Die große Illusion

Jean Renoir's classic "La Grande Illusion" has something to recommend it to anyone - there is fine acting, directing, writing, and photography, and a story filled with memorable characters who are involved in action, suspense, and drama, with some comic parts and even, later in the film, some romance. All of it fits together perfectly to create a timeless and very satisfying experience.

The movie takes place during World War I, and is often considered an anti-war film, but the themes about humanity, relationships, loyalties, and identities are all timeless and go beyond any mere political statement. The interplay between persons of different nationalities and classes, thrown together by the war, leads to good drama and makes some profound points about human nature. The story primarily follows three Frenchmen who are taken prisoner by the Germans, showing us how they manage to deal with their confinement, and allowing us to watch their disappointments and their attempts to escape. The other main character is a German prison camp commander with whom they become friendly, raising complicated questions of loyalty and duty.

The character studies are excellent, and all the fine acting and directing get the most of out the possibilities. The settings are convincing and help the viewer feel what it was like to be in camp with the prisoners, sharing their boredom and their longing for freedom. The plot itself is interesting, and has some exciting moments, but the main emphasis is on what the characters learn about themselves and about humanity in general. There are many thoughtful scenes and some nicely defined secondary characters that round out the picture.

This is a fine movie, deserving of its reputation, and one that should appeal highly to anyone who enjoys classic cinema.

What makes Grand Illusion a great movie, and the reason that some of us keep returning to it, is that it can't be reduced to a single simple proposition, the way that recent war movies like Platoon ("war bad," to quote Tarantino's synopsis) or Saving Private Ryan ("war senseless") can. It's easy to be sentimental about war, even while deploring it, by focusing on the horror of it or by making heroes out of those who are forced to fight. Renoir deals instead with the far more complex mesh of differences and alliances that separate and divide our characters. And while his main characters all have a clear class/national/religious identity, he makes much more out of them than just sociological categories.

But trying to explain why Grand Illusion is such a great movie by charting all the conflicting bonds of nationality, class, religion, etc. doesn't explain why the movie is so powerful. To me it is in those scenes in which language either separates our characters (as when Marechal tries and fails to tell the British prisoners about the tunnel or asks why de Boeldieu uses "vous") or unites them (as when von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu speak in English or the English officer (in drag) sings the Marseillaise or when Marechal finally learns a little German). In these cases, Renoir uses language-without hitting us over the head to make the point-to illustrate the conflict between his ideal of sympathy between humans and the differences of class, nationality and religion.

Now I know that this sounds just as dry and academic as other attempts to explain Grand Illusion. Maybe it is; the movie really does not need to be explained to be enjoyed. But these are the scenes that, for whatever reason, have always made the greatest impression on me.

In the old European order, pre-WWI, one nation's aristocracy made war on another's not out of love for king and country or hatred for the enemy, but out of a sense of honor and duty. War was what they did, these aristocrats of l'ancien regime. Their castles in the air, their noble worldview, their time-honored way--all would crumble, as they very well knew, if the line between the rabble and themselves were allowed to continue to blur. The masses had new and different loyalties.

"La Grande Illusion" in 1914 was the hope that that old order could be preserved in the face of surging democracy and noveau-riche power. Jean Renoir's film presents us with an irony: the martial elites of France and Germany needed the war to vouchsafe their very identities, and yet that conflict would prove their undoing. Whatever side won, the hoi polloi would gain the upper hand.

Restored from its original camera negative, the 1937 French film now on DVD sparkles like new. The restoration lets us see that nothing is dated about this work of genius, even if its POW-camp situations today seem stock and its characters stereotypes of nationality and class. The fine acting, the deft pacing, and the fluid camerawork make for a film that could have been produced last year. The whispered subtext, the nuanced conflicts, and the ironic complexity make for a film that is timeless.

The subtext is the eternal tension between "in the air" and "on the ground," "on high" and "here below," "from a distance" and "up close and personal." From a distance, war is no more rancorous than a chess game, with national boundaries as artificial as the squares on a chessboard. Up close and personal, war separates humans from their lives and aspirations, lovers from their beloveds.

The old elites loved nothing but their class and its accoutrements. It was peasant stock and noveau riche who belted out national anthems and honored the borders which in wartime could sever lover from lover but, paradoxically, also shield prison-camp escapees who made it across them to sanctuary. Renoir's genius was that he could show that an emergent new order, manifestly better on the ground, comes at a steep price, tragically, in the air.

Every time I watch this I find something else I hadn't thought of before, every viewing is an augmented experience. Things I hadn't spotted at 11, 19, 22 etc I spotted last night, mostly inconsequential but still adding to the picture 36 years after my first time. That to me is the difference between great films and Great films, one of the reasons why this ostensibly simple movie is one of the all time Greats.

And it is simple (the simplest things are usually the best) - boring to some people who sadly will never understand its logic and magic - an absorbing prisoner of war tale that is also a prisoner of class tale. It defines that class loyalties are more meaningful than patriotism even if not always practical, and that to those who consider themselves to have breeding it's far more important to have "blood" than capital. Boldieu and Rauffenstein embody this, they both knew their chivalric world order was being gradually diminished - the next war will and was led by people without breeding, types like Marechal and Rosenthal who fought on. The most significant borders are not between countries, races, religions, sexes or ages but those between the classes. Renoir was at his most inspired with Illusion, with so many memorable images and set-pieces, an engrossing storyline even when down to trying to say blue eyes in German or being posh by gossipping in English, and fantastic acting by all concerned. Everything has already been covered and better in previous posts, but I would add I don't understand why Regle du jeu is the Renoir film that gets the kudos today - unless by being deliberately more obscure it appeals to influential Artheads.

The French film I love the most.

From Jean Renoir's autobiography, My Life and My Films (1974):

"If a French farmer should find himself dining at the same table as a French financier, those two Frenchmen would have nothing to say to each other, each being unconcerned with the other's interests. But if a French farmer meets a Chinese farmer they will find any amount to talk about. This theme of the bringing together of men through their callings and common interests has haunted me all my life and does so still. It is the theme of 'La Grande Illusion' and it is present, more or less, in all my works."

In a sense, 'La Grande Illusion' is a counterpoint in an argument of stories: in one corner, Jean Renoir & friends singing about humor and good cheer; in the other, a handful of Germans demanding bigotry and murderous pride.

My opinion of the movie is quite high, but I think, from having read that book and a few others, that the real accomplishments in 'Illusion,' artistic and thematic, come directly from Renoir's deep affection of people and our loves.

To live your life with love and humor takes thoughtful delicacy. It's much easier to close your heart, fence yourself in, and never have a true friend in your life: and such closed-hearted people are inevitably the ones who coolly turn the political screws until the world bursts into famine and war.

It was too much to think that 'La Grande Illusion' would prevent the then coming war, as Renoir hoped. But to look at the story again, as a lyrical anti-fascist statement and a call to weigh friendship and good company over nationalism (of any sort), that I think is where the story gets really good.

The modern era continues to give us a real choice. We can kill, without effort, to subdue the stranger. Or we can join the stranger for a meal and a conversation, and become friends. Which of these is the true vision of the world's "leaders"? Cold hearts, cold future.

Something to think about as you watch the movie.