Prof. Andrew Sarris
International Film 1930-1960
October 23, 2000
La Grande Illusion – A Film By Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir once said that filmmaking is not a true art because it is not the sole creation or vision of one person. As a former sculptor and the son of the great impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, he certainly had the background to appreciate this distinction. However, if ever there was one person who originated a film and so clearly brought both vision and purpose to it, it was Jean Renoir in his 1937 French masterpiece La Grande Illusion. Renoir conveyed this vision both as the writer and director of the film. As the writer, he created a profound script whose complexity of vision begins right with its title, and as director, he executed and reinforced that vision during both production and post-production with his unusually straightforward cinematography and editing techniques.
Jean Renoir was someone who “loved film with a religious passion” and, according to former student Syd Field, he loved discussing the relationship between art and film with his students. Field recalls that because of Renoir’s “background and tradition, Renoir felt that film, though a great art, was not a ‘true’ art in the sense that writing, painting, or music is, because too many people are directly involved in its making. The filmmaker can write, direct, and produce his own film, Renoir used to say, but he can’t act all the parts; he can be the cameraman, but he can’t develop the film. He sends it to a special laboratory for that, and sometimes it doesn’t come back the way he wants it” (Field 230).
Renoir believed that creating a film is an extremely collaborative effort and that a filmmaker must depend on many others to bring his vision to the screen. This is an important acknowledgement for someone who is considered by many critics to be the greatest film auteur ever. Even the staunchest critics of auteur theory, such as William Goldman, admit that while Hollywood studio films are never the vision of just one person, there are a handful of independent writer-directors such as Woody Allen who control so many aspects of a film’s creation that they might be considered its author. This was probably more common in European cinema, particularly in the 1930s, where film production was not such an assembly-line process. Renoir “is considered one of the first great ‘auteurs,’ a cinematic master whose distinctive style always contained a concern for human issues and a reverence for natural beauty” (UCLA). Indeed, the French theorists who originated auteur theory, including André Bazin and François Truffaut, considered Renoir to be the most influential of all auteurs and La Grande Illusion to be his first masterpiece (Sarris).
The Grand Illusion was both a critical success and an important film. It won the 1938 New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards the following year. In 1937, it won Best Overall Artistic Contribution at the Venice Film Festival. The film is recognized as being inspirational for many later films, including The Great Escape, Casablanca, and Paths of Glory. In his autobiography My Life and My Films, Renoir said that he had hoped this movie would help prevent the imminent second world war. Instead, it was banned in both Germany and Italy until after 1945. (Renoir, IMDb)
The complexity of the film’s theme begins with its famous title, which has been subject to various interpretations ever since it first premiered. One suggestion is that the illusion refers to the film medium itself, which coincides with Renoir’s interest in the ancient debate about art and nature and the power of art to imitate and influence. This is an interesting theory, but I think in this case, the title is not intended to be quite so meta-literary or academic. Another argument is that war is the illusion, because there can be no victors once we have all lost our mutual respect and humanity. Indeed, many critics cite this as the greatest film ever made about the futility of war.
I think the anti-war interpretation of the title is certainly valid, but it only scratches the surface of what this film is about. I believe La Grande Illusion is really about class distinctions, particularly at the end of the gilded age of opulence and the beginning of the modern world, which most historians consider World War I. As reviewer Eric Stewart explains, “La Grande Illusion in 1914 was the hope that the old order could be preserved in the face of surging democracy and nouveau-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” (IMDb). Incidentally, this pre-World War I class struggle is also a primary theme of the recent film Titanic. However, this aspect gets overlooked to some extent in both films because it is more complex and less emotionally satisfying than a love story or a prison escape drama. I do not mean to suggest that Titanic is in any way on par with this film, but instead reference it only because it is a recent popular film with a related theme.
The anti-war and the end-of-the-aristocracy interpretations of the film’s theme coincide well because war is the ideal example of how the old regime was being made obsolete. Prior to World War I, war in Europe was considered a sort of civilized sport orchestrated by the upper classes. There were strict game-like rules of conduct and for the officers, it was almost a medieval competition for honor. Recent technological inventions, however, such as barbed wire, machine guns, and poison gases were about to drastically change the game and put an end to the chivalric fantasies of combat. In addition, the 19th century’s rise of the middle class had already started to undermine the aristocracy’s dominant position. This is most clearly seen in Captain De Boieldieu’s resentment of Lieutenant Rosenthal, who comes from a Jewish banking family that has more money than his ancient aristocratic family. This is similar to the changing world order depicted in the 1939 film Gone With The Wind, about the end of feudalism in the American South a half-century earlier. What is so remarkable about The Grand Illusion is that the class-struggle is depicted without any fighting or cities being burnt, but rather through thoughtful conversations and small acts of decency. As Bob Erich wrote in a recent review, this film “makes an eloquent statement on the insanity of war without descending to polemics, a war movie that has no villains… Renoir created a film in which decent human beings are caught up in a deranged set of circumstances” (IMDb).
One such example of the script’s eloquent humanity is a brief scene in which a German prison guard gives a harmonica to Lieutenant Maréchal, who is going crazy in solitary confinement. Here and throughout the film, we are reminded of the common values and similarities of the German captors and their French prisoners. One might say that the big illusion is that people are fundamentally different, that there is a distinction between aristocrats and non-aristocrats, the wealthy bourgeoisie and the working class, the French and the Germans, or the Gentiles and the Jews. This point is driven home best in the film’s brilliantly simple final scene, in which Maréchal and Rosenthal reach the Swiss border and realize that there is no natural division between Switzerland and Germany. Maréchal says succinctly, “The border is man-made. Nature doesn’t care.”
In his autobiography, Renoir wrote that his goal was to show what separates and brings together various people. “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” (Renoir). This is most clearly illustrated in the way the characters bond by class rather than nationality, despite their countries being at war. The French aristocrat Capt. de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay) feels most comfortable with German aristocrat Capt. von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim); their connection is that they are both from old military families and thus share a bond of honor and duty which they believe the other soldiers lack. Likewise, the working-class Lt. Maréchal (Jean Gabin) falls in love with the German farm woman Else (Dita Parlo). Neither Maréchal nor Lt. Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) see anything glorious or sporting in war. Their goal is to escape and survive, whereas de Boieldieu says early in the film that his only motivation for escaping from the prison camp is the challenge.
In this respect, the film is about the absurdity of the old aristocratic values in the modern world, which is what caused and prolonged the war in the first place. However, La Grande Illusion also suggests that there is a certain dignity to the fading old-guard that is going to be lost forever. Von Rauffenstein, the racist, classist German commandant turns out to be the most gentle character in the film. He adheres to his code of honor no matter what. After shooting down the French aviators, he invites them to lunch and observes a moment of silence for their dead. Later, de Boieldieu tries to convince him that his old prejudices might be misplaced, but instead, I believe Rauffenstein ends up reminding de Boieldieu of his own noble duty. Rather than escaping with his two men, de Boieldieu instead takes on a paternal role and sacrifices himself so that they can get away. I think deep down he senses a feudal duty to protect his vassals, and this is why Rauffenstein sympathizes with him even as he is forced to shoot him. Ironically, de Boieldieu gets to die a chivalrous hero while enfeebled Rauffenstein must wither away in a bureaucratic job, a relic of the old guard.
Another important way Renoir accomplishes his purpose is through the layering of the three languages in the film, French, German, and English. An authentic use of language is essential for portraying the complexities of World War I. Language in this film either separates or brings together the characters. When Maréchal tries but fails to explain to the newly arrived British prisoners about the tunnel they have dug, the characters are separated by their language barrier. Later, when Maréchal asks de Boieldieu why he insists on using the ‘vous’ form, language is again used to isolate the characters, even though here they both speak French. On the other hand, von Rauffenstein and de Boieldieu bridge their nationalities by speaking in English as a neutral language, even though Rauffenstein also speaks French. At the end of the film, Maréchal finally succeeds in breaking down a linguistic boundary when he falls in love with Else and even learns a little German.
Perhaps Renoir’s most important role in implementing his vision was as director. In addition to writing the original story and co-writing the screenplay, he had a tremendous influence on the film’s cinematography, production design, and editing. He coordinated all these processes to create what Hitchcock called a unified purpose. André Bazin praised Renoir’s for his “modest use of camera movement and editing and emphasis on deep focus photography. Bazin argued that these techniques could lead the spectator to a more direct relationship with the landscapes and characters” (UCLA). Other theorists credit Renoir’s films for reflecting “a sense of fluidity and spontaneity, which are the result of his choreographed staging and masterful camera work” (Art2u).
One example of how Renoir employs the camera to reinforce his theme is by using similar shots regardless of which characters are on screen. Many films emphasize the heroes with close-ups, bright lighting, or soft-focus, and exaggerate the villains by shooting them in shadows or from low, menacing angles. Since this film has no good or bad guys, everyone is shot the same way regardless of their nationality or what country they’re in. The German officers look just like the French officers, just as the German and Swiss countrysides look the same. Renoir thus uses cinematography to break down artificial notions of borders, enemies, and heroes, and to demonstrate a commonality that binds all the characters together.
The editing also helps us see all the characters equally. Known for his simple, straightforward editing, Renoir uses cuts to neutrally show the characters’ different points of view without giving unfair emphasis to any one particular actor. This also makes it difficult to identify a lead role. Each of the five major characters (Maréchal, Rosenthal, de Boieldieu, von Rauffenstein, and Else) is introduced briefly, and then elaborated on in stages throughout the film. Editors traditionally try to cut scenes so that the audience sympathizes with or follows a particular character. This is done by holding on him longer, focusing on his reactions during a dialogue, using more close-ups of him, etc. In La Grande Illusion, however, the editing, just like the cinematography, emphasizes the legitimacy of all the characters and their different points of view.
Modern viewers universally praise the slick production despite its being over 60 years old. One critic writes that “the fine acting, deft pacing, and 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.” Donald Lamb concurs and praises Renoir for his incredible camera work throughout the film: “He probes the characters at the various prison camps with some smooth dolly shots and brilliant use of focus and pull-backs. It seems like an extension of his hand, much like his father’s paintings” (IMDb).
An anonymous reviewer put it best: “This is a great film about the futility of war, racism, classism, and all other things that separate any human being from another” (IMDb). While probably no full-length feature was ever authored by a single artist, I think that in La Grande Illusion, Jean Renoir as both writer and director created and implemented such a compelling vision that this film can truly be called his.
Works Cited
Art2U. Jean Renoir Filmography.
http://www.art2u.com/movies/Renoir.html, October 2000.
Field, Syd. Screenplay. New York: Dell, 1979.
IMDb. Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com, October 2000.
Goldman, William. Adventures in the Screen Trade. New York: Warner Books, 1983.
Renoir, Jean. My Life and My Films. 1974. Quoted from IMDb.
Sarris, Andrew. Notes from class lectures. Columbia University, Fall 2000.
UCLA. UCLA Film and Television Archive – Jean Renoir.
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/text/renoir.html, October 2000.