Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LEI I I U 87 NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD FILM A Psychiatrist analyses La Grande Illusion [This abridged study by C. van Emde Boas, ai leading Dutch psychiatrist, was first published in 'Freie Katheder', a Dutch literary periodical last year. It is one of several sociological studies which he has made of selected films.] La Grande Illusion is accepted as one of the most perfect productions of pre-war French filmmaking. It is also a film » ith a purpose, preaching the fraternization of peoples with such fervour that it is frequently considered unsuitable for public performance. What I am concerned with here is not its artistic quality, but whether it is really an anti-war picture and whether its effect on the average cinema-goer is such as the propaganda pretends it to be. Although my own initial reaction on seeing it was one of deep emotion, I cannot help on reflection considering it politically a complete failure. Despite its artistic qualities and its superficially humanistic intentions, it has, I feel, a strong reactionary undercurrent. To assist readers who did not see or do not remember the picture a short summary of its contents will be necessarv . The Story In the war of 1914-1918 a French plane flown by Lieutenant Marechal and Capt. de Boieldieu is shot down by the famous German fighterpilot. Cavalry Captain von Rauffenstein. The German, the prototype of .the well-educated aristocrat of the old school who knows how to beha\e towards his defeated adversary, welcomes the prisoners most courteously and offers them, according to the rules of the game, an excellent lunch in the officers' mess. The Count de Boieldieu, in particular, who is his social equal, is treated with all the consideration he could ask for. The French are then brought to a prison camp and soon they begin to dig an escape tunnel from the dormitory to the open field. We see life in the prison camp, the Prussian officers and the jovial militiamen, all portrayed in the sympathetic light of an ennobling humanism, of the relationship of 'man to man'. The old guards are mild and human, full of understanding for the prisoners. Then comes the disappointing transfer of the prisoners on the day the tunnel was to ha\e been used. By chance the principal figures meet again in an old castle in the mountains, specially arranged as a camp for prisoners who have tried to escape. Von Rauffenstein is the commander, a job he loathes, as he admits to Boieldieu, but which enables him after all to serve his country. Again an escape is planned, this time it goes off successfully, due to the self-sacrifice of Boieldieu. He succeeds in distracting the attention of the castle garrison by playing the flute on the highest tower of the castle, but has to pay for it with a bullet in his stomach from the revolver of the commander who shoots him 'with a bleeding heart', 'doing his duty', when Boieldieu refuses to come down. Marechal escapes with 1 ieutenant Rosenthal, the son of a rich Jewish hanker, and both try to reach Switzerland. The) Bnd shelter in a farm near the frontier where a young peasanl woman has been left alone with a little girl. All the men are gone, killed. There is a wonderful ■ • i-; when she points to the portraits: "I iege, Tannenberg, our greatest victories.' Again the film demonstrates how important the relationship is between human beings: the German farmer's wife and the French pilot fall in Io\e and the German child is cared for by the enemies of its country. But when Rosenthal's foot which has been injured is healed, the escape proceeds. Marechal promises to come back after the war 10 fetch I Isa and then they vanish into the night to reach Switzerland safely. Conscious Motive From this short summary it should be clear even to those who have not seen the picture, that what we might call the conscious, or the higher motive of the film is a pre-eminently ethical and humanistic one which moves us deeply and cannot be overlooked by a single spectator. The act o\' fraternization remains the leading theme throughout the whole film. When von Rauffenstein asks the captured staff officer whether he is related to the military attache in Berlin and they start talking about Mile Fifi at Maxim's and about Oxford, the individuals are at once set free from the group (i.e. German or French in this case) which kills every tender feeling. They have achieved a common human basis on which a new relationship is possible. And that same motive comes in repeatedly: whether it is the sympathy shown by the German guard for the French lieutenant who goes crazy in solitary confinement, or the attachment of the French farmer's son to the farm and the way he speaks to a German cow as if it were a human being. The fact that love overcomes all national antagonisms, that the charm of a little girl and the magic of the Holy Crib bridge all differences of language, all this enables us to accept a picture, so 'human' in the best sense of the word, as a whole. "On n'apprend que de celui quon aimeY The Dangers But this is just the thing which makes this film so terribly dangerous. Right next to these antiwar passages, but much less visible and more dispersed throughout the whole story, we find elements which may easily reconcile us to the idea of war unless we can succeed in dissociating them from their deceptive cover of honour, chivalry, patriotism and duty. The pathos of the scene of the defeated French pilot being lunched in the German officers' mess and the chivalrous idea of the wreath dropped by the German squadron leader in honour of his dead French adversary, are perhaps the least dangerous. Anv cinemagoer can see through this false show as long .is he remembers Rotterdam, Warsaw and London. \tiei the murderous air battles above Berlin and the atomic bomb on Nagasaki aerial warfare Ins ceased to be a tournament for modern knights d la von Rauffenstein. But Renoir himself could not possibly think of that in I93S and therefore it should be considered his special merit that he even then attached this element of empty war romance exclusively to an effete aristo Much less transparent is the cited ol the Outburst of patriotism introduced quite oaturallj when the Fort Douamont near Verdun changes hands several times, it is only on careful reflection that one realizes that the glamorous and stirring tune of the Marseillaise, gripping not only the French on the screen but e\en the spectator in the cinema, is one of the refined means by which more 'kriegsbereitschaft' is let loose on the spectator than all the other anti-war tendencies in the rest of the picture, can keep in check I ven less apparent and less intense, but more permanent and uninhibited by any contradictory feeling, the pro-war tendency works via our inevitable sympathy with the prisoners and their repeated and finally successful attempts to escape. 'La Patrie' The effect of a film as well as of a drama is based upon our identification with the persons on the screen or on the stage. The anti-war tendency, preached openly and quite honestly by Renoir, is, however, entirely undermined by this identification. F or, why do these men try to escape? Why do they repeat their efforts in spite of solitary confinement, transfers, and all sorts of drawbacks and dangers, with an obstinacy and a courage deserving a better cause? Because they are fed up with the war and military rigmarole? Because they are longing for the peace and comfort of Switzerland, the neutral modern Canaan? Not at all! All these grown-up men are moved only by a single idea, a single ideal which is not called 'home' or 'wife' or 'work' and 'child' but 'La patrie'. Rosenthal, the 'sale juif expresses it when he says towards the end of the film that he is going back to his guns and Marechal to his flying. For here lies the greatest weakness of the film — or, from the point of view of the ruling ideology its greatest strength: war is portrayed throughout this whole anti-war picture in a special way. We feel its threats, we undergo force as an evil working from a great distaiK tragically inevitable fate coming over mankind. Everybody mourns for it, everybody suffers but no one is guilty. Outside death rages mercilessly, but nobody is responsible for it. All the factsweheard after 1918 about profiteering, imperialistic cliques, trusts, international carte? arrangements and so on, are entirely torgotten in the intoxication of nationalistic feelings. Beneath the Surface In short, under the cover of fraternization and a humanistic ethic the fatal inclination to look upon war as something inevitable visiied b) higher powers upon a guiltless world, is activated bj this film. In this way it unwitting!) strengthens the passive attitude of men and women towards this human evil and stifles the inclination to resisi which it pretends to call up. If this picture is shown todav m a special performance as frequently happens, it should be introduced and explained and not onlv praised for its artistic values. We should always ask. not onlv wh the artistic quality of the art presented to us but also what is its effect upon us and in which d tiOD does it pull us. We should learn to ■ below the surface and to understand vsi Renoir could not help himself; unless we want to ome the victims of the verj dimes we are pretending to light against,