Review of La Grande Illusion (1937)
Life and escape attempts in a series of officers’ prison camps, where the Germans herd together various nationalities at some point during WW1.
Anti-war drama with very little action. Nice characters, ironies and one-line incisions into various illusions. The director’s experiments with realism are fruitful, with a few glaring exceptions (a sharp spotlight stands in for the natural light of a lantern).