Allusion, Delusion in Grand Illusion

For the postmodern moviegoer, violence, accompanied with the typical barrage of human insensitivity, is a prerequisite for a quality war movie.

Even high caliber films from Saving Private Ryan to Platoon embody an overwhelming sense of the uncanny human ability to destroy. Thus, when the gods of film restoration rediscover a masterpiece like Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion, the film's social commentary and reflections on humanity appear dated and escape unnoticed if one is not careful.

Toted as the seminal World War I movie, Grand Illusion often garnishes critical accolades for its anti-war message as well as Renoir's masterful use of landscape shots. In 1938, a year after its release, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, the first foreign film ever to receive this honor. Joseph Goebbles, the Nazi propaganda chief, called the film "Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1." Sadly enough, after another world war, the Vietnam War and the melange of violence at home, Grand Illusion no longer has the sense of anti-war urgency that it possessed 62 years ago.

For most moviegoers, World War I might be a distant bleep on the grand spectrum of wars; World War II stands out not only because it is more recent but also because its brutality documented relentlessly. Grand Illusion asks the modern viewer to make the leap back into the pre-World War II and appreciate the depths of human devotion from a less jaded perspective, a task that ultimately proves impossible.

An incredibly well-preserved picture greets the viewer, and the opening scenes appear both surreal and promising. The film is set in 1916, before war-weariness had begun to be epidemic among troops and their homelands. The Germans shoot down a French reconnaissance plane that holds two of the movie's main characters, Lieutenant Marechal (Jean Gabin) and Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay). The film almost prompts laughter, for Erich von Stroheim's Captain von Rauffenstein invites the captured parties for a meal before sending them off to a prison camp.

The etiquette of war is entirely foreign to the modern viewer; for the enemy to eat lunch with his victims almost borders on the ridiculous. Von Stroheim, normally in the position of director, pleasant surprises in the role of a stiff captain serving the German Imperial Army.

The opening scenes have some odd nuances aside from the after-capture meal. Strangely, the subtitles break for the occasional English sparring between Rauffenstein and Boeldieu. One must assume that these phrases are inserted to emphasize the class difference between the two career officers and the others in the opening scene.

This obvious attempt to inject class is not only a shadow of Renoir's leftist leanings, but it also serves to set the grounding for the film's climax. The '90s viewer is accustomed to images of war camps populated with emaciated prisoners living in horrible conditions. Thus, Renoir's attempt to convey a POW camp is incredibly dated.

We find Marechal, Boeldieu, Rosenthal (Marcel Dialio), a Jewish couturier, and Cartier (Julien Carette), a music hall performer comfortable in a beautiful German setting. When the camera pans, Tudor manors and a sweeping countryside grace the vista. Similarly, while the camp is a POW camp, the prisoners are fed, exercised and treated reasonably well.

The inmates' cheerful attitude is further bolstered with Rosenthal's delicious care packages sent from his home in France. This relatively happy image of prison camp is almost insulting to the memory of those who perished in the holocaust and other prison camps.

The viewer must remember that Renoir filmed this before concentration camps and Vietnam POW camps, when war had a distinct code of morality and enemy soldiers had a distant respect for each other's bravery.

The biggest stretch for the postmodern viewer is Renoir's attempt to convey the necessity of escape from the prison camp. For a jaded moviegoer, life in the camps does not appear quite so horrible. The prisoners are isolated from the trenches and the continuous threat of death, are well fed and have each other's company.

Renoir asks us to make the philosophical jump to acknowledge that capture of any form is contrary to the human spirit. His mission fails, especially after the four are transferred to a tighter security prison in the heart of Germany. The prison is a fabulous castle placed in the German countryside. The train-ride through the European backwoods creates nostalgia for the innocence and beauty Europe held before World War II. Claude Renoir, the cameraperson for this film, does an excellent job capturing a sense of movement and depth, especially given the crude technology he had at his disposal.

Grand Illusion might have been a profoundly anti-war movie, but it is impossible to destroy the postmodern baggage of cynicism that a viewer inevitably brings to the movie. Thus, the movie operates under an illusion that we can appreciate the hold freedom has on the spirit.

However, because we are used to blood and gore as our guides to human character, Grand Illusion appears to be only a dated and trite war movie with French subtitles.