Category: Drama
All Genres: Drama, War
Release Year: 1937
Country: France
Runtime: 114
Rating: 4.3 (0)
Languages: French, German, English, Russian
Director: Jean Renoir
Sound: Mono
Taglines:

Writing by: Jean Renoir – screenplay
Jean Renoir – story
Charles Spaak – writer

Produced by: Albert Pinkovitch – producer (uncredited)
Frank Rollmer – producer (uncredited)

Cast: Jean Gabin – Lt. Maréchal
Dita Parlo – Elsa (farm woman)
Pierre Fresnay – Capt. de Boeldieu
Erich von Stroheim – Capt. von Rauffenstein (as Eric von Stroheim)
Julien Carette – Cartier, lacteur (as Carette)
Georges Péclet – Le serrurier (as Peclet)
Werner Florian – Sgt. Arthur
Jean Dasté – The teacher (as Daste)
Sylvain Itkine – Lt. Demolder (as Itkine)
Gaston Modot – The engineer (as Modot)
Marcel Dalio – Lt. Rosenthal (as Dalio)

Music: Joseph Kosma
Official Website: Visit Website


Plot Outline: During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life…
Plot: During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life. They meet other prisoners from various backgrounds, as Rosenthal, son of wealthy Jewish bankers. They are separated from Rosenthal before managing to escape. A few months later, they meet again in a fortress commanded by the aristocrat Van Rauffenstein. De Boeldieu strikes up a friendship with him but Marechal and Rosenthal still want to escape…

Crazy Credits: We know about 2 Crazy Credits. One of them reads:
During the end credits, the HVTV Fall Lineup is shown, including: – I Love Lucifer – The Golden Ghouls – Murder She Likes – David Dukes of Hazard – Facts of Life Support – Beverly Hills, 90666 – Fresh Prince of Darkness – Unmarried with Children

Goofs: We know about 2 goofs. Here comes one of them:
Anachronisms: Elsas rural farmhouse in the mountains has electric lighting in the 1910s.

Trivia: There are 6 entries in the trivia list – like these:

• First foreign language film–and still one of only a handful–to be nominated for Oscar as Best Picture.
• The uniform worn by Jean Gabin was actually owned and worn by Jean Renoir, who served in the air force during WWI.
• Goebbels made sure that the films print was one of the first things seized by the Germans when they occupied France. He referred to Jean Renoir as “Cinematic Public Enemy Number 1″. For many years it was assumed that the film had been destroyed in an Allied air raid in 1942. However, a German film archivist named Frank Hansel, then a Nazi officer in Paris, had actually smuggled it back to Berlin. Then when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945, the film found its way to an archive in Moscow. When Jean Renoir came to restore his film in the 1960s, he knew nothing of Hansels acquisition and was working from an old muddy print. Purely by coincidence at the same time, the Russian archive swapped some material with an archive in Toulouse. Included in that exchange was the original negative print. However, because so many prints of the film existed at the time, it would be another 30 years before anyone realised that the version in Toulouse was actually the original negative.