Using a film as a historical source allows us to peer into the perspective of the director or producer that had experienced through the time period that is portrayed in the film. In Renoir's Le Grande Illusion, we are able to sense and understand the sentiments of the European population that were involved in the Great War and the inter-war period towards the act of war. However, the film itself portrays more of the time period that it was created and distributed, rather than the time period in the film itself.
The film itself depicts the story of a group of French Prisoner of Wars (POWs) that are trapped in the POW camp during the Great War from 1914 to 1918. We clearly see the many nationalities of the soldiers that were held captive in these camps, ranging from Russians to French under the authority of the German soldiers. This clearly explains the different participants of the Great World who were involved because of the alliance systems between the European powers then. The "Austro-German", "Franco-Russian", "Anglo-French" and the "Anglo-Russian" alliances or ententes banded the countries in a mesh that would being all of them into the war once one of these countries went into aggressive conflict. (Bell, 1992, Pg 108-109). The eventual sufferings from the aftermath of the war, where there was "a total of roughly 9 million dead soldiers" (Winter, 2002) could be inferred from the film as well. Elsa highlighted to Marechal and Rosenthal when they first met that the portraits in her home were of her brothers and husband who were unfortunately killed during the skirmishes of the Great War. The film itself sticks true to the history of the Great War, but Renoir did not choose to emphasize the theatrics of the battlefield. There is clearly no "war-in-hell" episodes in the film. He chose to clarify the futility of war, in that it accomplishes nothing.
