Grand Illusion, All Quiet on the Western Front
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Europe emerged from World War I with a different point of view than had existed before and with a new sense of the world as extending beyond the borders of Europe. This idea is mirrored in Felix Gilbert's book The End of the European Era, 1890 to the Present where he notes that Europe at the end of the nineteenth century was the center of world power. He finds that Europe was reshaped after that war and again after World War II, and a number of forces came together over that time to produce these changes, including the rise of America as a world power, the growth of the power of and perceived threat from the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution, and the tensions after World War I that made a second war seem more and more certain as time passed, leading to World War II and the destruction of much of Europe. The tensions that developed after World War I are described in different ways in a number of texts, including a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the book by Gilbert, and the film Grand Illusion by Jean Renoir. In Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, seven young men from the same school enlist in the army at the behest of their teacher to fight for the Fatherland. They enter the war all fired up with patriotic fervor and with dreams of glory and success, but the war has a devastating effect on them. They find that the reality of war is not at all like the image they have been carrying with them, and those who are not killed are destroyed in s
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ence will never understand. Paul is a sensitive young man who loves beauty and the life of this world. He does not survive, but if he had he would find the beauty he loved more precious and yet also tarnished at one and the same time.
War as an illusion is also the theme of Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937), and this story of World War I was told on the eve of World War II and so gained added meaning and poignancy because of that fact. What is particularly striking about the film is the degree to which Renoir captured what would be the difference between the two wars--World War I still had illusions about the nature of war, about a certain respect between peers, about politeness between enemies, about war as a civilized experience; while World War II would not feature such illusions and instead would be an all-out assault of one enemy against the other. The sense of the war as civilized is embodied in the character of the German officer Captain von Rauffenstein, who shoots down two French officers behind German lines and invites them to dine with his squadron before they are taken to a prisoner-of-war camp. The two officers will meet the Captain again some time later, after they have been quartered at several other prison c
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Approximate Word count = 2314
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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