Jean Renoir
La Grande Illusione

Watching and rewatching "La Grande Illusion" by Renoir is good for the heart, letting oneself be surprised every time by the timeless humanity of its characters is a joy that few films succeed in communicating, and then it is one of those films that, once made, no longer belong to the director and his collaborators but continue to shine over the years (and it's seventy!) on their light. The story told in it unfolds every time with the naturalness of reality before the eyes of the audience, who remain immediately captivated. Jean Renoir made a film of immediate impact (rightly said) in which his hand and that of screenwriter Charles Spaak are invisible; a film that retains intact the freshness of its first screening at the Venice Film Festival in 1937.

During the First World War, Lieutenant Marechal (Jean Gabin) and his superior Captain De Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), French officers, are captured during an aerial reconnaissance by the German Captain Von Rauffenstein (Eric Von Stroheim) who shoots down their plane. Although prisoners, they are treated with dignity and even invited to lunch by Von Rauffenstein, who immediately becomes intimate with De Boeldieu due to their common aristocratic social background. Both are career officers and had frequented the same circles before the war broke out and discover they have mutual friends; Lieutenant Marechal, on the other hand, is a mechanic in civilian life, and while the aloof and distant De Boeldieu patiently endures his captivity, on his face one can read the anxiety to return to combat. Transferred to an internment camp, they come into contact with other French prisoners who are organizing an escape attempt through an underground tunnel that opens beyond the barbed wire, but a few days before the work's completion, they are moved to a more secure castle, perched on mountains, and used as an officers' prison. Here Marechal and De Boeldieu meet Rosenthal, a wealthy French Jew they met in the first period of captivity, and Von Rauffenstein, who, the victim of an aircraft accident, has suffered serious injuries and spinal damage and is now the prison director. Von Rauffenstein detests this petty role of policeman and longs for the front line, and finds a valuable confidant in his peer De Boeldieu, who, however, is a sphinx: it is not possible to understand if he is flattered by Von Rauffenstein's special regard for him during captivity, nor if he shares his beliefs about the superiority of the aristocracy over the emerging bourgeoisie, nor even if he reciprocates his friendship sincerely or only opportunistically. Nonetheless, it is De Boeldieu who devises an escape plan in which he does not intend to participate and from which Marechal and Rosenthal will benefit: while De Boeldieu distracts the entire garrison defending the castle with a mock escape attempt, the two officers can climb down the walls undisturbed and flee across the nearby Swiss border. De Boeldieu will die at the hands of Von Rauffenstein himself to grant his compatriots the widest possible margin of time. Marechal and Rosenthal, on the run, find refuge at the farm of a young German widow, Elsa, who lovingly takes care of Rosenthal's ankle injured while climbing down the walls. The farmwoman (Dita Parlo) has a daughter whom Marechal takes an immediate liking to, and as the days pass, the relationship between Marechal, Elsa, and the child becomes close, familial; even "uncle" Rosenthal seems happy with this impromptu family born almost miraculously while the war rages outside. Once Rosenthal is healed, Marechal, though tempted to stay, feels the duty to return to fight and entrusts Elsa and her child with a promise, slender, yet enough to warm all three of their hearts. Marechal and Rosenthal cross into Switzerland and in the final scene, they are seen as two black dots in a sea of snow while a German patrol guarding the border tries to shoot at them, but then ("they're in Switzerland now," says a soldier) spares them. The Great Illusion is many great and small illusions. The illusion that the war will be resolved with a rapid succession of blitz battles. The illusion that a world, a set of values, those of 19th-century nobility, still survives. The illusion that the French Revolution was as beneficial as believed. The illusion of being immortal, invulnerable, eternally young. The illusion of being the authors of history, steering it with our heroic actions. And many other small illusions, more intimate but no less important. And we who sit watching should ask ourselves what became of all these illusions, whether they remained so, whether they were overcome by progress that seems unstoppable toward nothingness, or whether they were simply set aside; we should ask ourselves, paraphrasing Montale, "What sense does this new sludge have and breathing in more of the same odor? and spinning on rafts of dung?".

Pierre Fresnay and Eric Von Stroheim act in this film at irreplaceably high levels. Jean Gabin has that something extra, which might be his charm as a concrete, positive, popular, yet noble man, placing him a few centimeters above his fellow actors. I have always considered Nino Manfredi his heir, not only Italian, because both have a way of acting far from the histrionics of an Olivier or a Gassman, but more natural, relying more on the innumerable nuances of a mask that inspires trust, loyalty, honesty. And it is precisely Manfredi who is the protagonist of a forgotten masterpiece by Brusati, "Pane e cioccolata" ’73, where a scene from "La Grande Illusione" is cited, the one in which a young soldier dresses as a woman on the occasion of a little party organized among prisoners and evokes a loaded silence of repressed and embarrassing sensuality.