GRAND ILLUSION

Jean Renoir’s GRAND ILLUSION is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary with a brand-new 35mm print screening at Film Forum

GRAND ILLUSION (Jean Renoir, 1937)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through May 24
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

If you’ve never seen this remarkable cinematic achievement, prepare to be overwhelmed by Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece, screening through May 24 at Film Forum in an all-new 35mm restored print in honor of the film’s seventy-fifth anniversary. The first foreign film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, Grand Illusion is set in a POW camp during WWI, where everyman pilot Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), by-the-book Captain de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay), lovable Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), and others are being held by the aristocratic Captain von Rauffenstein (an unforgettable Erich von Stroheim). Proclaimed “cinematic public enemy no. 1” by Joseph Goebbels, Grand Illusion takes on anti-Semitism, class structure, and religion in addition to war, a humanist film that is as relevant as ever seventy-five years after its initial release. Illustrator Paul Davis will be at Film Forum on May 15 following the 7:45 show to sign copies of his specially created poster celebrating the anniversary.