La Grande illusion (Grand Illusion) (1937)
Average Rating: 9.4/10
Reviews Counted: 62
Fresh: 60 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 9/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 4.3/5
User Ratings: 10,736
My Rating
Movie Info
For its 75th Anniversary, Rialto Pictures presents a stunning 4K restoration of GRAND ILLUSION, Jean Renoir's powerful and eloquent anti-war film set during World War I. Aristocratic Captain de Boeldieu and his mechanic, Lieutenant Maréchal are shot down by Captain von Rauffenstein, who treats them with customary officers' hospitality. The two downed pilots are then sent to a German POW camp, where they quickly join a group of prisoners who have concocted an elaborate escape plan. Their plot is
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Cast
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Jean Gabin
Lieutenant Maréchal, L... -
Pierre Fresnay
Capt. de Boeldieu -
Erich von Stroheim
Von Rauffenstein -
Marcel Dalio
Rosenthal -
Dita Parlo
Elsa Farm Woman -
Julien Carette
The Actor -
Jacques Becker
An English Officer -
Gaston Modot
The engineer -
Georges Péclet
A French Soldier -
Jean Daste
The Teacher -
Sylvain Itkine
Demolder -
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All Critics (64) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (62) | Rotten (2) | DVD (10)
It's among the most understated anti-war films ever made, effortlessly humanistic but far too subtle to indulge in preaching.
Top CriticA model of simplicity and grace, with emotional effects that move you when you least expect it, the kind of great film that only a master can pull off.
Funny, heart-wrenching, nail-biting, caustic and profound, touting the futility of armed combat while turning imprisonment and escape into a microcosm for society's aspirations and contradictions.
It's still one of the key humanist expressions to be found in movies: sad, funny, exalting, and glorious.
It's an excellent film, with Renoir's usual looping line and deft shifts of tone, though today the balance of critical opinion has shifted in favor of the greater darkness and filigree of The Rules of the Game.
An artistically masterful feature, the picture breathes the intimate life of warriors on both sides during the [First] World War.
Renoir, who invokes so skillfully these terrifying images of disintegration, offers in contrast only the old ideal of man's brotherhood, and his film does not tell us whether it is illusion or reality.
Back in 1952, both Orson Welles and David Lean cited the movie as one of their 10 all-time favorite films. Still, not everyone was a fan: Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's rat-faced Minister of Propaganda, declared it "Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1."
often contrasted to All Quiet on the Western Front which has a similar message but told with a very different perspective
Lionsgate makes a play for prestige cred with another entry in their StudioCanal Collection, and their superb disc for La Grande Illusion will wipe away any salty tears that it doesn't carry the Criterion logo.
Like Universal's Oscar winner 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (1930), 'La Grande Illusion' was banned in Germany by Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. See it and sing 'La Marseillaise.'
See it and you may begin to appreciate the sorts of standards for greatness that the cinema is capable of setting.
a monumental humanist work
Its very simplicity of utterance gives it a purity that makes other films that try to express similar sentiments feel forced and obvious.
Renoir's 1937 anti-war masterpiece created a new genre, the POW movie, and with his 1939 La Règle du jeu constitutes a diptych of unparalleled excellence.
A timeless classic of acting and filmmaking genius that uses the artificiality of war to explore the very construct of society, and is a classic must-see.
The great illusion is that these men of the officer class are somehow different from the masses who suffered the bloodiest of wars. Renoir proves that they are not.
A vividly humanist, anti-war classic.
A sorrowful, acutely thoughtful, and wholly imperishable masterpiece...
Audience Reviews for La Grande illusion (Grand Illusion)
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Rosenthal: Not looking back?
- Lieutenant Maréchal: If I do, I'll never leave
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- The Actor: Make my day.
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- Rosenthal: Frontiers are an invention of men. Nature doesn't give a hoot.
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Foreign Titles
- Die große Illusion (DE)
- La Grande Illusion (UK)
