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Grande Illusion

La Grande Illusion

Jean Renoir


  • Country: France
  • Year: 1937
  • Language: French
  •  
  • Runtime: 114 min.

Jean Renoir's antiwar classic, a heartfelt call for peace in a world on the brink of war, was instantly hailed as a masterpiece upon its release and branded "Cinematic Enemy No. 1" by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

Cinematheque

screening times

    • Saturday October 9
    • 5:15:00 PM
    • Tiff Bell LightBox Cinema 4

Note: indicates Premium Screening.

official description

ARCHIVAL PRINT!

Jean Renoir's antiwar classic, a heartfelt call for peace in a world on the brink of war, was instantly hailed as a masterpiece upon its release and branded "Cinematic Enemy No. 1" by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Shot down behind enemy lines, three French flyers from very different backgrounds—a defiant proletarian (Jean Gabin), an effete aristocrat (Pierre Fresnay) and a nouveau-riche Jewish merchant (Marcel Dalio)—are interned in a POW camp, where Fresnay finds himself unexpectedly striking up a friendship with his social equal, the camp commandant (Erich von Stroheim), while his colleagues plot an escape. Renoir's warm, sympathetic depiction of those common human connections—of social class, of moral values— that defy the belligerent boundaries of nationalism still retains its resonance and topicality today.

Thanks to Eric LeRoy and Jean-Baptiste Garnero, CNC.

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