Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 31: It's All An Illusion

In the main Best Picture category it is very rare that a film that is completely in another language, features in it. This is especially true since the academy introduced the Best Picture not in the English Language award in the late 1940s. However from time to time there is a Cries and Whispers or a Crouching,Tigerr, Hidden Dragon that make it in and the first to do just this was Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion making the list in the 1939 category which was won by You Can't Take It With You. I am a little familiar with Renoir's work having studied early French cinema but I'd never seen this film. It concerns what life was like for French Prisoners-of-War during the First World War Jean Gabin's Marechal and Pierre Frenay's de Boeldieu both of whom get captured and along with other former officers plan to escape. The first half of the film sees the escape attempt foiled as they are moved to another POW camp which is claimed to be an impenetrable  fortress. De Boldieu, Marechal and a third Rosenthal all plan an escape but De Boldieu decides to be the decoy and ends up getting shot by the remorseful German Captain. The final part of the film careers off and sees Marechal and Rosenthal's attempted escape which sees them living with a widowed farm-mistress and Marechal starts to fall for her. The end of the film sees the two men escaping into Switzerland as the Germans decide not to shoot them as they are no longer in Germany.

There's no denying that Renoir is a masterful director and every frame is artfully put together, the scenes which show the horrors of the camp are certainly the stand-out. However I found at times that the narrative was comprised in favour of the films aestethics. Parts of the film were the POWS were plotting early on were long and meandering and the romantic plot between Marechal and the German woman dragged towards its final stages. However these are minor niggles and overall the film was absolutely brilliant the acting was particularly masterful while Gabin was a standout Erich Von Stroheim as the German Captain was absolutely terrifying. Von Stroheim is probably most famous for his role as Max in Sunset Boulevard but he was just as captivating in this yet I'm guessing Oscar couldn't look past the subtitles. I'm surprised this was nominated to start off with so I don't think it had a chance of winning. But it obviously proves that Oscar was starting to become forward thinking at the end of its first decade.