LE GRANDE ILLUSION (1937) *** Jean Renoir's film about war and class consciousness was good enough that the Nazis banned it and ordered every copy burned. It was good enough that a German saved a copy anyway. Others have filmed a more gripping narrative with better actors and a more compelling storyline, but they didn't do so while the guns were being pointed at Paris, and they didn't do so with the realization that doing so would make them a target (I wonder if this explains the unusually high number of actors with only one name). This story rings true, not just the big points but the small ones as well, Dita Parlo is strong as the "good German," and Renoir's script drives home without offering room for response or getting pedagogical. Jean Gabin (the commoner) is in many ways more regal and elegant than Pierre Fresnay (the aristocrat), which was also one of the meritorious beliefs of le Front Populaire of socialist French film makers, now heading towards the borders like the characters here portrayed. It's a tremendous film by one of the best directors of one of those unique historical collections of individuals that suddenly spring up in the same place, and it is a document of the courage of that director and his actors in facing a threat that others would soon be too late to effect.
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