What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Grand Illusion, a French film from 1937


Class distinctions are eternal, or they are a grand illusion. War will lead to lasting peace, which itself is a grand illusion. Choose your metaphor – or choose both – or maybe even another one for The Grand Illusion – a classic 1937 French film about World War I and personal relationships.

After two French airmen – an aristocrat, Boëldieu, and a working-class man, Maréchal – are shot down and captured, they are brought to an upper-class German officer, von Rauffenstein, who treats them with the respect his class believes is owed to fellow enemy officers.

From there, the two POWs are sent to an internment camp where they meet an assortment of prisoners. Part of the beauty of the movie is seeing the personalities fleshed out at the camp, which serves as a cross-section of French society.

It is even larger than that, however, as it also shines a light on German society and, for a brief moment, Russian society. Each has its differences and cultural tics, but that there is a common humanity across all people is one of the movie's messages.

A French prisoner, Rosenthal, a Jewish man who was a banker before the war, receives luxurious food parcels from home, which he generously shares with his fellow prisoners. This makes him popular. Still, the antisemitism is palpable, as sadly, that commonality is here too.

Escape attempts – including the obligatory tunnel and the obligatory handmade rope – discipline, sleep issues, boredom, books, and the uncertainty that we've come to know from POW movies are all here – as are the strange fellowships that sometimes cut across class lines.

But the class ties that bind are strong. A now-injured von Rauffenstein is the commander of the fortress prison that Maréchal, Rosenthal and Boëldieu are transferred to. He and Boëldieu bond in a "we're of the same class" way that Boëldieu can't do with his lower-class countrymen.

Rounding out the plot, Maréchal and Rosenthal escape with help from Boëldieu leading to the classic two prisoners trying to get home dynamic, heightened here by antisemitism that fades as, of course, it's hard to hate someone decent whom you've come to truly know.

The celebrated French actor Jean Gabin plays Maréchal, and his screen presence is powerful. But for overwhelming screen presence, Austrian-born actor and director Erich von Stroheim owns every single scene he is in, playing the aristocratic and insane German von Rauffenstein.

You never really know with von Stroheim if he's a talented actor or just a force of nature, but his monologues about war, honor, death, and duty are gripping in a movie that sometimes spends a bit too much time talking about, well, war, honor, death and duty.

Noted French director Jean Renoir wasn't focused on plot in his picture. The impact of the film comes from the light he shines on the relationships that develop across the classes that defined Europe then – classes that this war and the following one would break apart.

Shot, of course, in black and white – and having been beautifully restored – there's a realism to Renoir's camera as the small but intimate details – the way the men carefully unravel and re-roll cigarette paper – put you right there with the men. It's a straightforward but effective use of the medium.

Renoir’s employment of fluid tracking shots also enhances the film’s naturalistic tone and helps create a documentary-like immediacy, such as when the camera smoothly follows the prisoners moving through the camp, capturing their daily rhythms without intrusion.

Renoir also highlights the contradictions and insanities of war, as The Grand Illusion is, at its core, an anti-war movie. This message is quietly but powerfully highlighted in a prison-camp scene early on.

The German guards and French POWs alternate celebrating the news of some fort changing hands several times – each one celebrates when his country holds the fort for the moment – followed by one POW wryly noting after the third switch: "There can't be much left of the fort."

That could be the movie in a nutshell: after all the fighting, destruction, killing, hate, and suffering – what will be left? What was it all about? Was it worth it?

Renoir and his talented cast made an important movie that places you right with the prisoners. Today we've seen many versions of this type of movie, but for 1937, Renoir broke new ground in bringing this aspect of the reality of war to film.

It's moving and poignant, but sadly, as with all anti-war movies, The Grand Illusion offers no practical plan to stop the next war. The audience may thus nod in agreement that war is madness, but history ensures they’ll be watching another war film soon enough.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Fading Fast

DOUBLELIKE!!

 

[Fading Fast]

Silver Dollar from 1932 with Edward G. Robinson, Aline MacMahon and Bebe Daniels


Nobody becomes massively successful without at least some luck and some ability; to fairly assess a massively successful man or woman, the interesting question is how much of each did it take?

In Silver Dollar, Edward G. Robinson's character is a roman a clef of Denver's massively successful 19th-century silver prospector turned businessman and politician Horace Tabor.

Whether Tabor had more ability or luck is a question for history, but in Robinson's portrayal of his Tinseltown doppelganger, the heavy thumb landed on luck.

In the movie, we immediately meet Robinson and his pragmatic wife, played by Aline MacMahon, living in a Denver prospecting town in the mid-19th century. They are struggling store owners until luck shines down and a silver mine Robinson blindly invested in pays off.

Robinson was already a big man in his own mind and a big man in his bragging to others, but now, with silver money behind him, he really lets his ego and spending rip. He buys both personal possessions and elected office, as his gifts to the city make him a popular politician.

Jump forward a few years and he's lieutenant governor of the state, living in a mansion and investing in everything he can possibly invest in and buying everything he can possibly buy. Through it all, Robinson's character is an insecure braggart who irritates many people.

It is more pathetic though than arrogant. He has a pathological need to tell everyone how "big" he is – how much money he's made, how much he's donated, what he's bought, and what he's built for the city. The only thought a normal person has is "get me away from this guy."

It is clear throughout that his success is more luck than smarts, as he does little diligence on his investments, pays all but no attention to the details, and really made all his money – his "silver money –" from two lucky mine hits.

Along the way, he eventually trades in pragmatic and kind MacMahon, who has never been comfortable with his outsized spending and ego, for a younger, cuter wife, played by Bebe Daniels, who is comfortable with both. It's an early example of a cliché that never ages.

In the climax, Robinson's highly leveraged silver empire is threatened when the U.S. Government debates moving to an all-gold standard. That would cause the bottom to fall out of the silver market and prove if Robinson was a smart or just a lucky man.

You'll want to see that climax and the ensuing denouement to Robinson's life fresh, but look for the reactions of his two wives, their acting displays a complex humanity at work. It is a nuance lacking in Robinson's bravado.

Silver Dollar captures the chaos and opportunity prospecting offered in a young country still discovering its natural resources. It was hard and risky work, but the outsized payoff equation was partly driven by luck, which could catapult silly men like Robinson to great prominence.

Robinson maybe overplays the role a bit – it feels like he does – but there were some big, coarse egos that came out of those rough towns, so maybe he got it right. The real thoughtful acting in this one, though, fell to MacMahon and Daniels as the buffeted wives of the "big man."

Robinson never really grows as a character. You sense he'd make the same mistakes time and again, but his wives, Daniels in particular, do grow. When things get tough, Daniels "mans-up" much more than Robinson. She's maturing through experience, but he isn't.

Directed by Alfred E. Green and produced by Warners Bros., the movie has an early "talkies" clunkiness, but also the real-life grit that Warners would be known for in this era. It's not polished film making, but you feel an element of raw humanity was captured on screen.

Released in 1932, a few men like Robinson were still alive then and many in the country had seen the tail end of that era, so the movie felt like recent events to contemporaneous audiences. Today, one needs a little of that perspective to appreciate the crazy on display in Silver Dollar.


N.B. It's hard in our modern era of "fiat" currency (it is worth something because of a government imprimatur) to appreciate the major political battles that were waged over a gold versus a combined gold-and-silver standard. Yet, like Robinson's, fortunes hung in the balance over those decisions.

 

[Jon Crow]

A old classic this afternoon ' Where Eagles Dare ' Broadsword calling Danny Boy '