Review of The Elusive Corporal (1962) by Ryan M — 21 Aug 2009

Should rank among the best of great directors' forgotten late works. Renoir's second-to-last film is a good deal more than the WWII update of 'Grand Illusion' that it's consistently billed as (though I won't argue that it's better than the earlier classic).

To begin with, there are no Gabins or Stroheims here, and traces of their romantic loftiness are mostly absent (though something of Fresnay's ever-prideful "Captain de Boeldieu" comes back in the bespectacled prisoner's beautifully executed death scene).

Even Cassel, the movie's ostensible center, is hardly singularized (and it should resonate that there's no pretense to nobility in the characters here). The film plays even faster and looser than 'Grand Illusion' with the farcical elements of prison life, all the while retaining pacifistic reminders about war's absurdity.

There's also more naturalism in the aesthetic. The major kicker of course is that Renoir thinks 'The Elusive Corporal''s war IS worth fighting, and if the film fails at all it maybe does so at the level of arguing that last point (Cassel's "swastikas still depress me" line is hardly a rallying call).

Perhaps Renoir wants to have it both ways by humanizing the Germans while calling for their defeat. That's hardly a disagreeable approach, but I can't shake the feeling that for most of the film Renoir skirts the issue, focusing in instead on the amusing, tender stuff of Frenchmen scrambling for their freedom.