Watching Grande Illusion

 

This week Debby and I watched Renoir’s Grande Illusion for the first time in a good while. It was a good as I remembered. It is the best war movie I have ever seen and one of the best of any sort. Its fine performances, superb direction, and most of all wonderful humanity were just as I remembered. So was the sense of loss I felt not only for the characters but also for a splendid civilization that that war wounded grievously (and the next one may turn out to have killed). It was not only the end of the Rauffensteins and Boeldieus.