Landmarks - La Grande Illusion

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Anne McElvoy presents a landmark edition on the Jean Renoir film La Grande Illusion. Popular with the audience and critics on its release in 1937, this masterpiece of French cinema tells the story of French officers trying to escape from a World War One prison. The film examines the themes of nationalism, duty, class and politics and has influenced a number of subsequent films including Casablanca and The Great Escape. However La Grande Illusion had a troublesome history: it was declared Cinematic Public Enemy Number One by Josef Goebbels - who ordered all prints to be destroyed - and it was banned by the French authorities too. For many years it was thought lost forever, until a copy of it was re-discovered in the 1990s. Film historians Ginette Vincendeau and Ian Christie and professor of French History Julian Jackson join Anne to examine what makes this one of film's classics.