La grande illusion (1937)

Note des utilisateurs:

8.0/10   

Réalisateur:

Jean Renoir

Writers:

Charles Spaak (scenario and dialogue) &
Jean Renoir (scenario and dialogue)

Release Date:

12 septembre 1938 (USA)

Genre:

Drame | War

Plot:

During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life...

Plot Keywords:

Aristocrat | Escape | Officer | French | Prisoner Of War

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 3 wins & 1 nomination

Avis des utilisateurs:

A Humanist Classic

Ensemble

Jean Gabin	...	Lt. Maréchal
Dita Parlo	...	Elsa (farm woman)
Pierre Fresnay	...	Capt. de Boeldieu
Erich von Stroheim	...	Capt. von Rauffenstein (as Eric von Stroheim)
Julien Carette	...	Cartier, l'acteur (as Carette)
Georges Péclet	...	Le serrurier (as Peclet)
Werner Florian	...	Sgt. Arthur
Jean Dasté	...	The teacher (as Daste)
Sylvain Itkine	...	Lt. Demolder (as Itkine)
Gaston Modot	...	The engineer (as Modot)
Marcel Dalio	...	Lt. Rosenthal (as Dalio)

Autre(s) titre(s):

The Grand Illusion (USA)

Durée:

114 min | 94 min (1937 release) | Germany:107 min

Pays:

France

Langue:

Français | Allemand | Anglais | Russe

Couleur:

Noir et Blanc

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Son:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Classification:

Finland:(Banned) (1942) | Finland:K-16 (1937) | Finland:K-8 (1959) | Malaysia:U | Norway:12 (1959) | Norway:16 (1937) | Germany:12 (f) (1948) | Portugal:M/6 | Australia:G | Germany:(Banned) (1937-1945) | Italy:(Banned) (1938-1945) | South Korea:12 | Sweden:15 | USA:Unrated | UK:U (video rating) | UK:A (original rating) (cut)

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Caserne de Colmar, Colmar, Haut-Rhin, France

Company:

Réalisation d'art cinématographique (RAC)

Anecdotes:

The little girl who played "Lotte" never saw the film, having died of the flu some weeks before the film was released.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: As the WWI German soldiers are celebrating a French fort's capture, the map on the wall of the officers club is clearly an inter-war (1919-1938) map of Germany.

Guillemet:

Capt. de Boeldieu: I think we can do nothing to stop the march of time.
Capt. von Rauffenstein: Believe me, I don't know who is going to win this war the end, whatever it is will be the end of the Rauffensteins and the Boeldieus.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)

Soundtrack:

Frou-frou

A Humanist Classic

Grand Illusion is a movie about class that doesn't hate anyone. How often does that happen? Yes, there are namby-pamby movies that "show all sides" and bore everyone with their non-existent point-of-view, but that's not what I mean. And, of course, there are plenty of movies about class that reveal their biases from the start; I'm rather fond of Eat the Rich movies, myself. But Grand Illusion is about class without dismissing any of its characters. The aristocrats whose world is disappearing are presented as tragic figures, stuck in a code of life that is rapidly becoming meaningless. Both aristocrats know their time is past; the French one accepts this as probably a good thing, the German one doesn't (and blames the French one's sentiments on the French Revolution), but they both know their way of life is soon to be forgotten. And it would be easy for Renoir, when he made the film in the mid-30s a French communist with proletarian sympathies, to demonize these two. But he doesn't; he allows them their humanity, which is the most characteristic feature of Renoir movies in any event (he is the great humanist of movie history).

Nor does he show the collapse of the old way as an unfortunate preface to chaos. The bourgeois characters are good people. The world might be safe in their hands, as safe as in any other hands at least (except for the propensity among nations for war). All of the middle and lower-class characters in the movie are presented as people, not stereotypes. But Renoir doesn't accomplish this by collapsing all class boundaries into some homogenous universalism. These characters remain trapped within their class, and their class is clear to the viewer. The movie is not about the absence of class but about the crushing ironies of the very real existence of class in the lives of the characters. To show all classes without condescension, while retaining a particular point of view (that while people are good, it's best that the aristocratic world is in decline), is pretty amazing.

In Grand Illusion, the nominal hero is working/middle-class, but the upper class isn't evil and the lower class isn't romanticized or dismissed. And it's all accomplished in such a seamless way that many, if not most, first-time viewers might easily think it was a fine movie but something less than great. It sneaks up on you, and more than just about any film you can name, rewards multiple viewings.