Towards the end of his working life - he shot only one more film and that initially for television - Renoir returned to the milieu of one of his greatest successes, La Grande Illusion, shot Le Caporal epingle in black and white and set it largely in prison camps though this time the war in question was the Second World War as opposed to the first and as he could hardly replicate the acting quality of Gabin, Stroheim, Carette, Dalio, etc perhaps wisely he opted to go with a definite second eleven headed by Jean-Pierre Cassel and featuring Claude Rich and Claude Brasseur. There's not a lot of sunshine or hope on offer; dismal seems to be the prevailing colour and each time Cassel takes one step forward he goes back two. Perhaps the best description is picaresque by virtue of the motley characters he encounters which transform him into a sort of captive Candide. Charles Spaak, who had written La Grande Illusion, worked uncredited on Caporal and maybe he should have worked harder for though it holds the attention it remains inferior to La Grande Illusion.
Review of The Elusive Corporal
