{"id":3851,"date":"2026-07-18T14:09:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T14:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=3851"},"modified":"2026-07-18T14:09:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T14:09:33","slug":"the-true-story-behind-the-first-foreign-feature-to-break-out-in-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=3851","title":{"rendered":"The True Story Behind the First Foreign Feature to Break Out In Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tOn May 1, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a major change to the eligibility rules for the best international feature film. No longer would a film have to be nominated by the country of origin; henceforth, it could land in the pool of nominees by winning an award from a list of high-profile international film festivals.\u00a0Moreover, in recognition of the fact that a person not a nation actually directs the film, the director\u2019s name and not the country\u2019s will be engraved for posterity on the statuette plaque.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe new protocols for the best international film category, n\u00e9e best foreign language film, are the latest rejiggering in what has historically been one of the more contentious and confusing Oscar categories. \u00a0Of course, under whatever rules, Oscar validation can mean the difference between multi-platform distribution and oblivion in the American marketplace. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, despite the provincialism of allotting a mere five slots to the output of the rest of the planet, foreign filmmakers have been eager to perform due obeisance before the Academy, which since 1957 has granted offshore films a regular seat at the festivities. (The first winner was Federico Fellini\u2019s La Strada<\/em>.) \u00a0Before that, the Academy doled out an Honorary Oscar when the impact and excellence of a foreign film became too conspicuous to ignore, as with Italy\u2019s The Bicycle Thief<\/em> in 1949 or Japan\u2019s Rashomon<\/em> in 1952.\u00a0The honor was voted on by the Board of Governors, to save the full Academy membership from reading subtitles. (Today the nominees are chosen by an Academy-approved Select Committee). Costa-Gavras\u2019s Z<\/em> (1969), nominated for best picture and<\/em> best foreign language Film (it won the latter), was a landmark border crossing and, in 2020, Bong Joon Ho\u2019s Parasite<\/em> broke the language barrier by becoming the first non-English language film to win best picture.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, of all the foreign-born incursions into top-tier Oscar territory, the first breakthrough is the most curious. At a time when subtitled films were a species of exotica, and with no major studio backing, Jean Renoir\u2019s antiwar classic La Grande Illusion<\/em> (1937) \u2014 easily translated as Grand Illusion<\/em> \u2014 landed a nomination in the best picture slot, which was then called outstanding production and included ten candidates. (The other nominees were Boys Town<\/em>, The Citadel<\/em>, Pygmalion<\/em>, Test Pilot <\/em>[all MGM], <\/em>\u00a0Four Daughters<\/em>, The Adventures of Robin Hood<\/em>, Jezebel <\/em>[Warner Bros.], Alexander\u2019s Ragtime Band<\/em> [20th Century-Fox] \u00a0and You Can\u2019t Take It with You <\/em>[Columbia].<\/em>\u00a0The last, directed by Frank Capra, won.)\u00a0To be sure, in 1949 a British invader, Laurence Olivier\u2019s Hamlet<\/em>, won best picture, but it was at least in English and credited to an A-list screenwriter. But how did Grand Illusion<\/em> manage to crash the exclusive party?<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1938, Jean Renoir was not a known name in the US, much less a world-famous auteur. \u00a0It seems unbelievable that two of his early masterpieces \u2014 Boudu Saved from Drowning<\/em> (1932) and The Crime of Monsieur Lange<\/em> (1936) were not released in the US until 1967 and 1964 respectively.\u00a0Renoir\u2019s version of Maxim Gorky\u2019s The Lower Depths<\/em> (1936) and his Popular Front documentary The People of France<\/em> (1936) got only modest arthouse circulation and critical attention, with reviewers sure to identify the director as \u201cthe son of the famous French impressionist Auguste Renoir.\u201d Only after Grand Illusion<\/em> was Renoir acknowledged in his own right as a French master in another medium.<\/p>\n

\n\tMade in Paris by Les Realisation d\u2019Art Cinematographyque, Grand Illusion<\/em> was distributed stateside by World Pictures Corp., operated by the legendary foreign film magnate Irvin Shapiro, who began his career importing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari<\/em> (1920) and capped it by exporting The Evil Dead<\/em> (1985).\u00a0 Like almost all films about the Great War made in its aftermath but before its sequel, it is somber in tone and pacificist in sentiment. There are no scenes of thrilling aerial combat or over-the-top attacks in no man\u2019s land. \u201cA War Story without War Scenes!\u201d warned the advertising. Renoir knew the material first hand, having served as both a cavalry officer and a pilot in the Great War and been wounded twice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo French pilots \u2014 Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), a white-gloved aristocrat,\u00a0and Lieutenant Mar\u00e9chal (Jean Gabin), a gruff former machinist \u2014 are shot down over German lines by the ramrod-straight Prussian aviator Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim).\u00a0A chivalric knight of the air, von Rauffenstein plays the gracious host to his prisoner-guests before they must depart for a prison camp. The accommodations in the German POW camp are not half bad and the company is great. De Boeldieu and Marechal encounter a diverse crew of colorful countrymen \u2014 a comedian, a literary scholar, and the son of a wealthy Jewish family, Lieutenant Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), a stalwart solider who generously shares his bountiful food parcels. \u00a0(The affirmative portrait of Rosenthal was certainly by way of apology for the treatment of the most famous Jew in French military history, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had just died in 1935.)<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, the prisoners are digging a tunnel to escape. \u201cA golf course is for golf, a tennis court for tennis, a prison camp for escape,\u201d observes de Boeldieu. When not excavating and eating Rosenthal\u2019s bread and cheese, the men rehearse for a musical comedy performance featuring a chorus line of men in drag.\u00a0The shenanigans are interrupted by news that the French have retaken Fort Douaumont, marking the end of the carnage at Verdun.\u00a0In an outburst of patriotism, the prisoners rise to sing \u201cLa Marseillaise,\u201d a scene that ranks as the second most stirring rendition of the French National anthem in motion picture history. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs recidivist would-be escapees, de Boeldieu, Marechal, and Rosenthal are transferred to an impregnable medieval fortress, commanded by Captain von Rauffenstein, now burnt, broken in body, and wearing a neck brace.\u00a0Knowing their days of bloodline privilege are numbered, the German and the French aristocrat bond, their class affinities binding them more tightly than the uniforms that separate them.\u00a0Renoir told film historian Arthur Knight that if a French farmer and a French financier dined together, they would sit in uncomfortable silence, but if a French farmer and a Chinese farmer dined together, they would find plenty to talk about.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, a French prisoner must do his duty: de Boeldieu gallantly stages a diversion so Mar\u00e9chal and Rosenthal can escape, during which a reluctant von Rauffenstein is forced to shoot his class comrade. On his death bed, de Boeldieu accepts the fortunes of war as Von Ruffenstein grieves. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe third act finds Mar\u00e9chal and Rosenthal scurrying through the woods and fields, squabbling and miserable, until they come upon a farmhouse run by a fetching German war widow (Dita Parlo) with an adorable daughter. She takes them in, gives them shelter and food, and falls hard for Marechal, 1937 being the year of peak Jean Gabin.\u00a0In too short a time, though, the pair must leave the idyll.\u00a0Against odds, they escape into Switzerland.\u00a0The guards on the German side see no point in firing as, in the distance, the men plod through the snow to freedom.\u00a0In Great War territory, this counts as a happy ending.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn June 8, 1937, La<\/em> Grande Illusion<\/em> premiered at the 1250-seat Marivaux Theater in Paris, to a packed house made up of \u201cmembers of Paris society, Paris cinema and theater circles, writers and press representatives\u201d who, at the end, \u201cgave long and loud applause.\u201d The French critics, then as now a surly and hard-to-please lot, were unanimous in praise: \u201can important and extremely happy event in French cinema history\u201d (Le Temps<\/em>); \u201ca masterpiece of cinema\u201d; (Mariane<\/em>); and \u201ca very fine film, a beautiful human work\u201d (Oeuvre<\/em>). In the theater that night was Pierre Autre, Motion Picture Herald<\/em>\u2019s man in Paris, who first sent word back to American readers, a rave that has stood the test of time. \u201cLa Grande Illusion<\/em> is, by far, the best French film of the year, up to date \u2014 in fact, it is one of the best French films ever made.\u201d\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> also predicted that \u201cthe smash hit\u201d should \u201cgo well in the States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt did better than well. In America, Grand Illusion<\/em> became the most widely circulated and highly praised foreign film of the 1930s. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn Sept. 12, 1938, Grand Illusion<\/em> opened at the newly refurbished Filmarte Theater in New York with columnist Dorothy Thompson, novelist Fannie Hurst, playwright Clifford Odets, and actress Aline MacMahon in attendance. The Filmarte was run by a pioneering importer of foreign film, Jean H. Lenauer, whose arthouse was emblematic of what were called \u201csure seaters\u201d in the trade because a small but devoted clientele was sure to buy a ticket to whatever foreign film happened to be booked.\u00a0Grand Illusion<\/em> played the Filmarte for a record-breaking 27 weeks. The lobby was decorated with reproductions of Impressionist paintings by Auguste Renoir.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, the word on Grand Illusion<\/em> was getting out beyond the insular arthouse crowd. Samuel Goldwyn called it \u201cthe most brilliantly directed film I have seen in years \u2014 a challenge to Hollywood.\u201d Producer Walter Wanger, director Mervyn LeRoy, and the actresses Lillian Gish and Helen Hayes also offered endorsements.\u00a0The New York Film Critics named Grand Illusion<\/em> the year\u2019s best foreign film. The National Board of Review dispensed with qualifiers and named it \u201cthe best film of the year from any<\/em> country.\u201d \u00a0The Film Daily<\/em> ran out of superlatives and finally just said, \u201cyou owe it to yourself to see this picture \u2014 it will send you out thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the best notices went to von Stroheim, basically radioactive in Hollywood since Joseph P. Kennedy booted him off the set of Queen Kelly<\/em> in 1929.\u00a0 In The<\/em> New York Times<\/em>, Frank Nugent chided Hollywood for its \u201cfolly in permitting so fine an actor to remain idle and unwanted.\u201d Von Stroheim responded in character. \u201cYou can\u2019t expect a director to enjoy acting when directing is the nearest thing to being God,\u201d he said. \u201cI have enjoyed acting in pictures directed by a director called Eric von Stroheim, and written by a writer called Eric von Stroheim.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tTo break out of the arthouse ghetto, however, Grand Illusion<\/em> needed a transit visa into the mainstream exhibition market, namely a Production Code seal.\u00a0On July 29, 1938, \u00a0Irvin Shapiro duly applied for the imprimatur from Hollywood\u2019s censorship regime. Unsurprisingly, the Code guardians asked for a few \u201cslight deletions\u201d \u2014 a shot of a prisoner rubbing a pair of silk underwear, the use of the word \u201cdamn,\u201d and a reference to a prisoner who tries to escape dressed as a woman (\u201cQuite amusing,\u201d comments a friend. \u201dNot so amusing when a sergeant mistook me for one,\u201d he replies.). \u00a0Also concerning was \u201cthe racial angle in reference to Rosenthal\u201d \u2014 that is, an antisemitic insult aimed at him once in anger, once in jest, by Mar\u00e9chal. But this was a matter left \u201csolely for [Shapiro] to decide.\u201d \u00a0Shapiro decided to keep the insults.\u00a0On Nov. 23, 1938, after the requested cuts were made, the PCA issued Grand Illusion<\/em> a Code seal. The Roman Catholic Legion of Decency also gave it clean bill of health, rating it \u201cAI: unobjectionable for adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the Code imprimatur, Grand Illusion<\/em> spread out beyond the arthouses and played the RKO, Warner, and Publix circuits.\u00a0Reviews and ads were careful to explain to the first-time foreign filmgoers that \u201cEnglish titles translate the dialogue.\u201d The box office thrived on word of mouth, repeat business, and high school French teachers dragging their classes to screenings.<\/p>\n

\nGrand Illusion<\/em> was also fortunate to hit the crest of an antiwar zeitgeist.\u00a0 Another great war, with less chivalric Germans, was looming on the horizon: in March 1938, the Nazis annexed Austria; October saw the invasion of the Sudetenland, and on Nov. 9-10 the Reich-wide pogrom now known as Kristallnacht was launched. \u00a0For many Americans, a film about what Variety<\/em> called \u201cthe futility of mankind\u2019s armed conflict\u201d had ominous relevance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNot that the antiwar message was universally embraced. Though Grand Illusion<\/em> \u00a0won \u201cthe most artistic ensemble\u201d award at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, it was banned by the Italians under pressure from Nazi Germany on the grounds that the film \u201chas an anti-German tendency and offends Germany\u2019s honor.\u201d Actually, what offended the Nazis was the sympathetic portrayal of Rosenthal.\u00a0The Nazis also took more active measures to suppress the film. In 1938, film historian Herman G. Weinberg reported that on the very day that the Nazis moved in to Vienna [March 13, 1938], \u201cGrand Illusion<\/em> was taken off the screen in the middle of a reel by the storm troopers.\u201d\u00a0Renoir regarded the shut-down \u201cas a signal honor \u2014 and a decoration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn America, the reception of Grand Illusion<\/em> was less violent but still passionate: isolationists and anti-Nazis alike adopted the film for their cause.\u00a0On Jan. 12, 1939, a special \u201cCongressional Night\u201d screening of Grand Illusion<\/em> at the Belasco Theater in Washington, DC was arranged for senators and congressmen because, said the management, \u201cthe picture\u2019s indictment of warfare will be a message of interest to not only the Committees of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations, but to legislators generally.\u201d The ardent isolationist Congressman Hamilton Fish (R-NY) blurbed the film as \u201can antidote to war hysteria.\u201d From the other side of the ideological spectrum, anti-Nazis interpreted the tolerant and pacifist spirit of the film as a rebuke to Nazi eugenics and militarism. \u201cIt will give you hope for humanity and patience and inspiration in the fight against the Nazi syphilis,\u201d said Mike Gold in the Daily Worker<\/em>. In Los Angeles, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League sponsored screenings of Grand Illusion.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, the critical buzz and cultural impact of Grand Illusion<\/em> reached into the ranks of the Academy voting pool. The timing was fortuitous. In accord with newly agreed to protocols adopted by the Academy Rules Committee on Dec. 20, 1937, selection of the nominees for Outstanding Production was now open to all<\/em> eligible voters (whereas only directors selected the best director nominees and actors the Best Actor and Actress nominees and so on).<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Jan. 23, 1939, the nomination ballots were sent out to 4,000 Academy members; they had to be returned by February 3. By then Grand Illusion<\/em> had been playing in New York since its premiere in July and in Los Angeles since November 1938. When the voting went down, every savvy person in the motion picture industry\u00a0had certainly seen it. Its resonant timeliness and manifest excellence (everyone knew it was a work of genius on sight) catapulted Grand Illusion<\/em> into the top ten. For Jean Renoir and Irvin Shapiro, the clich\u00e9 was true: it was an honor just to be nominated. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe recognition from the Academy kept Grand Illusion<\/em> circulating. In New York, after ending its run at the Filmarte, it moved over to the 68th Street Playhouse, another landmark arthouse.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn September 1939, upon the outbreak of the war in Europe, World Pictures Corp. re-released Grand Illusion<\/em> with a new publicity campaign tailored to the moment. \u201cNever so timely!\u201d\u00a0 exclaimed the ads. \u201cThey said the Europe of 1914-1918 would never happen again\u2014but!\u201d Renoir\u2019s response \u2014 you can picture him giving a resigned Gallic shrug \u2014 was laconic. \u201cIn 1936, I made a picture in which I tried to express all my deep feelings for the cause of peace. It was very successful. Three years later the war broke out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy then, von Stroheim had offered his services to the French army, which thanked him politely but declined. Back in Hollywood, he played sinister Nazis in Five Graves to Cairo<\/em> (1943) and The North Star<\/em> (1944).\u00a0In 1941, Renoir also came to Hollywood. Darryl F. Zanuck, a great admirer of Grand Illusion<\/em>, signed him to a deal at 20th Century-Fox, but after an unhappy experience with the Tobacco Road-ish Swamp Water<\/em> (1942), Renoir moved to RKO for This Land Is Mine <\/em>(1943), about French resistance under the Nazi occupation, and United Artists for The Southerner <\/em>(1945), a social realist drama about sharecroppers that was a genuine hit. After The<\/em> Woman on the Beach<\/em> (RKO, 1947), a moody noir with Joan Bennett as the woman, he returned to Europe for a postwar blossoming in Technicolor that included The Golden Couch<\/em> (1952), which exposed Americans to the Commedia dell Arte, and French Can Can<\/em> (1955), set during the Belle Epoque. He later made his home in Los Angeles, where he died in 1979, still tormented by a leg wound from the Great War.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story of Grand Illusion<\/em> has a coda that Captain de Boeldieu and Captain Von Ruffenstein might have appreciated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn June 1940, when the Nazis barreled in to Paris, Henri Langlois, the archivist-programmer of the Cinematheque Francaise, was desperate to protect his collection of French cinema \u2014 including the original 35mm negative of Grand Illusion<\/em> which Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels ordered seized and destroyed.\u00a0 Before the war, however, at the first meeting of the International Federation of Film Archives, held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, Langlois had made friends with Franz Hensel, head archivist for the Reichsfilmkammer, the motion picture branch of Goebbels\u2019s propaganda ministry. \u00a0
Hensel was now a Nazi major stationed in Paris during the Occupation. Going seriously rogue, he collaborated with Langlois to safeguard the treasures of the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Fran\u00e7aise, which Langlois had hidden in the basement of the Palais de Chaillot Hotel.\u00a0Described by The<\/em> Hollywood Reporter<\/em> as \u201ca Nazi who apparently cared more for cinema than party allegiance,\u201d Hensel rescued the negative of Grand Illusion<\/em> despite the film being deemed \u201ccinematic public enemy No. 1\u201d by Goebbels.\u00a0When the Nazis confiscated the negative and shipped it back to Berlin, Hensel safeguarded it in the Reichsfilmarchiv vaults in Berlin until the Allied victory.<\/p>\n

\n\tBerlin was in the Soviet sector.\u00a0In 1945, according to an account by Stuart Klawans in The<\/em> Nation<\/em>, the Russians transported the negative back to Moscow and deposited it at Gosfilmofund, the Soviet film archive, unaware of its value. Eventually, Soviet and French film archivists realized what they had. In 1999, a clean print of Grand Illusion<\/em> was struck from the original negative and released by Rialto Pictures. This is the definitive version currently in circulation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt probably never happened but I like to think it is just possible that in 1939 Langlois and Hensel cut out from the film conference at MoMA and wandered up to the 68th Street Playhouse to catch a screening of Grand Illusion<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***
Author\u2019s note: I want to thank the indispensable Louise Hilton, archivist at the Margaret Herrick Library, for facilitating access to the Production Code files on Grand Illusion<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Jean Renoir\u2019s antiwar classic 'La Grande Illusion' wowed audiences and managed a best picture Oscar nomination in 1937.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2692],"class_list":["post-3851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-hollywood-history"],"yoast_head":"\nThe True Story Behind the First Foreign Feature to Break Out In Hollywood - US Property Moves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=3851\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The True Story Behind the First Foreign Feature to Break Out In Hollywood - 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