La Grande Illusion (1937)

Set during WWI, two French aviators, an aristocratic Captain (Pierre Fresnay) and a working class Lieutenant (Jean Gabin) are shot down over Germany. In the prisoner of war camp they're assigned to, they meet a disparate group of French and English prisoners. Directed by Jean Renoir (RULES OF THE GAME). As film lovers, we all have blind spots when it comes to certain revered classic films and I must confess GRAND ILLUSION is one of mine. I don't dislike it, far from it but I can't drum up much enthusiasm for it either. There were moments watching the film where I wished I was watching THE GREAT ESCAPE instead. If that makes me a Philistine, so be it. But Renoir's movie inevitably shows up on any list of the greatest films ever made. Renoir's emphasis isn't on the POW escape but on how war breaks down social classes and weakens it to the point that it can never be the same after the war is over. The aristocratic officers of Fresnay and Erich von Stroheim as the German commandant are a dying breed and it's the working class like Gabin's mechanic that will survive the war. My favorite sequence in the film is the interlude with the farm widow (Dita Parlo) which brings an elegiac close to the film. The acting is impeccable. I just wish I liked it better. With Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette and Jean Daste.