La Grande Illusion - A 1937 Film (The Geand Illusion) - directed by Jean Renoir - run time an hour and 54 minutes

 

The Grand Illusion is considered one of the greatest movies ever made.

"It's not a movie about a prison escape, nor is it jingoistic in its politics; it's a meditation on the collapse of the old order of European civilization. Perhaps that was always a sentimental upper-class illusion, the notion that gentlemen on both sides of the lines subscribed to the same code of behavior. Whatever it was, it died in the trenches of World War I." from Roger Ebert.

You may watch it on Internetarchives.org 

https://archive.org/details/1937lagrandeillusion

The movie is set in a German prison during World War One. The prisoners are a diverse mix of prisoners.  It was released just as another war was on the way.

With Grand Illusion, Renoir provides a multilayered perspective on class, war, nationalism, and prejudice. For example, the film’s treatment of Rosenthal—an affluent Jewish banker who generously shares his food with his fellow inmates— has been interpreted as an effort by Renoir to combat anti-Semitism during the rise of Nazi Germany. De Boeldieu’s sacrifice for his working-class comrades, furthermore, symbolically mirrors the changing social order of Europe. In addition, Rosenthal points out the ultimate “grand illusion”: that the current war will end all wars. The performances by Jean Gabin and Erich von Stroheim are exceptional, although the latter, having spent years away from his native Austria, reportedly struggled to speak German. Grand Illusion was the first non-English-language film to be nominated for an Academy Award as best picture. However, the work was so despised by the Nazis that they confiscated and destroyed prints of the film during their World War II occupation of France.

I highly reccomend the presentation below from the M I T film school.

"Renoir was born in Paris in 1894, the son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He began his career as an actor in the early 1920s, and his first film as a director was La Fille de l'eau (1924). Renoir's early films were mostly silent, and they often featured his wife, Catherine Hessling, in the lead role.

Renoir's first sound film was La Chienne (1931), a dark comedy about a man who is driven to crime by his mistress. The film was a critical and commercial success, and it established Renoir as one of the leading directors of the French cinema. 

Renoir's most famous films were made during the 1930s, including La Grande Illusion (1937), The Rules of the Game (1939), and The Woman on the Beach (1943). These films are all considered masterpieces of world cinema, and they explore themes of war, class, and love.

Renoir left France for the United States in 1941, and he made several films there, including The Southerner (1945) and The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). He returned to France in 1949, and he continued to make films until his death in 1979." - Bard

Mel Ulm