La grande illusion (1937)

Calificación de los usuarios:

8.0/10   

Director:

Jean Renoir

Escritores:

Charles Spaak (scenario and dialogue) &
Jean Renoir (scenario and dialogue)

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

12 septiembre 1938 (USA)

Género:

Drama | Guerra

Plot:

During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life...

Plot Keywords:

Aristocrat | Escape | Officer | French | Prisoner Of War

Premios:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 3 wins & 1 nomination

Comentarios de los usuarios:

A Humanist Classic

Reparto

Jean Gabin	...	Lt. Maréchal
Dita Parlo	...	Elsa (farm woman)
Pierre Fresnay	...	Capt. de Boeldieu
Erich von Stroheim	...	Capt. von Rauffenstein (as Eric von Stroheim)
Julien Carette	...	Cartier, l'acteur (as Carette)
Georges Péclet	...	Le serrurier (as Peclet)
Werner Florian	...	Sgt. Arthur
Jean Dasté	...	The teacher (as Daste)
Sylvain Itkine	...	Lt. Demolder (as Itkine)
Gaston Modot	...	The engineer (as Modot)
Marcel Dalio	...	Lt. Rosenthal (as Dalio)

También conocida como:

The Grand Illusion (USA)
La gran ilusión (Spain) (original subtitled version) [es]

Duración:

114 min | 94 min (1937 release) | Germany:107 min

País:

France

Idioma:

Francés | Alemán | Inglés | Ruso

Color:

Negro y Blanco

Relación de Aspecto:

1.37 : 1

Sonido:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Clasificación:

Finland:(Banned) (1942) | Finland:K-16 (1937) | Finland:K-8 (1959) | Malaysia:U | Norway:12 (1959) | Norway:16 (1937) | Germany:12 (f) (1948) | Portugal:M/6 | Australia:G | Germany:(Banned) (1937-1945) | Italy:(Banned) (1938-1945) | South Korea:12 | Sweden:15 | USA:Unrated | UK:U (video rating) | UK:A (original rating) (cut)

Locaciones de Filmación:

Caserne de Colmar, Colmar, Haut-Rhin, France

Compañía:

Réalisation d'art cinématographique (RAC)

Trivialidades:

The art director, 'Eugene Lourie', was the one who carved the nativity figures out of potatoes for the Christmas scene towards the film's end.

Errores:

Anacronismos: Elsa's rural farmhouse in the mountains has electric lighting in the 1910s.

Citas:

Lieutenant Maréchal: The theater's too deep for me. I prefer bicycling.

Conexiones de Película:

Apareció en Jean Renoir: Part One - From La Belle Époque to World War II (1993) (TV)

Banda de Sonido:

Il était un petit navire

A Humanist Classic

Grand Illusion is a movie about class that doesn't hate anyone. How often does that happen? Yes, there are namby-pamby movies that "show all sides" and bore everyone with their non-existent point-of-view, but that's not what I mean. And, of course, there are plenty of movies about class that reveal their biases from the start; I'm rather fond of Eat the Rich movies, myself. But Grand Illusion is about class without dismissing any of its characters. The aristocrats whose world is disappearing are presented as tragic figures, stuck in a code of life that is rapidly becoming meaningless. Both aristocrats know their time is past; the French one accepts this as probably a good thing, the German one doesn't (and blames the French one's sentiments on the French Revolution), but they both know their way of life is soon to be forgotten. And it would be easy for Renoir, when he made the film in the mid-30s a French communist with proletarian sympathies, to demonize these two. But he doesn't; he allows them their humanity, which is the most characteristic feature of Renoir movies in any event (he is the great humanist of movie history).

Nor does he show the collapse of the old way as an unfortunate preface to chaos. The bourgeois characters are good people. The world might be safe in their hands, as safe as in any other hands at least (except for the propensity among nations for war). All of the middle and lower-class characters in the movie are presented as people, not stereotypes. But Renoir doesn't accomplish this by collapsing all class boundaries into some homogenous universalism. These characters remain trapped within their class, and their class is clear to the viewer. The movie is not about the absence of class but about the crushing ironies of the very real existence of class in the lives of the characters. To show all classes without condescension, while retaining a particular point of view (that while people are good, it's best that the aristocratic world is in decline), is pretty amazing.

In Grand Illusion, the nominal hero is working/middle-class, but the upper class isn't evil and the lower class isn't romanticized or dismissed. And it's all accomplished in such a seamless way that many, if not most, first-time viewers might easily think it was a fine movie but something less than great. It sneaks up on you, and more than just about any film you can name, rewards multiple viewings.