Category: jean gabin

‘Grand Illusion’ review: one of the very few forms of film perfection

Jean Renoir's 1937 prisoner-of-war drama is one of the standards to which all films must aspire.

GRAnd Illusion -- von stroheim.jpgErich Von Stroheim in "Grand Illusion"
Sometimes I’m asked why I almost never give a film a grade of ‘A,’ and I reply that to do so is to declare a movie an immortal classic on a par with “Casablanca” or “The Godfather”: works of perfection as both art and entertainment and survivors of the test of time.

I’d add “Grand Illusion” to that list.  In 1937, with the threat of war slowly rising to a boil around him, director Jean Renoir looked back with a combination of nostalgia and horror at the War to End All Wars, as the conflict which we now call World War I was known.  

It’s a prisoner-of-war drama, with a French officer (Pierre Fresnay) and enlisted man (Jean Gabin) shunted from one form of incarceration to another, often under the guard of a German aristocrat (Erich von Stroheim). In its course, issues of class, race, history, love, and art are considered with the most delicate of touches, the personalities of cast ooze through the masks of their characters, and the daily life mixes seamlessly with greater events.  

“Grand Illusion” is humane and funny and profound and light and sober and dreamlike and hopeful and sad all at once.  It’s showing in a new 35mm print (that, too, makes it something of a classic).  See it and you may begin to appreciate the sorts of standards for greatness that the cinema is capable of setting.
    
(114 min., unrated, probably PG, Cinema 21) Grade: A


© 2024 Shawn Levy Dot Com

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑