“Neither you nor I can stop the march of time.” Capt. de Boëldieu to Von Rauffenstein (La Grande Illusion, 1937).
Jean Renoir’s masterpiece La Grande Illusion (1937) tells the dramatic story of two French prisoners of war escaping Nazi Germany during the “war to end all wars,” the Great War. Released on the eve of World War II and suspended between two historical moments in French history—the 1930s Popular Front and the 1940’s Vichy Regime, Renoir used film to establish that European chasms were not so wide that war in 1914 (or 1937) was the only solution. The film’s controversial themes of class, race, gender and national identity as divisive elements are as timely today as they were in 1937, just as common humanity and lessons from our past remain mankind’s only hope for a secure future.
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