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La Grande Illusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Immi Tallgren
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Extract

The way I discuss here the history of censorship and criticism of La Grande Illusion reflects the normal context today, in which it is acknowledged that there are certain common concerns of law and art and that they influence each other mutually. The expressive and ceremonial aspects of criminal law are well known.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , July 2002 , pp. 297 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

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References

1. Jean Renoir on his new film La Grande Illusion, see Premier plan, numéro spécial 22–23–24: Jean Renoir, at 239–40.

2. Together with La Marseillaise (1937), La Bête humaine (1938) and La Règle du jeu (1939), La Grande Illusion is regarded to be among Renoir’s most important films. It is often seen as the incontestable masterpiece of the French pre-war cinema.

3. Renoir was criticised for his image of ‘la guerre en dentelles’. He defended his style by referring to his “irritation devant la manière dont étaient traités la plupart des sujets de guerre… La guerre, l’héroïsme, le panache, le poilu, les Boches, les tranchées, que de motifs à l’utilisation des plus lamentables clichés “, see Renoir, Jean, Ma vie et mes films (Paris: Flammarion, 1974)Google Scholar at 131.

4. For an analysis of reactions see Marc Ferro, Cinéma et Histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) at 184–90.

5. This phrase is normally put into the mouth of President Roosevelt, but may rather originate from an American journalist, see Olivier Curchod, La Grande Illusion, Jean Renoir: étude critique (Paris: Nathan, 1994) at 17. In any case, the film was shown throughout the United States and in American universities, as well as in an exceptional showing at the White House for the birthday of Mrs. Roosevelt. La Grande Illusion won the American prize of best foreign film in 1938.

6. See Curchod, ibid, at 17.

7. Ferro, supra note 4 at 184. Renoir’s perception of Jews in La Grande Illusion has been widely discussed, see Ferro at 186–88.

8. Elliot, David, “The Battle for Art” in Dawn Ades et al., eds., Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930–45 (London: Thames and Hudson in association with Hayward Gallery, 1995)Google Scholar at 33.

9. Douzinas, Costas & Nead, Lynda, eds.,Law and Image—The Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar at 9.

10. Thereby they contest “a typically modern attitude introduced by Kant’s critical philosophy and simplified by legal neo-Kantians … modernity releases three areas of inquiry and action—the cognitive, the practical, and the aesthetic—and the three faculties of knowledge, law, and taste are freed to develop their own specific, internal rationality, in separate institutions operated by distinct groups of experts.” Douzinas & Nead, ibid, at 2–3.

11. See Foucault, Michel, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975)Google Scholar at 130, and especially at 14–23,53–58. Foucault’s account of the penal history has faced a lot of criticism; see Garland, David, Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990 CrossRefGoogle Scholar) at 157–75 for references. Friedrich Nietzsche discusses the “Festlichkeit” of inflicting pain and of penalties, see Zur Genealogie der Moral (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1991)Google Scholar, describing how “[j]edenfalls ist es noch nicht zu lange her, dass man sich fiirstliche Hochzeiten und Volksfeste grossten Stils ohne Hinrichtungen, Folterungen oder etwa ein Autodafé nicht zu denken wusste…” at 57.

12. See Garland, David, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar at 10.

13. Ibid, at 9.

14. Ibid,

15. Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1994 Google Scholar) at 6. See also Guyora Binder, “Representing Nazism: Advocacy and Identity in the Trial of Klaus Barbie” (1989) 98 Yale L. J. 1321.

16. Chesterman, Simon, “Never Again … and Again: Law, Order, and the Gender of War Crimes in Bosnia and Beyond” (1997)Google Scholar 22 Yale J. Int’l L. 299 at 311.

17. Morgan, Edward M., “Retributory Theater” (1988) 3 Am. U. J. Int’l L. & Pol’y 1 at 2, quoting Eugene Ionesco, Notes and Counter Notes (London: Calder, 1964)Google Scholar at 223–24.

18. Morgan, ibid, at 4.

19. See Tallgren, Immi, “The Sensibility and Sense of International Criminal Law”, Eur. J. of Int’l L., forthcoming 2002. On the differing interests in distributing information on crime and punishment that general prevention theory presupposes (consistency, equality, systemacy, rationality) and the mass media follow (filtration, focusing, exceptionality, dramatics), see the analysis by Thomas Mathiesen, Prison on Trial: A Critical Assessment (London: Sage, 1990)Google Scholar at 64–67.

20. Garland, supra note 12 at II.

21. See Douglas, Mary, Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (London: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar evoked by Garland, ibid, note 12 at 135.

22. See, Statute of the International Criminal Court, UN Doc. A/CONF.183/9 (17 July 1998). For a commentary, see, for example, Triffterer, Otto, ed., Commentary on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: observer’s notes, article by article (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999).Google Scholar

23. Garland, supra note 12 at 135–36.

24. Sesonske, Alexander, Jean Renoir: The French Films, 1924–1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 289.

25. Franck, Thomas M., The Empowered Self: Law and Society in the Age of Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar at 280.

26. Ibid, at 285.

27. There are at present, 139 signatures and 37 ratifications (6 August 2001).

28. Franck, supra note 25 at 38–39. See also Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Free Press, 1999) at 47: “In modern societies, options for individuals vastly increase, while the ligatures binding them into webs of social obligation are greatly loosened.”

29. See Tallgren, Immi, “Completing the ‘International Criminal Order’” (1998)Google Scholar 67 Nordic J. of Int’l L. 107.

30. Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: a Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 39.

31. See Franck, supra note 25 at 151–62.

32. See, for example, Gillian Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) at 3–14.

33. See Cohen, Stanley, “Human Rights and Crimes of the State: The Culture of Denial” (1993) 26 Aus. & New Zealand Google Scholar J. Crim. 97.

34. See, preamble of the ICC Statute, supra note 22.

35. Rorty, Richard, “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality”, in Shute, Stephen & Hurley, Susan, eds., On Human Rights: the Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993 (New York: Basic Books, 1993)Google Scholar 111 at 125.

36. Sesonske, supra note 24 at 296.

37. Rorty, supra note 35 at 115.

38. Ibid. at 114–15.

39. Sesonske, supra note 24 at 291.

40. Marc Ferro, The Great War 1914–1918 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) at 224. It is likely that La Grande Illusion is among the films that Ferro had in mind here.

41. See André Bazin, Jean Renoir (Paris: Editions Gérard Lebovici, 1989) at 59. Renoir omitted this part of the script from the film.

42. See Baier, Annette, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflection on Hume’s Treatise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

43. See Baier, ibid, note 42 at 249–50.

44. Rorty, supra note 35 at 129. See Tallgren, supra note 29 at 132–34.

45. Rorty, ibid, note 35 at 122.

46. Ibid.

47. See Bazin, supra note 41 at 60.

48. Carr, Edward Hallet, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1984)Google Scholar at 75.

49. Ibid.

50. Nietzsche, supra note 11 at 13–14.

51. See Levinas, Emmanuel, Autrement qu’être: ou, Au delà de l’essence (The Hague: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Butler, Judith, ‘Ethical Ambivalence’ in Garber, M., Hanssen, B. & Walkowitz, R. L., eds., The Turn to Ethics (New York: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar 15.

52. See, for example, the Introduction ibid, at vii-xii. See also Martti Koskenniemi, ‘“The Lady Doth Protest Too Much’ : Kosovo and the Turn to Ethics in International Law” (2002) 65 Mod. L. Rev. 159.

53. Rose, supra note 32 at 3.

54. Général Paul Aussaresses in his autobiographical account of the war in Algeria, see Services spéciaux Algérie 1955–1957 (Paris: Perrin, 2001) at 44–45.

55. See, for example, Morgenthau, Hans, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1948).Google Scholar

56. See, for example, Kelsen, Hans, Théorie du droit international public (R.C.A.D.I. 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, III at 35–37.

57. See Lasson, Adolf, Das Kulturideal und der Krieg (Berlin: 1868)Google Scholar. See also Jellinek, Georg, Die Zukunft des Krieges, in Ausgewahlte Schriften und Reden 2 vols. (Berlin: Springer, 1916)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Sorel, Georges, Reflexions sur la violence (Paris: Libr. de Pages libres, 1908).Google Scholar

58. See ICC Statute, Articles 22–24 and 6–8.

59. See also Report of the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court, finalized draft text of the Elements of Crimes, U.N. Doc. PCNICC/2000/I/Add.2.

60. See Koskenniemi, supra note 52.

61. Koskenniemi, ibid, at 171; see Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. Georg Schwab (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985) at 31–32.

62. Koskenniemi, ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. See Tallgren, supra note 19, quoting the ICTY report on Kosovo.

65. Hilary Charlesworth, “Feminist Methods in International Law” (1999) 93 Am. J. Int’l Law 379 at 394.

66. Chesterman, supra note 16 at 319–23.

67. Ibid, at 321.

68. Ibid.

69. Kennedy, David, “The Nuclear Weapons Case” in de Chazournes, Laurence Boisson & Sands, Philippe, eds., International Law, the International Court of Justice and Nuclear Weapons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar 462 at 472.

70. Jünger, Ernst, In Stahlgewittern (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2000, 41. Aufl.)Google Scholar at 38, returning from the battle in Les Eparges to Germany to heal after the first of the fourteen times he was wounded in World War 1.

71. Sesonske, supra note 24 at 313.

72. Ibid, at 312–13.

73. Ferro, supra note 4 at 188.

74. Ibid, at 188–89.

75. See, Foucault, for example, Surveiller et punir, supra note 11 at 36.

76. Foucault, Michel, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977–1984, Kritzman, Lawrence D., ed. (New York: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar at 112.

77. See Gramsci, Antonio, Letters from Prison (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).Google Scholar

78. See Carr, supra note 48 at 80–85. See also Hans Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946).

79. See Marc Feher’s critical analysis on the current ‘international community’, focusing on its actions or omissions in Kosovo and East Timor and the painstaking efforts of the Western liberals and the Western left to find principled arguments for their respective, moving positions in the discourse, Marc Feher, Powerless by Design, The Age of the International Community (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).

80. Carr, supra note 48 at 87.

81. See Ferro, supra note 4 at 189.

82. See Bazin, supra note 41 at 59.

83. Sesonske, supra note 24 at 291.

84. Ibid, at 293.

85. See Tallgren, supra note 19.

86. See Rose, supra note 32 at 11, referring to post-modernism as “despairing rationalism without reason”.

87. For an intriguing analysis on subjection, power and melancholy, see Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997) at 18–30.