Grand Illusion

In Brief: If you don’t know Jean Renoir, it’s time you did, and Grand Illusion (1937) is the best place to start. Generally considered an anti-war film — and it is one — Grand Illusion is really too many things to be neatly pigeonholed by genre. It’s a World War I story — essentially a story about French prisoners of war escaping from a German prison — but it’s a subdued one that’s more about character than action. (In other words, Jerry Bruckheimer wouldn’t touch it with a stick.) And it’s as much about the end of the European ruling class, about the passing of an age, as it is about war. Is that passing age the “Grand Illusion” of the title? Yes, but that isn’t all — there are other illusions here. Powerful, powerfully made and boasting an array of flawless performances — including Erich von Stroheim in perhaps his most famous role — Grand Illusion achieves that rare distinction of having a precise vision of an earlier time, making that vision relevant to its own time and remaining strangely contemporary in any age. A deeply beautiful work.