Original subtitles

Success and Controversy With Olivier Curchod

La Grande lllusion is Renoir's twenty-first film.

1937.

The main thing to remember is this is the first and last time

that he'd received such public and critical acclaim

in the whole of his career.

He'd been making films for 15 years.

He'd had some limited success,

he'd received some recognition,

but he wasn't a filmmaker people really trusted yet.

The man behind La Grande /llusion

had free rein for the years ahead,

which enabled him to make La Béte Humaine 2 years later

and La Regle du Jeu 3 years later.

The story of the different versions of La Grande /llusion is a long one.

It first came out in June 1937,

within the unique setting of the World Fair in Paris.

The film was sold as the highlight of the exhibition in the press.

La Grande Illusion was acknowledged from the outset

as the main film of the year.

It left the screens during the war.

Vichy and the German occupying forces didn't want the film.

There was debate about bringing the film out again in 1945.

The images in the film,

which deals with the Great War,

so therefore French prisoners,

German jailers, were no longer acceptable.

There was a press campaign pitting

the vast majority of the critics and the public,

who had applauded the re-release of the film in 1946,

who said quite simply,

"This 10 year old film is a masterpiece of French cinema",

against the Resistance press,

which said, "We can't show a film like that after Auschwitz,

"after collaboration, after Hitler,

"showing us Germans from 30 years ago who were nice,

"Stroheim being pals with Fresnay,

"Gabin sleeping with Dita Parlo. It's not possible."

Suddenly, people started thinking

that the film might be ambiguous,

and was pleading before the war for Franco-German rapprochement,

which is nonsense.

Renoir was evoking the war he'd known.

You can't superimpose

the 14-18 war with the particular features

that distinguish the 39-45 war.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Renoir was in Europe shooting a film

when he heard that the production company, RAC,

had gone bankrupt and the film had, as it were, been abandoned.

So he launched a Europe-wide search, using his contacts,

for copies, because he wanted to restore the film,

in order to stop people seeing the 1946 film, which had been cut,

although by a few minutes only:

the handing out of the parcels,

the scene where the Germans sing the nationalist song

Wacht am Rhein to celebrate the taking of Douaumont...

and the kiss between Gabin and Dita Parlo.

Renoir wanted the film back on the screen some day in the 1950s

looking the way the Parisians first saw it in 1937.

The irony of the story is that having spent years

looking for the negatives

to reconstruct La Grande Illusion of 1937,

the French Film Library, which is pretty organized,

discovered that they had a wonderful copy from 1937,

from which they could restore the film,

which led to the version we all knew

for years and years, which is the 1958 version,

with different credits,

reconstructed credits.

The film was a great success.

An international referendum classified it

as the best film out of 10 films, the best French film of all time.

Renoir promoted the film throughout the whole of 1958

showing it all over France and in Europe.

He recorded a short presentation film for the occasion.

In it we see this nice fat old man

nostalgically showing us photos

of his own plane, which he flew during the war.

I found some old souvenirs in the bottom of a drawer.

This is a 1915 Voisin.

Of course, it's not a jet plane. The chap flying it is me.

How time passes!

It's a deeply personal film, which escapes political labels.

It's also the film that made Jean Renoir an international name.

That's why he always defended the film tooth and nail.

Afterwards, in the 60s and 70s,

all the film enthusiasts can relate to a film like that.

Martin Scorsese, for example, is an admirer

of La Grande Illusion.

Then there's the resurrection of the negative,

which led, at the end of the 90s, to a new restoration,

which is the film the Parisians saw in 1937.

The main thing that's new for us,

apart from the picture quality, because it's from the negative,

are the original credits,

done the way they were in 1937

with a sort of shutter, which gives them a certain charm.

and also gives the film a kind of eternal relevance.

The story of La Grande Illusion is also, over 75 years,

the story of the way in which the film has been understood,

interpreted,

and often misinterpreted.

In 1937, when the film came out,

it managed to unite both ends of the political spectrum in France.

The Communist press, in particular,

within the context of course of the Popular Front,

applauded the film wildly,

because it was by Renoir, who at the time was still affiliated

to the French Communist Party.

They saw the film

as a great internationalist film,

a great pacifist and humanist film.

At the other extreme,

to the right, it was a great film about patriotism,

about the Marseillaise and flying the flag.

Renoir had succeeded, while laughing up his sleeve,

in getting everyone to agree.

On the other hand, when the film travelled abroad, in 1937,

it was sent to represent France with some other films

at the Venice Film Festival,

the film was tipped to win.

Mussolini, as a veteran of the Great War,

appreciated this man's film,

but his regime couldn't back it.

So, La Grande /llusion went home with a cup, a gadget,

while a modest film by Duvivier picked up the prize.

Germany blockaded it.

Then the film crossed the Channel and the Atlantic.

In 1938 it was shown in England. It was a massive hit.

It was shown in the USA, in exceptional circumstances:

Mrs Roosevelt had it screened in the White House for her birthday.

President Roosevelt saw La Grande Illusion,

a journalist having stated that every Democrat in the world

should see the film.

The rich get richer,

and cinema history soon had it

that it was President Roosevelt himself who said,

"Every Democrat in the world should see La Grande lllusion"

It ran for weeks on end in New York in 1938.

It toured fifty American universities.

That may be one of the reasons why La Grande Illusion

has been part of a film buff culture in the USA since before the war.

Before the war, there was this division:

dictatorships had censored the film, stopped it being screened,

in Italy, in Austria after the Anschluss, in Japan,

in Nazi Germany of course...

But inside, things weren't so simple. Some liked it, some didn't.

And then the democracies, the French 3rd Republic, England, the USA,

made it into a sort of loss leader

for the great humanist values of democracy.

In France, at the end of 1937,

Céline, who's not just anybody, brought out his first pamphlet,

Bagatelles pour un massacre,

and devoted a whole chapter to La Grande Illusion,

an appallingly

filthy and violent chapter,

savagely attacking the character of Dalio, Rosenthal, the Jew.

Céline hated the film, because he found it dangerous.

He thought the portrayal of the Jew in the film

contributed to the acclimatization of Jews in French society.

His reading may have been the best -

although he threw his arms up in indignation and started screaming -

of the strategy employed by Renoir

from the point of view of the film's racial and political message.

War came and the film was banned by Vichy and the occupying forces.

After the war, there was the polemic

with the Resistance, who wondered whether the film

wasn't too nice given all the horrors of war.

On the other hand, what's very important is that in the 1970s

students of human sciences in universities

started trying to decipher the message of La Grande /llusion.

Here we must mention the great historian Marc Ferro,

who held the following view:

the film had the reputation of being a pacifist, humanist film.

In reality explains, or tries to explain, Marc Ferro,

this film is actually

coded anti-Semitism, a coded preparation for Vichy.

Look at the character of Rosenthal.

Rosenthal, the Jew,

who identifies himself as Jewish,

who says his family is from Austria,

that they are rich...

In 35 years the Rosenthals have acquired

3 historic castles with hunting, ponds, farmland and orchards...

Ferro said, "He's different".

In other words,

the representation of the Jew in La Grand Illusion

is to show that Jews are different

and not integrated into French society.

The second attack made by Ferro in his paper:

look at the English.

They're ridiculous.

When they put on a show they dress up as women.

All Englishmen are homosexual.

Of course, being anti-English would be very important

in Vichy propaganda.

What's not mentioned is that almost all of the claims

made about the film by Ferro are wrong.

Ferro was mistaken,

because he was working on documents that were inaccurate.

He quotes dialogue: it's wrong.

He cites scenes: he's mistaken.

In other words, he has a preconceived idea about the film,

which he wants to apply...

It's great to knock something off its pedestal.

The great humanist film!

That human sciences can finally prove that it's actually

a pre-Vichyist, anti-Semitic film without knowing it.

What's certain is, since then, I can quote a dozen historians

or commentators who for the last 10, 15, 20 years

have been sniggering,

"La Grande Illusion isn't the great humanist, pacifist film after all".

In fact, an extra element has come to muddy the issue:

Jean Renoir's biography.

In 1939, Renoir,

disenchanted with Communism,

gradually detached himself from the left.

In 1939 he went to Mussolini's Italy

to shoot a film adaptation of 7osca,

which caused much gnashing of teeth.

Renoir, during this phoney war,

said some unfortunate things about Jews in the film industry.

He who had worked with Jews throughout the 1930s.

And then in 1940, when he had to get permission to leave for the USA,

Renoir, who wasn't that bothered about it,

and it's not to his credit,

paid some visits to Vichy,

some letters were exchanged,

which for the last 10 years have been brandished, not to sully Renoir

but in an attempt, based on the Renoir of 1940,

who indisputably prostituted himself in order to leave,

to re-read La Grande /llusion of 3 years earlier, saying,

"We told you that the film

"was pre-Fascist and pre-anti-Semitic,

"because look what he's doing in 1940".

Two things should be said.

The first thing is, that it's a man and a work.

In the Arts, these have always been two different things.

They are obviously linked,

but a work is a work, with its own logic,

with a message that's all its own, regardless of the man.

Secondly, you can't use a man's biography

to reconstruct the story.

Thirdly, you can't use the events

of 1944-45

to go back to 1937

and say, "In 1937, it was preparing for Auschwitz".

That's completely crazy.

And then there's another response,

which is to see what Renoir is saying in the film.

- I'm happy to be going with you. - With us.

Yes, / like Boeldieu, but...

When I'm with him...

I never feel completely at ease.

Education, I suppose, but there's a barrier between us.

He's a great chap.

Everything crystallizes around Rosenthal.

Once he decides to give the part

to Marcel Dalio,

and it's something that's never been mentioned by any commentator,

the role is limited to the first half of the film.

Only the barracks.

In the second half of the film, the fortress,

there was another character, named in the script archives as Dolette,

to be played by an actor with whom Renoir had worked before,

called Robert Le Vigan.

Dolette was an engineer from the best school,

a cultivated Frenchman.

Renoir came up with the idea of combining

the Jew from the first half

with the engineer from the second, who will escape with Gabin

and end the film with him.

The day he decided to do that

he gave the character of Rosenthal

not half an hour of the film, but the whole of the film.

He allowed him to take on the characteristics

that had been envisaged for the character played by Le Vigan.

In other words, when Gabin and Fresnay arrive at the fortress,

where people are put who spend their time escaping,

we meet Rosenthal.

So, he's like them.

He's at the same level as the Franco-Frenchman, Gabin,

and the old stock aristocrat Pierre Fresnay.

And when it comes to escaping,

it's Rosenthal that Gabin escapes with.

What the commentators have never understood

is that you don't judge a film on a line of dialogue,

on an isolated sentence

but on a narrative strategy,

a narrative economy on the scale of a whole film.

Renoir's message is as follows:

"In the first half I'll show you a Jew who acts like a Jew".

Sorry to put it so bluntly.

His name's Rosenthal,

he displays the signs of his wealth,

the signs of his origins.

The most famous scene is the one with the costumes,

where they're preparing the costumes for the show.

Each one of the boys says why they want to escape.

One says because he wants to be like everyone else.

Another that he thinks his wife's cheating on him.

Rosenthal says, "I'm from a very wealthy family,

"I own castles, etc...

"I want to escape to defend it all".

What do you say, Rosenthal? You're a sportsman.

Him? He was born in Jerusalem!

Wrong, Vienna, the Austrian capital.

Danish mother, Polish father, naturalized French.

Good old French aristocracy!

There are two anti-Semitic attacks here.

First, the character played by Carette, the Parisian,

"Him? He was born in Jerusalem!"

First attack by a Frenchman.

The French people are showing their anti-Semitism here.

The second attack is from Gabin, "Old French aristocracy".

Renoir, the screenwriter, had the brilliant idea of making

two identifiably French characters,

to whom the French audience of 1937 could relate,

come out with the most stupid and trite anti-Semitic jibes.

"Old French aristocracy", "Him? He was born in Jerusalem".

We notice that Pierre Fresnay is hanging back,

while logically, he's a member of the old aristocracy,

it's 1916-17, his family

would certainly have been anti-Dreyfusards 20 years earlier.

Not one word

with even the slightest whiff of racism about it,

such as "Old French Aristocracy" or "He was born in Jerusalem",

is uttered by Pierre Fresnay.

Some time later, Gabin is sent to the cells.

When he returns, completely exhausted,

there's someone crying and a wonderful zoom shot

catches Dalio wiping away a tear. It's Rosenthal

who says, "I won't leave without Maréchal".

Part two, we're in the fortress.

Rosenthal's there in the fortress.

Rosenthal's already worked out an escape plan.

He's a die-hard escaper.

The audience of 1937 gradually starts to realize

that Rosenthal is more and more like Maréchal.

The two names even rhyme.

And they escape together.

And then the culmination of the demonstration,

of Renoir's strategy,

is the escape, the flight into the mountains, the famous scene,

in which, exhausted, because Rosenthal's broken his ankle,

exhausted, at one point the Franco-Frenchman

tries to abandon Rosenthal.

You know what you are to me? A dead-weight.

A millstone around my neck.

I never could stick Jews!

A bit late to find that out.

What does he mean, "A bit late to find that out"?

We've been in the same film together for 70 minutes.

You're taking me for the Jew I was 45 minutes ago.

Today, we're together. We're leaving together.

And what's this, "I never could stick Jews"?

It's the kind of insult you hurl when you're done in and hungry.

What's racism? The thing you say when you've nothing better to say.

And then Gabin goes off.

He leaves the frame, we lock on to Rosenthal,

who looks down and cries discreetly.

They both sing Le Petit Navire,

the communication is pure Renoir.

And then the brilliant shot that's written in the screenplay.

It's described in the screenplay right down to the framing.

We see the shot and then Maréchal's coat enters the frame,

and then, "Come on". He takes him by the arm and leads him away.

Come on.

From then on, it's in the bag.

Céline can get out his rifle.

Renoir's message, that Jews are part

of French society,

that Jews deserve to be integrated into French society,

this is the message

that runs throughout the whole of La Grande Illusion.

What's the answer?

That in the end, when they part,

when they come out of the snow to cross the border,

Gabin says to Dalio, "So long, filthy Jew!"

laughing, and they embrace.

- So long, filthy Jew! - So long, old chap!

Just think what it means

for a supporting player like Dalio, used to playing foreigners,

to playing "filthy Jews",

to leave the biggest film of the year

in the company... in the arms

of the biggest star in the French cinema.

How does the audience come out?

They've been converted without knowing it.

Which is what Céline had understood.

Subtitling TVS - TITRA FILM