Anniversary of The Grand Illusion
On June 9, 1937, the premiere of the film "La grande illusion (The Grand Illusion)" took place at the Marivaux theater in Paris. The director of the picture is Jean Renoir, the son of the world-famous artist, one of the founders of impressionism, Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
For the title of his film, Jean Renoir used the title of a book by the British journalist Norman Angell, published in 1909, originally under the title "Europe's Optical Illusion", but a year later, after significant changes and additions, it was called "The Grand Illusion". The main idea of this book was that the economic cost of a war between the developed countries of Europe is so great that no country, having started a war, can hope to win, even in the event of victory and territorial gains, since the consequences of such a war would be simply catastrophic. Smart people understood this idea more than a hundred years ago. The rest - unleashed and continue to unleash wars. Norman Angell's book was translated into 25 languages, including Russian, and published in a total circulation of more than two million copies. The results of the World War I fully confirmed the validity of the main provisions of Angell's book. In 1933, Norman Angell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for this book, as well as for more than forty other works.
However, despite the common title of Jean Renoir's film and Norman Angell's book, the plots of these works have nothing in common. The plot of Renoir's film is inspired by stories about the escapes of General Armand Pinsard. Jean Renoir met him during the World War I, and Pinsard, then a lieutenant in the French Air Force, saved his life when a German plane pursued the future filmmaker. During the war, Renoir and Pinsard lost sight of each other, but met again by chance in 1934. Then Pinsard told Renoir about his captivity in Germany and his escapes. These stories, as well as his own experience of participating in the First World War, during which Renoir received a serious leg injury that left him lame for life, inspired Renoir to create a film.
Filming took place from January to March 1937. The work on the film was carried out with enormous financial difficulties, and only thanks to the financial support of Jean Gabin these difficulties were overcome.
2 months after the premiere, the film "The Grand Illusion" took part in the 5th Venice International Film Festival, at which it was nominated for the Mussolini Cup in the Best Foreign Film category. The Renoir film did not receive this award, because by a decision of the jury chaired by Giuseppe Volpi, a major businessman and one of the founders of the Venice Film Festival, she was awarded to another French film - “Un carnet de bal (Christine)” by Julien Duvivier. But for the “Grand Illusion”, the jury came up with another award - for the Best Overall Artistic Contribution.
And in 1939, a film by Jean Renoir was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Picture category. Moreover, at that time there was still no separate nomination for films in a foreign language, and "Grand Illusion" was the only non-English nominee. And the first such nominee. Needless to say, the victory was awarded to the American film "You Can't Take It With You" by Frank Capra.
As it often the case with great works of art, the attitude to the film "Grand Illusion" from various "greats of this world" was completely different, sometimes the opposite. Benito Mussolini, as can be understood from the above, was a fan of this film and included it in his personal collection. US President F. D. Roosevelt said that
"all the democracies in the world must see this film".
And Joseph Goebbels declared this film an enemy of Reich No. 1 and during the occupation of France banned its demonstration.
Goebbels' decision served as the basis to believe that copies of the film were destroyed and irretrievably lost to humanity. This assumption was reinforced by the fact that in 1942, during an allied air raid, the film storage near Paris was completely bombed. However, as it turned out much later, the negatives of the film with the film were taken to Berlin even before the air raid and, after the capture of the German capital by Soviet troops, together with the entire captured movie fund, were transferred to the Soviet Union. In the 60s, negatives were returned to France. Where, without the slightest attention, they lay in one of the movie storages for almost 30 years. And only in the 90s the film actually survived a rebirth.
The film "Grand Illusion" was highly praised by film critics. According to the site Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of the reviews of American film critics on this film are positive. Roger Ebert, who rated the film 4 stars out of 4 and included it on his list of "Great Movies", wrote in his review:
"It's not a movie about a prison escape, nor is it jingoistic in its politics; it's a meditation on the collapse of the old order of European civilization. Perhaps that was always a sentimental upper-class illusion, the notion that gentlemen on both sides of the lines subscribed to the same code of behavior. Whatever it was, it died in the trenches of World War I."
Russian film critics rated the film no less highly than American. Sergei Kudryavtsev, who also set the film to a maximum of 10 points, wrote in his review:
“Jean Renoir’s picture, having almost predicted a new world confrontation, actually says goodbye to patriarchal illusions about the war, a code of noble honor, and impeccable debt performance by the hereditary military. Renoir heroes still believe in a battle without total hatred, when armies and not peoples fight, but another time is coming when there will be no place for such “misconceptions”. Even the hope that between ordinary people of different nationalities of realities can arise and a genuine sense of solidarity can be felt somewhere inside, turned out to be Jean Renoir’s own “great illusion”, who felt that even more destructive cataclysms were coming, but continued to believe, as a true humanist, in genuine human unity."
Despite the fact that more than eight decades have passed since the release of Jean Renoir's film "The Grand Illusion", modern moviegoers continue to highly appreciate this picture. 68% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated "The Grand Illusion" from 8 to 10. Based on the above success rates, Jean Renoir's film "The Grand Illusion" was rated 8,249 by FilmGourmand, which allowed it to take 449th Rank in the Golden Thousand. The Golden Thousand included only two films produced in 1937: "The Grand Illusion" and "Make Way for Tomorrow" by Leo McCarey. But Jean Renoir's film takes a higher place, which allows us to consider this film the best picture of world cinema in 1937.
