And it couldn't have happened to a nicer film. Unlike many of the cinema's major masterpieces, La Grande Illusion was hailed as such right from the start - it was a huge commercial and critical success, and remains Renoir's best-loved film, even if his subsequent La Règle du Jeu has since stolen its thunder when it comes to critics' polls. And I said "nicer" rather than "better", because one of La Grande Illusion's encyclopaedia of virtues is its infinite humanity - although set during World War I and explicitly about the conflict between France and Germany, Renoir never resorts to cliché or caricature in his depiction of the men on both sides. His underlying philosophy throughout his long career was "everyone has their reasons", and it was rarely more effectively illustrated than here.
This was entirely deliberate on Renoir's part, as he was trying to make a film that would show his fellow countrymen the sheer pointlessness of war - at a time when Hitler had been in power for four years and had started some aggressive sabre-rattling, it was a message that needed to be delivered, even if it ultimately had little effect. This is largely because Renoir misjudged the nature of Hitler's threat - he saw World War I as a war between gentlemen, conducted with respect for the rules of chivalry and good manners. It's arguable that that view was dated even with regard to that war (which Renoir himself fought in), but it certainly didn't apply to the maelstrom that was just around the corner.
The film revolves around three French prisoners of war, held in a German POW camp presided over by former air ace von Rauffenstein, played by Erich von Stroheim. In many ways, this is the ancestor of the likes of The Great Escape and just about every other wartime prison escape film, though in La Grande Illusion the escape is merely its dramatic centre-piece, as Renoir is far more concerned with the theme of human relationships and the social and cultural obstacles that impede them.
The men are very different in terms of background, race and class: Maréchal (Jean Gabin) is the salt-of-the-earth working-class lieutenant, de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) is the refined and aristocratic captain, and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) is the Jew, initially seen as an outsider by virtue of his "foreignness". But as the film makes clear, they all encounter situations where they don't fit in - and find common ground in the most surprising places (von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu, for instance, are technically on opposite sides in terms of nationality, but very much on the same side when it comes to their social standing, shared memories and attitudes towards the war).
These similarities and differences are emphasised by the fact that the soundtrack is in multiple languages - the French speak French, the Germans German, and so on - which was highly unusual for the time, but it's a crucial part of Renoir's theme. For instance, von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu often speak English to each other, partly because they know Maréchal can't understand it, but also out of politeness: it's a mutual second language, which puts them at an equal disadvantage.
The theme of communication or the lack thereof runs throughout the film, most notably in the scenes between Gabin and Dita Parlo (the female lead in Jean Vigo's L'Atalante) - he only speaks French, she only speaks German, and although their body language betrays their feelings all too clearly, they're acutely conscious of their inability to put their thoughts into words. This is both immensely touching and also potentially perilous, as he's a fugitive sheltering in her house and he doesn't know how she'll react when German soldiers pay her a visit.
Renoir's direction is magisterial throughout - there are those who rank him as the greatest of all film-makers, and the evidence presented here doesn't exactly hinder their cause. Although Citizen Kane has been praised to the skies for its alleged innovations, this is largely because they're so in-your-face that you can hardly avoid them. But La Grande Illusion was showcasing the creative possibilities of deep focus and complex, fluid camera movements five years earlier, but because Renoir always focused primarily on the characters and story, this went almost unnoticed at the time. He's the hardest of directors to imitate, because his technique is so seamless and invisible that there's little indication of how he achieves his effects - apparently, the presence of a Renoir film on an actor's CV was no guarantee of that actor's talent, since Renoir, as one casting agent put it, "could make a wardrobe act".
This is absolutely not a slur on Renoir's cast, though, since Jean Gabin was already established as one of the finest screen actors of his generation (the closest modern equivalent of his protean skills would be Gérard Depardieu), and von Stroheim, Fresnay, Dalio, Julien Carette, Gaston Modot and Dita Parlo give him sterling support (Pauline Kael observed that the crucial difference between the acting styles of Gabin, Fresnay and von Stroheim was that while Gabin's technique was as invisible as Renoir's, the other two are giving much more obvious "performances" - entirely appropriately, as their characters dedicate their lives to presenting a carefully-chosen façade to the world). As ever with Renoir's greatest films, there's not a bland or caricatured performance anywhere to be found - even the minor background roles are totally convincing, regardless of the characters' nationality.
In short, it's a flat-out wonderful film - made even more so by the fact that for all the incalculable riches on offer, Renoir never forgets that his primary duty is to entertain. I first saw La Grande Illusion on the big screen in the company of an audience that was at least 90% French, and what came across most powerfully was the genuine love they clearly felt for the film - which went well beyond knee-jerk patriotism or snobbish cultural élitism. I'd need far longer than a DVD Times review to do it anything like full justice - like all truly great works of art, it reveals new depths every time I watch it, and this DVD has rarely been out of my player since it landed on the doormat!
Those who have seen other Criterion DVDs know what they're capable of in terms of wringing the maximum possible quality out of decades-old material, but this is one of their finest achievements to date. Where this version differs from previous small-screen editions of La Grande Illusion is that they had access to the original camera negative, which was long thought destroyed after one of the main Paris labs was bombed during World War II. Actually, it had been moved from Paris to Berlin and then to Moscow following confiscation by both the Nazis and the victorious Soviet troops, and eventually found its way back to an archive in Toulouse with a vast amount of other material. Since La Grande Illusion wasn't considered a particularly rare film (it's always been one of the easiest Renoir films to get hold of), no-one at the archive realised the importance of what they had until the 1990s!
The result is a real eye-opener: pin-sharp images crammed with fine detail and a satisfyingly wide dynamic range: from jet black to brilliant white and the whole gamut of greys in the middle. It's not only by far the best print I've seen of this particular film, but arguably the finest print I've seen of any film from this era - quite apart from its visual qualities, it's also in remarkably good physical condition (Criterion's restoration team missed a few dust spots, but they really don't matter).
They've also worked wonders on the soundtrack. Predictably enough, it's in the original mono - but I certainly wasn't expecting a 1937 recording to sound anything like this rich and vivid. Admittedly, Criterion haven't been able to entirely eliminate defects in the original recording, and certain passages were clearly sourced from inferior materials (this may partly be a by-product of Renoir's insistence in recording live sound - he loathed the artificiality of dubbing), but this is as good as we're ever likely to get. Chapter stops have been set at seventeen - adequate enough, but a bit on the skimpy side by Criterion standards.
Personally, I'd have been more than satisfied with the above, but Criterion were made of sterner stuff and have thrown in their usual raft of extras: detailed production notes, biographies of the six lead actors, an article by Erich von Stroheim about working with Renoir ("His politeness towards everyone he works with was a source of endless amazement to me, especially as I personally cannot say three words in succession without swearing") and notes on the restoration accompanied by a vivid demonstration of the dramatic difference between earlier prints and the new version.
There's also a delightful four-minute introduction to the film by Renoir himself (in heavily accented English), a recording of a live 1938 radio broadcast of Renoir and von Stroheim accepting the New York Film Critics' Award for Best Foreign Language Film (Criterion have added relevant stills where necessary). Renoir speaks in unsubtitled French, but a spoken translation follows. Though this is admirably purist in terms of reproducing the original broadcast, it's a pity Criterion didn't take advantage of the technology at its disposal and supply subtitles as Renoir is actually speaking. The recording quality of Stroheim's speech is very crackly, though this is doubtless a fault of the original broadcast.
The most useful extra is the commentary recorded by critic and historian Peter Cowie, who also recorded an outstanding commentary for Criterion's The Seventh Seal. As with that recording, this works on three levels: as an admirably comprehensive analysis of the film, a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of its making, and a set of detailed biographies of Renoir and his cast and crew. One small glitch is that the commentary was recorded in 1987, with the result that some of the information is inaccurate - not least when Cowie says that the original negative was destroyed and that we'll never see a perfect version of the film (a claim that is contradicted as he speaks by the quality of the image playing in the background!).
But that's a minor quibble about an otherwise terrific achievement - and the same is true of the DVD as a whole. For all the fuss about the likes of Fox and Pathé overpricing their DVDs, no-one seems to mind about Criterion's prices (typically nearly $40 for one of their really feature-packed discs like this one) - but when both quality and quantity are at this level, that's hardly surprising. It's worth every cent, and then some.
Michael Brooke
| Distributor: Criterion
Director:
Starring: |
| - critical commentary
- director's introduction - radio interviews - production notes - biographies - restoration demonstration |
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