Touches You

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

As the critic Walter Benjamin reminds us, no civilization without barbarism, no enlightenment without inhumanity. So it is in Grand Illusion. The civilization lies in the camaraderie among the prisoners; the barbarism, offstage in the trenches where so many of the Lost Generation were slaughtered. Renoir's business, as always, is with the warm, the human, the civilized. Here he underlines that camaraderie by including "the Jew," whom he exempts from the worst of French anti-Semitism, and the members of the working class whose technical skills have made them pilots. Dalio is wonderful as "the Jew"; Gabin no less so as the former "mechanic." Fresnais and von Stroheim, the aristocratic career soldiers, hold themselves aloof, and experience the warmth ironically at best; not without bitterness, they agree that the war has put an end to heir world. A masterpiece among Renoir's masterpieces, it speaks to us almost as powerfullhy as it did to its first audiences. As we watch, it lets us believe in a tiny, imperiled, and almost unimaginable island of civilization where Gabin and "the Jew" can make common cause. But not without the reminder of barbarism: the guns pointed at the end by the frustrated German soldiers. Civilization, barbarism: Renoir understands both, and as always, celebrates the first without overlooking its second.

LA GRANDE ILLUSION is one of the biggest accomplishment of French and world cinema. Anti-war theme is shown in a rather strange way. Senselessness of war is the essence. At a frivolous (human) and non-violent way emerged the war illusion. Human relations during the war, the loss of any meaning and value. This is a strange story about human relationships in a time of war.Prisoners of war camps. The camps in the war could be called hell on Earth. Here are just illusions. Renoir gives us a work of art that explores the depth and complexity of human relationships. One difficult and undesirable topics is presented with a lot of modesty and charm.In the film's social status is reduced to a minimum. The soldiers are essential and a little crazy. The relationship between prisoners and soldiers is almost friendly. Full of patience and respect. War is man's ultimate folly, for it brings him losses that are permanent, and victories that are pyrrhic and short lived.Scenography and acting are excellent. Watch Gabin (Lieutenant Maréchal) and Fresnay (Captain de Boeldieu) is a real pleasure. Erich von Stroheim (Captain - Major von Rauffenstein) is quite realistic figure and around him is spinning an illusion and absurdity of everyday life. Dita Parlo as Elsa appears briefly but leaves a strong impression. There are so many different and important characters who acting with a lot of freedom and creativity. Renoir reveals every aspect of his characters.This film is full of humanism, heroism, drama and adventure. All of these features are mixed in a war illusion in which is hard to believe, but it's very nice to see and feel. A little comedy of manners is welcome, romance also.Whether it is or not, the film tells us that men can act nobly, even when they are a part of something that is not itself noble. Mankind must rise from ruin. Unfortunately, to this day all is one La Grande Illusion.

"Grand Illusion" shows the struggles on war, and the struggle between the rich and poor class. The film actually doesn't show war between the French and the Germans and instead Jean Renoir took another approach to the film. The Film instead shows a typical life on a POW in the first world war. While watching the film you'll take note that neither the German people nor the French are enemies but instead respect and care each other. In one scene at almost the end of the film one of the leading characters Le lieutenant Marchall a French man played by Jean Gabin meets a German women named Elsa played by Dita Parlo, while fleeing from the POW camp. As the film progresses you'll notice that Marchall and Elsa care deeply for each other but are separated by the fact that both of their country's are at war.

Released in 1937, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion remains one of the most revered films of all time seventy five years onward. The story of a group of working class Francophones trying to escape imprisonment during the First World War, the picture has been praised both for its exceptional acting and craft and its driving humanist, anti-war themes. As someone taking in this Renoir classic for the first time, I can attest that the film holds up very well.Grand Illusion follows a company of working class French men imprisoned in a German POW camp during World War I. Amongst them the proletariat Parisian Marechal (Jean Gabin), the French Jew Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), and a nameless engineer (Gaston Modot) - they are distinct from one another but share an understanding of the futility of the war they're fighting and a desire to escape. This futility is exemplified through the interactions between the Captain of the men, De Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), and the head of the German POW camp, Von Rauffenstein (Eric Von Stroheim), who are both aristocrats and share more common ground than the respective lower class men they represent.All of the elements of the film are at a higher tier of quality: the dialogue eloquently written, the performances subtle, the camera movements elegant (Renoir's camera has a way of artfully manoeuvring around rooms and dinner tables, following important characters as they talk and keep the plot moving forward). What truly makes Grand Illusion great though is not these formal elements but the larger statement they are in service of. Renoir was a writer with something to say, and from the scene where the French soldiers band together to put on a talent show to the final sequence where Marechal and Rosenthal are kindly taken in by a young German widow, he drives home his theme of the futility of war by highlighting the common humanity of people.In conclusion, Grand Illusion has aged remarkably well and remains one of the cinema's great masterpieces. Tied with Rules of the Game, it is Renoir's greatest work, and a must-see for anyone with a passing interest in cinema. It's a perfect example of what quality filmmaking is: high artistry in all compartments at the service of a simple but driving truth, in this case the "grand illusion" that war is something worth pursuing.