(1938, b/w; La grande illusion, French, German, English) Director Jean Renoir's moody masterpiece often has been cited as a classic, elegant antiwar screed for the screen, though for me two other films had far more impact - Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory and Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front - depicting the horrors of World War I.

Two French officers on a reconnaissance mission are shot down and captured by Capt von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim), who treats them as his personal guests; he refers to the French aviators as his "valiant enemy." Soon after their courteous reception as gentlemanly prisoners, Capt de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and his wounded pilot, Lt Maréchal (Jean Gabin), are taken to the Hallbach POW camp, where the French eat cabbage and receive food parcels from home while their Russian allies are fed cabbage roots without parcels.

A Jewish officer, Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), the scion of a banking family, generously shares his packages with his fellow French inmates. Along with Cartier (Julien Carette), a merry fellow formerly a stage actor, they take turns digging a tunnel, having only a can and coal shovel for tools.

During a theatrical performance with the prisoners in drag, singing and dancing in front of an audience of German officers, Maréchal leads the troupe in a rousing rendition of the Marseilaise when news arrives of a French success in recapturing Douaumont; for his act of affront, Maréchal is put into solitary confinement while the Germans retake Douaumont.

Just as they are close to completing the tunnel, the French officers are transferred elsewhere. Maréchal and Boeldieu eventually, after repeated attempts at escape from other camps, find themselves at Wintersborn, an ancient castle turned POW facility under the authority of Commandant von Rauffenstein, who politely greets them again with the warning: "No one escapes from this fortress."

Following a broken spine, severe burns to his hands, and numerous other injuries, von Rauffenstein explains to his aristocratic counterpart, Capt Boeldieu, his having been assigned to a bureaucratic policeman's duties since he's no longer capable of combat. Predicting that this war will be the end of the aristocracy, the German remarks that a commoner's death in war is tragic, but for men of their station, it's "a way out."

Here Boeldieu and Maréchal are reunited with Rosenthal. When the Russians create a commotion distracting the German guards, the French trio are inspired with a plan for escape, though one must sacrifice himself for the other two to get away. Fleeing the fortress 200 miles from safety in Switzerland, the two Frenchmen, hungry and exhausted, take shelter in a cowshed where a German widow (her husband a victim at Verdun), Elsa (Dita Parlo), living alone with her daughter Lotte, befriends and feeds the two men. Departing after Christmas, Maréchal promises to return for her if he survives the war.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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