La Grande Illusion (1937) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Directed by Jean Renoir, the son of the famous impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir, it is a French national treasure as well as a world treasure. Even if the film were of no special merit, the story behind it alone makes it a cultural landmark of the 20th century, and that saga reads like the script to Raiders of the Lost Ark.  

The anti-nationalist film was considered dangerous by the Nazis, and Goebbels ordered all prints and negatives seized. For many years it was thought that the only negative was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid early in the war, but somehow a German film archivist had managed to sneak it into a collection in Berlin. When the Russians marched into Berlin, they confiscated that collection and shipped it to Moscow. In the mid sixties, some French and Russian film archivists swapped various materials, including La Grande Illusion, but nobody had any idea that the original negative of this film even existed, so it escaped unnoticed into an anonymous archive. It was not until thirty years later that someone found it in the archives in Toulouse, exclaimed something like "sacre merde", and announced it to the world.

The only thing that would have made the story perfect would have been if Renoir had been around to hear of the rediscovery of the treasure, but he died in 1979, already in his mid 80's.

Renoir had previously supervised a restored print in the 60's, unaware of the existence of the negative, and the restoration pretty much sucked from a technical standpoint. It was just a splice of the best available prints, which were not in exceptional shape, and were burdened by unfortunate sub-titles, which were neither well placed nor well translated.

The DVD is newly mastered  from the pristine negative, with lots of extra features, and the sub-titles are optional if you prefer to see the images unsullied.

When I hold it in my hand, I feel like I'm holding on to a priceless heirloom from the family of man.

What do you expect me to say - criticizing it is tantamount to saying Michelangelo's "David" really sucks. Even if it were true, there is no chance to convince the world of it. Well, except maybe the Taliban.

But the story is timeless, and parts of it have appeared again and again in other great films influenced by this one. 

Do you remember one of the greatest, most emotional scenes in cinema history, when the French used the Marseilles to irritate the obnoxious Germans at Rick's in Casablanca? Guess where the idea came from? Do you remember the elaborate tunnel digging in The Great Escape, where the prisoners snuck the excess dirt out out to the courtyard in their pant cuffs? Guess where that idea came from? 

The basic story: three French officers find themselves as prisoners of war in WW1. One of the men is an aristocrat, one is a working class guy (mechanic turned pilot), the third comes from a rich Jewish mercantile family.

The aristocratic German officer from whom they eventually escape forms a gentlemanly bond with the French aristocrat, and they have an opportunity to polish their monocles together , while they discuss the death of their old way of life and the emergence of a new egalitarian world. 

The French aristocrat eventually creates a diversion so that the other two officers can escape. They make their way back to Switzerland, aided by a lonely German farm woman who shelters them because their human companionship is more important than their nationality. They share Christmas with her and her daughter before making the run to Switzerland.

Are you sure that's Switzerland. 

Positive

It all looks the same.

Borders are man-made. Nature doesn't care.