IMDb > La grande illusion (1937)
La grande illusion
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La grande illusion (1937) More at IMDbPro »


Overview

User Rating:
8.0/10   11,441 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 12% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Writers:
Charles Spaak (scenario and dialogue) &
Jean Renoir (scenario and dialogue)
Contact:
View company contact information for The Grand Illusion on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
12 September 1938 (USA) more
Genre:
Plot:
During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Awards:
Nominated for Oscar. Another 3 wins & 1 nomination more
User Comments:
Classic film on the death of ancient regimes more (86 total)

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)
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)
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Additional Details

Also Known As:
Grand Illusion (Australia) (video box title) (International: English title) (informal title)
The Grand Illusion (USA)
more
Runtime:
114 min | 94 min (1937 release) | Germany:107 min
Country:
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (Western Electric Sound System)
Certification:
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)

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Goebbels made sure that the film's print was one of the first things seized by the Germans when they occupied France. He referred to Jean Renoir as "Cinematic Public Enemy Number 1". For many years it was assumed that the film had been destroyed in an Allied air raid in 1942. However, a German film archivist named Frank Hansel, then a Nazi officer in Paris, had actually smuggled it back to Berlin. Then when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945, the film found its way to an archive in Moscow. When Jean Renoir came to restore his film in the 1960s, he knew nothing of Hansel's acquisition and was working from an old muddy print. Purely by coincidence at the same time, the Russian archive swapped some material with an archive in Toulouse. Included in that exchange was the original negative print. However, because so many prints of the film existed at the time, it would be another 30 years before anyone realised that the version in Toulouse was actually the original negative. more
Goofs:
Anachronisms: Elsa's rural farmhouse in the mountains has electric lighting in the 1910s. more
Quotes:
Lieutenant Maréchal: The theater's too deep for me. I prefer bicycling. more
Movie Connections:
Soundtrack:
Künstlerleben (Artist's Life), Op.316 more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
30 out of 38 people found the following comment useful.
Classic film on the death of ancient regimes, 21 March 2000
Author: Eric Stewart (epstewart@home.com) from Catonsville, MD

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.

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Was there electricity in that farmhouse? whisper-24
Was this intentional? **slight spoilers** Fermented
Should I say it...? BritalianBaron
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cross dressing jmegoddessoflove
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