La Grande Illusion – review

Back on the big screen in a restored version and released by Studiocanal on DVD and Blu-ray with useful extras, Renoir's 1937 anti-war masterpiece created a new genre, the POW movie, and with his 1939 La Règle du jeu constitutes a diptych of unparalleled excellence. La Grande Illusion is an optimistic, elegiac tragedy, looking at the great war and the crucial changes it wrought. La Règle du jeu is a pessimistic comedy, anticipating the second world war and the horrors it was to unleash.