SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Le Caporal opens with a montage of WWII documentary footage. "Honor and glory to the survivors" provides a nice interplay between themes in Grande Illusion and more personal philosophies regarding the condition of the human race (Renoir's 'humanism'). The drama moves at a relatively slow pace and the performances are full of affect. More documentary footage has a voice-over narration in French but from the perspective of the Nazis. There is an element of self-reflexivity to the film not just through the use of documentary footage and a more psychologically-based stylistic system but also infused into the themes of coercion and resistance. Le Caporal is more concerned with individualism than Grande Illusion which focused on group dynamics. This is underscored by the obsessive compulsive worry that one character shows for the safety of his cows, regardless of what is happening in the moment. The story does not track the multiple characters but instead folds their offscreen progress in with the corporal at regular intervals. He becomes a transient in their lives (hence elusive). There is a disconnect in this regard and a repetition to the structure of the narrative that underscores this disconnect. The graceful allusions in Regle with Schumacher are replaced by purely cynical portrayals of Germans (the drunken warmonger states "I'm probably a better German than you all"). Scorsese commented that Le Caporal Epingle is "in a different emotional key than La Grande Illusion".

In 1937, Jean Renoir directed GRANDE ILLUSION, the first great (maybe greatest) POW film and one of the most influential motion pictures ever made. Even though this movie shows the influence, one should keep in mind that most POW movies of the time do so as well, from STALAG 17 to BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. However, rather than focus how THE ELUSIVE CORPORAL resembles GRANDE ILLUSION, what's more interesting I think is how it differs.GRANDE ILLUSION used the POW camp as a metaphor for society, with all three classes represented. This film does not. It has no wealthy aristocrats, like Erich Von Strohiem's character. Some might compare Rich's character Ballochet to Pierre Fresney's Captain Boldieu, but doing so neglects that Ballochet is not an aristocrat; he only acts like one. Before becoming a POW, he was a gas meter attendant. Staying in the prison camp allows him to escape reality, for it offers him a deluded and misguided sense of comfort. This is why he does not want to leave it (until his final moment of self completion, of course). In this respect, Ballochet is unlike any character in GRANDE ILLUSION.Saying that the POW camp in THE ELUSIVE CORPORAL reminds one of a country club ignores that virtually every other prisoner-of-war movie did the same. Only Bryan Forbes's unique KING RAT, released three years after this one, was a film that showed a prisoner-of-war camp as Godawful. I also don't see how viewers could interpret life in this film's camp is all that enviable. While it's true that Ballochet obtains a sinecure that allows him easy work and extra rations, the movie clearly condemns him and also shows that he's an exception. Many times, we see most prisoners working, often performing menial, unheroic labor (ie, emptying the latrine's cesspool tank--a symbol of those, like Ballochet or Pater, who choose the stagnation of remaining in prison). Rarely do we see the prisoners idling the time away. Unlike most POW movies, we're reminded that they are not only prisoners, but enslaved labor.If one wants comparisons, one might more profitably compare THE ELUSIVE CORPORAL to French prison movies made just a few years before it (ie, A MAN ESCAPED and LE TROU). Like those films, this movie's concerns are not so much for society but for individuals, and, like THE ELUSIVE CORPORAL, they use escape as a metaphor for attaining selfhood (unlike GRANDE ILLUSION, which shows that even after escaping the prison, the prisoners still remain imprisoned---by their illusions).Maybe this movie is not a perfect film (though I'm not sure about that), but it's certainly worthwhile. It's beautifully lensed, often presenting a gray, misty look. It intersperses documentary footage to remind us of how chaotic the reality outside the camp was like. And yes, one can say it resembles GRANDE ILLUSION, but one could also just as easily say it resembles PAPILLION. The point is not that it doesn't, because, actually it does. But then again, it's also quite different. That it was made with such a small budget proves that Renoir's genius was still potent even toward the end of his career. It's a dramatic, humorous, subtle, and under-appreciated work of cinema.

Jean Renoir was always spared by the Nouvelle Vague critics.And however,if you've seen all his great films of the thirties (roughly from "la Chienne" to "La Règle du Jeu" )you may possibly find his latter days works disappointing:"le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe" and his pitiful attempt at a "Dr Jekill and M.Hyde" "Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier" "Le Caporal epinglé " is a different matter for it has its moments and the cast (Rich,Cassel,Claude Brasseur) is so perfect I do not need to add to the praise they have already received.When I was a child ,I remember what my mother said when she saw the movie when it was theatrically released ;she did not like it very much.Six or seven years later,when I had the opportunity to see it ,I told her I did not understand her and that I had liked it ."Some day you will find out" was the answer.At the time,I did not know even Renoir's name.Now that I've seen most of his movies,I do not take the same view as I did:I do not think,as it has often been mooted that it's a remake of "la grande illusion" although there are similarities between the two works.But Autant-Lara's "La traversée de Paris" or Henri Verneuil's "La Vache et le Prisonnier" (aka "the cow and I") which were pejoratively labeled "Cinema de Qualité" by the Young Turks were not inferior to "le Caporal Epinglé".Renoir's humor is sometimes vulgar and you'd better take "Stalag 17" instead.In the twenties his "Tire au Flanc" displays the same questionable coarse comedy side."La Grande Illusion" is one of the greatest films of the FRench cinema.Although it takes place during WW1,we never feel how atrocious that war was."Le Caporal Epinglé" takes place in a prison camp.And except for a few moments (Claude Rich's escape for instance) ,the soldiers seem to live in a holiday camp."LE Caporal Epinglé " is an entertaining movie though and the best scenes ,IMHO,are to be found outside the camp: Cassel on the dentist's chair is worth the price of admission.And the scene on the train with the naughty brat ("Be quiet or the gentleman will take you to war") is hilarious.

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.