1 Grand Illusion

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4LOM
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1 Grand Illusion

#1 Post by 4LOM » Mon Jan 31, 2005 7:08 am

Grand Illusion

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/98/grandill_w100.jpg[/img]

One of the very first prison escape movies, Grand Illusion is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece stars Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay as French soldiers held in a World War I German prison camp, and Erich von Stroheim as the unforgettable Captain von Rauffenstein.
Disc Features

- Newly restored digital transfer, created from the long-lost camera negative
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- A rare theatrical trailer in which Jean Renoir discusses both Grand Illusion and his personal war experiences
- Audio essay by film historian Peter Cowie
- Archival radio presentation: Renoir and Erich von Stroheim accept Grand Illusion’s Best Foreign Film honors at the 1938 New York Film Critics Awards
- Press book excerpts: Renoir’s letter to the projectionist, cast bios, an essay on Renoir by von Stroheim, and essays about the film’s title and recently recovered camera negative
- Restoration demonstration
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

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Tommaso
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#2 Post by Tommaso » Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:06 pm

I'm somewhat surprised that nobody has discussed this dvd here yet, though of course the film itself has been mentioned a lot in various threads dedicated to other Renoir films. So let me have a try.

I watched this last night with the Cowie commentary, and while I think that Cowie as always has a lot of interesting and well-informed things to say, I was inclined to disagree with what I felt was a rather too negative view of the Rauffenstein/Stroheim character. While it is true that of course Rauffenstein is an old-fashioned, conservative and in many cases prejudiced elitist, I cannot help but find him in a curious way entirely sympathetic. He is tragically aware that the ordered, ritualised world he inhabits - together with Boeildieu - is doomed to die, and the way he still upholds these old values of honesty, respect and gentlemanly behaviour despite of the war situation is ONE way of overcoming the war and misunderstandings between the nations, a way that is different from that of the Gabin character. Thus I wouldn't see the big cross (death) in the hall of his castle as a visual opposition to the little toy Jesus figure (birth) that appears later in the film at the farm house, as Cowie does. The cross like everything else in Rauffenstein's place rather seems to indicate the old, almost catholic, aestheticist/decadent lifestyle that Rauffenstein follows (remember there's also a book on Casanova and a bottle of champagne in the same room).

Rauffenstein is a good example of how Renoir never judges his characters, how he is able to bring out the deeply humane even in those realms where you won't necessarily expect it. And there cannot be enough praise for Stroheim's performance in this respect, needless to say.

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jbeall
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#3 Post by jbeall » Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:59 pm

Good post, Tomasso. I agree that Renoir doesn't prejudge Rauffenstein, but for my own part, while I sympathized with his sense of honor, his blatant elitism toward the other French officers was pretty irritating. Not in an aesthetic sense, of course, but you can quickly figure out where his sympathies lie.

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bunuelian
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#4 Post by bunuelian » Sat Jun 23, 2007 1:29 am

The reason I find Renoir so compelling as a commentator on the human experience is his balanced approach to subjective perspective. The tendency of so many filmmakers to reduce their characters to purely right and purely wrong reflects a myopic understanding of the world as a whole. It's a symptom of our world today: "liberals" cannot possibly have anything positive to say to the "conservatives," and the "conservatives" cannot possibly have anything of merit to add to the discussion where liberal values are concerned. Etc. Renoir instead declares that each of his characters holds his or her values with a greater or lesser degree of genuineness and integrity, and whatever fault may result from those convictions is borne not with outright shame (which judgment and condemnation demand) but with the awkwardness that best suits one who senses that she is wrong, but isn't certain why. It's simple compassion, rendered expertly in the medium, and for that, Renoir holds a special place for me.

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Tommaso
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#5 Post by Tommaso » Sat Jun 23, 2007 7:07 am

Well said, both of you. "La grande illusion" has sometimes been criticized for portraying the war too 'lightly', and indeed it seems that there are no 'bad' characters in the film, and the POW camps (especially the one in the castle) sometimes seem almost like somewhat peculiar holiday resorts. It's of course obvious where Renoir's sympathies lie, but even in the Gabin character there surface some prejudices and even antisemitism directed against Rosenthal at one point, stances that you would expect in Rauffenstein only if this was a normal 'propaganda' film.
In his introduction Renoir says that compared to the second World War, WWI was for him almost a 'Gentleman's War". And this shows very much in the film, but I also find it somewhat misguided (no war should be described like this, and especially not WWI), but this explains where he comes from. I felt compelled to compare this to the war films of Powell and Pressburger, for instance. Whereas they also show both sides and their motivations, and also refrain from overly judging their characters, there is (rightfully I think) no 'escapist' approach to the war that I sense in "Grand Illusion" and which makes the film a little problematic to me in places (or better, transforms it almost into a fairy tale). Renoir only narrowly escapes from 'romanticizing' history in places, and he manages to avoid this precisely because he takes this broader, humanistic view (and because he is such a master of filmmaking). But that gentlemanly view might be misleading if you apply it to 'reality', as "Colonel Blimp" illustrates so nicely (but equally sympathetically).

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ellipsis7
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#6 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jun 23, 2007 10:11 am

Renoir was making the point that in this war the real loyalty was between those of the same class, horizontally across nations and opposing armies, and that the true division and conflict was vertically between classes even if on the same ostensible side.... It is the upper classes who perpetrate the conflict so as to suppress the middle and working classes, by creating artificial national divisions and ordering them into battle with their counterparts so that they cannot find common cause in a true international class warfare...The existing hegemony is thus preserved...

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tryavna
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#7 Post by tryavna » Sat Jun 23, 2007 11:20 am

Ellipsis, I think that Renoir's involvement with the Popular Front in the years preceding Grand Illusion bear out your argument to a certain extent, but surely there's an even simpler "message" in the film: it is, at its most basic level, an anti-war film after all. Thus war itself is the enemy, not Rauffenstein, even though he happened to be on the side Renoir himself was fighting.
Tommaso wrote:In his introduction Renoir says that compared to the second World War, WWI was for him almost a 'Gentleman's War". And this shows very much in the film, but I also find it somewhat misguided (no war should be described like this, and especially not WWI), but this explains where he comes from. I felt compelled to compare this to the war films of Powell and Pressburger, for instance. Whereas they also show both sides and their motivations, and also refrain from overly judging their characters, there is (rightfully I think) no 'escapist' approach to the war that I sense in "Grand Illusion" and which makes the film a little problematic to me in places (or better, transforms it almost into a fairy tale).
Tommaso, while I think that your drawing attention to the parallels between G.I. and the P&P war films is instructive, it's ultimately a bit like comparing apples and oranges. We're talking about two totally different wars here, and I think that what Renoir is getting at is that WWI was a war in which there were no clearly defined "bad guys" -- at least on the Western Front. (I'm setting aside the real, though somewhat exaggerated, atrocities committed by the Germans in Belgium.) The Germans of WWI were not the same Germans of WWII, and the blame for the cause of the war can and should be distributed fairly evenly among all the nations involved. (W.E.B. Du Bois, for example, traces the roots of the war directly to the "scramble for Africa," thus making both sides the aggressors and equally responsible.) So what I think Renoir really means is that both sides shared similar values and could view one another in human terms -- but had been turned against one another through a series of misguided actions by their respective governments. I don't really view it as an attempt at "escape" or "romanticization" on Renoir's part, but rather his attention to the individual human tragedies at the story's core: the inability to connect with other people because of the arbitrary way that the war has divided them into "enemies."

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#8 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jun 23, 2007 11:32 am

tryavna wrote:Ellipsis, I think that Renoir's involvement with the Popular Front in the years preceding Grand Illusion bear out your argument to a certain extent, but surely there's an even simpler "message" in the film: it is, at its most basic level, an anti-war film after all. Thus war itself is the enemy, not Rauffenstein, even though he happened to be on the side Renoir himself was fighting.
Yes, tryavna, war betrays Rauffenstein too, when it forces him to shoot and kill what is his best friend, the man who shares the code of his class and rank, if not his uniform, Boeldieu... Those scenes are painful and poignant as Rauffenstein struggles with duty and emotion, and the terrible isolation that the situation brings him...

And of course Rauffenstein has already been physically injured by war, but that wound he carries as a badge of honour, only regretting it keeps him out of real battle...

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Tommaso
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#9 Post by Tommaso » Sun Jun 24, 2007 5:16 am

Tryavna and Ellipsis, thanks for your comments. I agree very much that this is an anti-war film, and perhaps it's indeed wrong to compare WWI and WWII and thus Renoir and P&P (although you will find a similar gentlemanly friendship crossing the dividing lines between the two commanders in "The Battle of the River Plate", which is a WWII film).

Perhaps what made it possible for Renoir to make "La grande illusion" in the way he made it is simply the fact that it was made before the outbreak of WWII. I assume that the atrocities of the Germans in Belgium that you mention would have taken on a far greater significance with the view of another war going on (and started by the Germans) if Renoir had made the film only two or three years later.

And perhaps it's also only with hindsight that I ask myself the question to what the title refers, i.e. what precisely is the Great Illusion? Somewhere on the disc it is stated that the title comes from a sociological essay/book that seems to say that the idea of divisions and war in Europe is that illusion given the fact of the increasing economical connections between countries. Probably this is what Renoir had in mind, but for me the title always seemed to refer to the impossibility of overcoming the political divisions by friendship, and that the fact that Rauffenstein kills (or has to kill) Boeildieu in the end just illustrates this impossibility. And after all both characters say that they and their class will no longer be needed and cannot go on with their (illusional) ideas.

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Matt
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#10 Post by Matt » Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:41 pm

lord_clyde wrote:
Curtis Tsui at Criterion wrote:Thank you for contacting us about the LADY VANISHES reissue.
Great news! I've been holding off on buying all the 'early' releases in hopes they would get reissues. Surely 'The Seventh Seal' , 'Grand Illusion', and 'The Samurai Trilogy' can't be far behind?
I keep hearing this on this forum. What's wrong with the current version of Grand Illusion?

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ellipsis7
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#11 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:57 pm

Yes, the CC Grand Illusion is fine... Not aware there are any better elements, certainly not from Studio Canal/Optimum which it betters... So no reason to go again...

However The Seventh Seal is being released theatrically hereabouts in a new 50th Anniversary restoration (newly remastered from the camera negative), also rereleased in this version by Tartan on SDVD and BluRay on 24 September in UK/Ireland... So wouldn't be surprised if this does get a second shot from the CC...

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#12 Post by lord_clyde » Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:45 pm

Matt wrote:
lord_clyde wrote:I've been holding off on buying all the 'early' releases in hopes they would get reissues. Surely 'The Seventh Seal' , 'Grand Illusion', and 'The Samurai Trilogy' can't be far behind?
I keep hearing this on this forum. What's wrong with the current version of Grand Illusion?
I rented it and it looked fine, but I would hate to buy it and have a 2-disc drop next year.

*And being spine number 1 gives the illusion (no pun intended) of being an especially early release, when of course it was not.
Last edited by lord_clyde on Sat Jul 28, 2007 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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ellipsis7
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#13 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:55 pm

And what would be on a second disc? There is Renoir stuff, unfortunately extracted only on Boudu Saved from Drowning that would merit release, not particularly relevant to Grand Illusion however, but I'm not aware of substantial material that would merit a second disc... The Elusive Corporal which might stand as a career comparison has just been released R1 by Lionsgate under their Studio Canal deal....

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denti alligator
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#14 Post by denti alligator » Sat Jul 28, 2007 6:09 pm

I would agree that there's nothing to add or fix about the current edition, except ...

Image

The outer frame is CCs laserdisc version, the inner frame the DVD version. Has the DVD been cropped that much, or is the negative Criterion worked with already zoomed-in?

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ellipsis7
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#15 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jul 28, 2007 6:20 pm

Solution - pictureboxing?... Hope not... I've had to set a specific user setting for my projector to zoom in slightly and shave off the blank edges while maintaing AR of CC pictureboxed discs.... 2 Mizos just run in said format - beautiful, but just regret to wasted potential picture info at the edges... That comparison looks distressing - I'd have to project to confirm - certainly on my smaller desktop monitor CC disc triumphed over Optimum/Sudio Canal by a nose...

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#16 Post by Narshty » Sat Jul 28, 2007 6:37 pm

Criterion's Grand Illusion transfer is shockingly zoomed in - I've noticed it since I first watched the restoration comparison featurette. I wonder if the zooming occurred during the transfer or if it's a fault of the 1998 fine-grain master made from the recovered negative? Could the negative be considered too delicate to do anything other than optical printing with, hence the possible cropping on the element itself? (Getting out of my depth now - hoping someone will send me a lifeline.)

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denti alligator
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#17 Post by denti alligator » Sat Jul 28, 2007 7:53 pm

Since the Criterion and the Studio Canal are from the same master and show similar cropping/zooming (whatever it is), I'd say it was already evident on the master they used. That said, the Studi Canal shows more cropping than even the Criterion and has that annoying jaggy (top and bottom).

If the elements for the laserdisc show more image but are otherwise in worse shape, I'll take a zoomed-in picture with better quality any day.

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#18 Post by teddyleevin » Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:17 pm

Can someone explain to me why the box design follows the 2nd set Criterion logos (the type that lasted from like Spine 55-350), but I can't find a record of it ever being rereleased and repackaged?

It's the first spine, but the art doesn't match that of the early spines.

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souvenir
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#19 Post by souvenir » Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:21 pm

teddyleevin wrote:Can someone explain to me why the box design follows the 2nd set Criterion logos (the type that lasted from like Spine 55-350), but I can't find a record of it ever being rereleased and repackaged?

It's the first spine, but the art doesn't match that of the early spines.
It was held back for better elements and released later, after the design change.

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#20 Post by reno dakota » Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:41 pm

teddyleevin wrote:Can someone explain to me why the box design follows the 2nd set Criterion logos (the type that lasted from like Spine 55-350), but I can't find a record of it ever being rereleased and repackaged?

It's the first spine, but the art doesn't match that of the early spines.
Take a look at the sixth post in this thread if you are interested in how much later Grand Illusion was released.

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#21 Post by teddyleevin » Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:23 pm

That's what I expected. Thanks for that link, by the way, I was looking for a list like that a while ago. I never realized they released things out of order. (I've only been into Criterions since December '06).

Thanks for the help!

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ellipsis7
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#22 Post by ellipsis7 » Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:14 am

That elusive Letter to the Projectionist, omitted from the CC booklet...
"GRAND ILLUSION"

LETTER FROM JEAN RENOIR TO THE PROJECTIONIST

The following letter was inserted into the cans of 'Grand Illusion' during its 1958 reissue. Widescreen had been introduced earlier in the decade and older films were often projected in that format, without any regard for their actual ratios.

Dear Sir,

This is an appeal from one technician to another. You're going to project my 'Grand Illusion'. The film still wears well, despite its advanced age: it is 22 years old. But is has retained a few features that were the norm at the time it was made in 1936. One of them is that it was conceived for a screen with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. I composed each frame to fill this space and to leave nothing blank. At times there is a great deal of detail at the top or bottom of the frame. By projecting my film on a screen with wider dimensions, you risk eliminating these details which I feel are important and at the same time partially cutting off the characters' heads which strikes me as unsightly.

I am asking you to help me present my work in the best possible conditions, by which I mean the correct format.

Thanking you in advance.

With best regards,

JEAN RENOIR
3 years earlier Renoir had answered questions on advent of 'The Big Screens' in a Sight and Sound poll of Directors...
1/. The adoption of wide screens is only the inevitable consequence of sound. the great weapon of the silent cinema was the big close-up. The big close-up served not only to explain a situation or interpret an inner feeling. It was a direct communication between the actor-master and the public-slave. The result was a little like hypnotism. From the moment when dialogue broke into films it was natural that the big close-up should dissappear, giving way to dialogue scenes comparable to scenes from a stage play. Now it is difficult to frame in close-up, on the square shaped screen (1.33:1), more than two people talking. The right kind of framing between half a dozen people talking would be a freeze. I must add I regret the close-up as I regret the disappearance of solos in modern opera.

2/. Evidently - or almost so, as I have explained - framing a conversation is easier on a wide screen than on a square one. All my colleagues have experienced the tedium of having to frame a scene round a dinner table. Either you set up far enough away to include all the guests sitting round the table, in which case they become too small for all their facial play to register on the screen; or you come nearer, and replace the table that is of normal size in medium shot with a tiny table in close-up. Personally I like these tricks, I am afraid that making framing - and other things - easier may completely destroy a certain primitive strength very necessary to the cinema.

3/. I prefer the ordinary screen, but I can't choose. Apart from the other pressures I have already outlined, there is an even more imperious one: fashion.... Our contemporaries see things horizontally. The previous generation saw things vertically. Neither you nor I can do anything to alter that.
Of course in 1959 with LE TESTAMENT DU DOCTEUR CORDELIER & LE DEJEUNER SUR L'HERBE, Renoir worked with widescreen (1.66:1) framing, albeit introducing the extra confounder of a multi camera, television like, shooting strategy, to catch scenes from several angles in a single take, thus attempting to capture a 'live' power and fluidity of performance...

CORDELIER took about 14 days to film using this methodology in January 1959... The entire production process for DEJEUNER took about 6 weeks in July & August of the same year. Of this, there were 3 weeks rehearsal in Paris, the first with just the actors alone, the second week bringing in the technicians to the process, then Renoir paused to recce his locations with cameraman and designer, before returning to a third weeks rehearsal in Paris, where now the entire company resumed rehearsal with the camera position and location layout sketched in chalk on the floor... A couple more days were spent in prep, dressing the actors gathering props etc, before everyone moved to the Midi on location... A final half week was spent in further rehearsal on the actual locations, before the film was shot in a single sustained period of just 20 days...

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knives
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#23 Post by knives » Thu Sep 11, 2008 5:32 pm

Is the current CC version worth the buy or should I just get the EAH that came out, this week I think? Thanks in advance

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#24 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Sep 11, 2008 5:34 pm

It depends if you want any of the extra features. I thought Peter Cowie's commentary was one of his best, if you ask me!

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dad1153
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Re: 1 Grand Illusion

#25 Post by dad1153 » Tue Feb 02, 2010 1:01 pm


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