By Ginette Vincendeau
Translator: Yi Ersan
Proofreading: Issac
Source: Sight & Sound (May 2012)
Like all enduring classics, Jean Renoir's The Great Mirage (1937) comes to us with a heavy baggage. The film was shot during the two world wars by a French landmark director and was a huge success at the time, winning numerous awards, being screened and widely reported.
The Great Phantom (1937)
It's a legendary movie. But at the same time, it's also been controversial, and its place in the film classics isn't as solid as it seems. Studio Canal recently released the film's newly restored Blu-ray disc, providing a great opportunity for contemporary audiences to revisit it.
This fabulous work received various feedbacks in the context of the 1930s, and through its ebb and flowing reputation, we can get a glimpse of how much a great work means different things to different people at different times, and it can also test the variability of the critical agenda.
Set against the backdrop of World War I, The Great Mirage tells the story of French captives escaping from prison in German concentration camps. Central characters include the working-class Mike (Jean Gaben), the aristocratic Berdio (Pierre Freinet), the wealthy bourgeois Jew Rosenthal (Marcel Dario), and the comical juggler Cartier (Julian Callette).
They try to escape by digging tunnels from the first concentration camp, but at the last moment they are transferred to the daunting Fortress of Winterbourne (the real-life King's Castle in Alsace, France), where they again meet Captain Von Lofenstein (Eric von Stroheim), a German officer who appears at the beginning of the film.
There, thanks to Berdio's sacrifice, Mike and Rosenthal were eventually able to escape. After being rescued by the German widow Elsa (Dita Parlo), they eventually cross the border to Switzerland.
The Great Mirage is a clear anti-war film that advocates human solidarity across national and class barriers: the French and German aristocrats are united by a shared memory of Maxim's restaurant and horses, while the lower classes on both sides agree that the war has been going on too long.
At the same time, the well-supplied Rosenthal shared food with his comrades, and Berdio, knowing that his class was doomed to perish, sacrificed himself to help his civilian officers escape (von Rofenstein commented, "This is the fine legacy of the French Revolution").
Filmed in the winter of 1936–37 and released on June 8, 1937, The Great Mirage is a collection of autobiography, humanistic statements, and political propaganda. It bears the hallmark of the left-leaning politics of the French Popular Front, in which Renoir was closely involved; but with the decline of the Popular Front, the political elements of the film have become less clear than those contained in the director's three 1936 works, The Crimes of Mr. Rankey, The Lower Class, and the Communist-sponsored documentary Life Belongs to Us.
"The Crimes of Mr. Rangie"
It was a transitional film, and Renoir's next work was the 1938 black pessimistic film Zola's novel, The Cloaked Beast, while The Great Mirage was about class unity rather than class struggle.
In the context of international tensions, which are increasingly threatened by fascism and world war, the pacifism conveyed by the film has its significance. Equally important, it was part of the strong anti-war sentiment in France after the First World War. In France, the war is called "la der des ders" – perhaps the most profound of the multiple meanings of the title of The Great Phantom is that it won't be the last.
In terms of narrative details, The Great Mirage can be arguably autobiographical—based on Renoir's own recollections of the war, in which he served as a pilot until he was shot down in April 1915 (in the film, Gabon wears Renoir's old uniform).
To his own memories, he added memories of his friend, another pilot, Pin Sade. Renoir and screenwriter Charles Spock did not admit that their script also borrowed from Jean de Valère's novel, which also sparked another plagiarism dispute. While there are some similarities between fiction and film, they are not closely related. More important was Spark's dedication and changes in the cast, especially the addition of von Stroheim and the addition of the role of von Rofenstein (Renoir greatly admired the Austrian filmmaker's talent as a director).
As Martin Oschonessi detailed in his excellent book on the film, published in 2009, although the brilliance of The Great Mirage is consistent in terms of both style and performance, critics tend to focus on its themes: "Its success was never confined to the film itself, but because it was directly and obviously linked to the pressing problems of the time." With the exception of some right-wing writers—including the fascist novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celina, who in "Bagatelles pour un massacre" viciously denounced sympathetic depictions of the Jewish Rosenthal—most critics loved the film.
The consensus among critics reflects the film's artistic success, as well as its ability to express contradictory views — for example, the film's national barriers have been criticized for being too artificial and obsessed with national stereotypes.
In addition to being banned in Germany as Goebbels' "number one enemy in cinema", The Great Mirage triumphed on the international stage. It succeeded in pleasing fellow fascist Italy, as well as U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, winning a series of awards including the Venice Film Festival's International Jury Prize and the New York Film Critics' Award.
When the film was re-released in 1946, the reaction of French audiences became more polarized. The average audience still liked it, but the critics were less enthusiastic. Some shots of Rosenthal, as well as romantic interludes between Mike and Elsa, were cut. Renoir's acquisition of American citizenship in the same year may have been partly responsible for the lashing out; but beyond that, after the aftermath of World War II and the revelation of the atrocities of the Holocaust, three aspects became particularly controversial: the film's pacifism; its chivalrous view of the war, with a sympathetic depiction of the "good Germans"; and its presentation of Rosenthal, which at the time was interpreted as anti-Semitism.
The final question sparked a series of ongoing debates, focusing on whether the film's interpretation of anti-Semitic stereotypes (Rosenthal plays a wealthy banker) and outright anti-Semitic rhetoric (Mike said to Rosenthal, "I can never tolerate Jews") meant footnotes to anti-Semitism.
However, these discordant issues soon took a back seat. On the one hand, France's fierce political divisions have given way to other agendas; on the other hand, as Europe has been rebuilt, the pacifism promoted in the film and friendly relations between countries have become very important.
Detached from these divisive discussions, The Great Phantom began a career that was increasingly enshrined. The 1950s witnessed a retrospective assessment of the film's history, marked by a number of polls that appeared from time to time – notably those conducted in Belgium in 1952 and 1958.
Notably, the list published by The Brussels Cinémathèque in 1952 and the list launched at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958 included The Great Mirage among the top ten (or twelve) films in film history. This is worth investigating.
The Great Phantom was the only French film on the list in 1958 (fifth), and the rest of the notable works on the list include Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, as well as Chaplin's Gold Rush, DeSica's The Bike Thief, Dreier's Joan of Arc of Montunder, von Stroheim's Greed, Griffith's The Party Is Different, Puddolkin's Mother, Wells's Citizen Kane, and Dufurenko's The Land. It was a pretty tough list of great films with "great themes" that fit the humanist spirit of their time – which, of course, might have been belittled by Claude Chabrol, the rising star of the French New Wave at the time.
In fact, in response, the Handbook of Motion Picture published its own list in December 1958 (mainly by Bazin, Chabrol, Godard, Houmai, Rivit and Truffaut). It was their choice: Sunrise by Maunaux; Renoir's Rules of the Game; Rossellini's Visit to Italy; Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible; Griffiths' The Birth of a Nation; Wells's Mr. Akadin; Deleyer's Words; Kenji Mizoguchi's Tale of the Rainy Moon; Vigo's Atlanta; von Ströheim's Wedding March; Hitchcock's Acacia of the Night and Chaplin's Monsieur Verdou.
"Flowing Night Flowers"
There are many differences between the two lists, such as the Factbook of Cinema which chose both more modernist films (Journey to Italy) and more intimate plays (Atlanta). In particular, (except for the Film Handbook's substitution of Mr. Akadin for Citizen Kane with Mr. Akadin for its typical provocative intent), the key transition from The Great Phantom to The Rules of the Game will be echoed in many subsequent film lists, notably the once-decade Sight and Hear selection.
On Sight & Hear, only Rules of the Game made it into the top ten (tenth in 1952; third in 1962; second in 1972, 1982 and 1992; back in third in 2002). The Great Phantom was much more frustrated, with only occasional mentions — for example, in 2002, Sight and Hearing ranked it 38th. Similarly, in the 2008 list of "The Greatest 100 Movies in Film History", the Film Handbook was "The Rules of the Game" and "The Great Phantom" ranked 68th. Many other examples can be given here, all illustrating the shift in critical taste.
Rules of the Game
As film critic Robin Wood put it, "In an era when the importance of cinema was attributed to the importance of its subject matter, The Great Mirage was widely regarded as Renoir's masterpiece," but in the 1950s, as the theory of film authorship began, "the film was seen as lacking in personal style, intimacy, and complexity." I agree with Wood that there is some kind of misunderstanding involved, but it is necessary to examine more closely why new critical consensuses continue to emerge and persist.
The "easy" accessibility of The Great Mirage, the balanced three-act structure, the complex and seamless cinematography and the performances of the main stars all mark a coordinated, classic film whose theme is the cohesion between the individual and the state.
In contrast, The Rules of the Game's more "decentralized" aesthetic reflects its themes of social differentiation. Thus, for Truffaut, the fact that The Great Mirage "is probably the least eccentric of all renoir's French films" is a big reason why he can't raise his enthusiasm. When it comes to serious themes — "great themes" in Chabrol's words — we can also see new wave standard-bearers' accusations of "quality traditions." It is therefore not surprising that Truffaut's disparagement of the Great Mirage "serves patriotic themes."
The commercial success of The Great Mirage (it was the French box office champion in 1937) was also an important factor. In Renoir's classic sequence, a legend about the rules of the game being treated hostily in 1939 is rife. The renoir scholars Claude Gaud and Christopher Faulkner considered it a huge exaggeration, but the legend that the film was "misunderstood" at the time of its release added to its mystery and prestige.
As Peter Woollen points out, regulars on today's film lists, such as Citizen Kane and The Rules of the Game, all carry the aura of film censorship. But this is not the case with The Great Phantom, which performs quite well commercially with The Lower Class and The Cloaked Beast. It is no coincidence that the three films starred in Gabben, the most popular star in France at the time.
"The Cloaked Beast"
The use of actors is another key factor in bringing fame to Renoir's classics. There are two reasons, first of all, another legend about Renoir is (passed down by Bazin) – one of the directors' characteristics is the use of "unconventional" actors – such as in The Rules of the Game, there are relatively unknown actors (Nora Gregor), non-professional actors (Renoir himself), or actors who deliberately deviate from their existing image (comedian Roland Tuton plays the tragic pilot Julius).
On the contrary, in The Great Mirage, all the stars show their strengths with ease, and as a result, they are recognized by the public. The wonderful performances of the likes of Gabon, Freinet, Dario and Callette were valued not only by the audience, but also by Renoir himself. As he said, "Every time I watch this movie, the idea comes to me that the bad actors are useless and I owe them too much."
The second is the question of stardom and authorship. Renoir happily shared the credit with his actors, which did not quite match the director-centered theory advocated by the film's authorship theory. On a production level, Gabon played an important role in the success of the film. On an audience level, Renoir is recognized as the actual director of The Great Phantom, which is also seen as a great work overall, while for a large part of the audience, it is a "Gabon film". In contrast, in the context of authorship, "Rules of the Game" can only be a "Renoir movie."
It is clear that the critical discussion that has influenced the acceptance of The Great Mirage is as steeped in history as ever. The film has experienced waves of criticism and opposition, but through these criticisms, it has continued to be a success.
When The Great Mirage fell off IMDb's Top 250 list in 2010, one viewer commented on the site, "It's a movie you'll both appreciate and enjoy!" While the film's immediate theme is a world war, the heated debate of 1946 showed its cautionary significance for the great war that followed—and therefore, it can tell us today as well; regrettably, the issues of war, class, and national conflict have not lost their relevance.
In terms of overall perfection, The Great Mirage is also a representative of French cinema of the late 1930s – it is definitely the best of them. It is a classic defined by Frank Kermode: a film that transcends time and spans various interpretations of different eras and cultures. Thus, in all these senses, Bazin's conclusion is still true today, as he did when he wrote it in the late 1950s: "It is not enough to say that the film maintained its power ... Its status has not diminished with the passage of time."