Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7322 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-11-13
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 108 minutes

Synopsis
The setting is World War I where three French Army prisoners of war from widely differing backgrounds, share a common interest in an escape. An internationally acclaimed production which highlights the senselessness of war.

Customer Reviews

A French Masterpiece
This is one of if not thee greatest french movie of all time the plot summary is During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life. They meet other prisoners from various backgrounds, as Rosenthal, son of wealthy Jewish bankers. They are separated from Rosenthal before managing to escape. A few months later, they meet again in a fortress commanded by the aristocrat Van Rauffenstein. De Boeldieu strikes up a friendship with him but Marechal and Rosenthal still want to escape.
This has about 2 hour worth of special features including about an hours worth of silent films an introduction from jean Renoir aswell as an introuduction from french film critic Ginette Vincendeau.
What more could you ask this film has english subtitles and french audio.

Still crisp after all these years
I have watched this film many times since the Sixties; due to postings with Reuters in each of its main languages, and it remains a very strong film. Like most good films it has a number of story lines which move back and forth. The cheery French officers who constitute our heroes contain a mixture of classes and religions (the wealthy Jewish banker, the French aristo and a mechanic amongst others). The film opens with the ambiguity of German pilots entertaining the French pilots who have just been shot down; both sides are punctilious and friendly. Eric von Stroheim as von Rauffenstein (played as Prussian cavalry officer) returns later in the film as the gaoler after suffering burns.

At no stage are the Germans seen as Huns or swine; indeed the old reservists who guard our heroes are kindly, and concerned for their charges. The war seems to be rather more like a football match seen from afar where news appear on the notice board, and the two sets of supporters are uplifted or brought low.

Numerous escape plots lead a reduced band of men to a Colditz-clone (where there is even a French african officer). Here de Boildieu and von Rauffenstein reflect that the war is the end of their warrior class. Two alone escape, bicker, reconcile and find refuge with a German widow. Once again the similarities between people overcome the difference between their nations and it is hard to disagree with the sentiments of "Good luck to them" expressed by the border patrol as the escapees reach Switzerland.

La Grande Illusion is not a classic anti-war film; it is neither angry nor "a searing indictment" but is rather a pro-foreigners film in which Renoir constantly tries to get you to consider the people who constitute the other side. It finds little positive in war (and even the warrior caste can see that) but it refuses to accept stereotypes - except perhaps the mono-lingual British officers in the "trou" scene.

Still a fine film, but age has withered it
La Grande Illusion is one of those films whose reputation as one of the pinnacles of cinematic achievement has always seemed unfathomable to me. If anything, its reputation does the film a great disservice. It IS a good film - a very good film, in fact - but it's not a particularly great one, and it seems to have less to say with each passing year, gradually turning into yet another prisoner of war movie moving from boarding school hijinks to superficial comments on the class system. There are a few excellent scenes in the last third, not least once Von Stroheim re-enters the film, but it feels at times as if there's more French studio system craft than substance. Certainly as an anti-war film it's surprisingly ineffective compared to Pabst or Milestone's earlier efforts. An improvement over the previous Warners/Canal + release, this has a restored sequence missing from the earlier release and an introduction by film historian Ginette Vincendreau.

Also included are two of Renoir's silent short films:

Made with film stock left over from the production of Nana, 1927's Sur un Air de Charleston is described as a holiday film for all concerned, and that's the best way to view it. Jean Renoir seems never to have thought enough of it to even edit the footage together. The plot is a simple reversion of racial stereotypes - in 2028 a black explorer travels to a post-holocaust Paris where a white native girl teaches him the Charleston (naturally he assumes she's a savage whose dancing is a prelude to her eating him before giving in to the seductive beat of `White Aborigine' music). There are plenty of surreal touches, be it the pet gorilla eating the flowers in Catherine Hessling's hair, the angels the girl telephones (Renoir and producer Pierre Braunberger among them) or the fact that black performer Johnny Huggins plays his part in minstrel blackface while Hessling's dancing ability is almost completely nonexistent, and there are some interesting occasional experiments with slow motion, but there's not really enough to sustain it for its modest two reels.

1928 short La Petite Marchande D'Allumettes aka The Little Match Girl also suffers from an unconvincing and badly cast lead performance from Mrs Renoir, Catherine Hessling, who looks anything but little and more than capable of looking after herself, which certainly takes the edge off Hans Christian Andersen's tale. Indeed, the film makes a couple of attempts to write itself out of the problem by portraying her as more than usually stupid, but they feel more like in-jokes than anything else. It's a shame, because the film itself is an impressively staged fantasy with great special effects and some interesting visual experimentation with camera speed and focus amid the unashamedly romantic treatment of the fantasy scenes, especially the sequence where the girl and her toy soldier are chased through the clouds by Death in the form of a relentless Hussar. If only you could care about the character...