MOVIE · 1937

Grand Illusion

DramaWar114 min

Captured during World War I, a group of French officers are sent from one German prison camp to another, where class divisions inside the barracks shape every attempt to escape. Jean Gabin is Maréchal, a working-class lieutenant thrown together with Pierre Fresnay’s patrician Captain de Boeldieu; across the wire, von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) recognizes in de Boeldieu a fellow aristocrat. When the prisoners are transferred to a heavily guarded fortress, the escape plan grows more urgent, and the lines of loyalty, rank, and nationality become harder to separate.