Vintage original 7-1/8 x 9-1/2 in. Argentinean photograph from the classic 1930's French WWI-themed war drama, LA GRANDE ILLUSION (The Grand Illusion), released in France in 1937 and directed by Jean Renoir. During WWI, two French soldiers (Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay) are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress. The cast includes Erich von Stroheim, Dita Parlo, Julien Carette, Georges Peclet, Werner Florian, and Jean Daste.

The image features a close exterior shot of German officer Le captaine von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) as he smokes a cigarette while talking with his French POWs Le lieutenant Marechal (Jean Gabin) and Le captaine de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) while Rauffenstein's soldiers stand at-the-ready. Printed for the film's original theatrical release in Argentina, it is in near-fine condition with approximately six creases on the top left corner, four on the top right corner and a few smaller creases in the image area from handling over time. There are no pinholes, tears, stains, writing, or other laws.

The uniform worn by Jean Gabin was actually owned and worn by Jean Renoir, who served in the air force during WWI. Most of the scenes involving Erich von Stroheim were improvised on the day of filming. He and Jean Renoir would discuss in German what they would be doing, von Stroheim would write it out in English and then give it to assistant director Jacques Becker and script girl Francoise Giroud to translate into French for the screenplay. Von Stroheim clashed with Jean Renoir in the early days of shooting, and the director later said the actor "behaved intolerably." They had one argument over whether or not there should be prostitutes in the German quarters, a detail Von Stroheim thought would lend greater authenticity but which Renoir rejected as a childish cliche. The dispute so distressed Renoir he burst into tears, which caused Von Stroheim to do the same. They fell into each other's arms, and Renoir said that rather than quarrel with an artist he so greatly admired, he would give up directing the film altogether. Von Stroheim promised from that point on to follow Renoir's instructions to the letter, and he kept his word. Looking back on the production, the actor said, "I have never found a more sympathetic, understanding and artistic director and friend than Jean Renoir."

Joseph Goebbels made sure that the film's print was one of the first things seized by the Germans when they occupied France. He referred to Jean Renoir as "Cinematic Public Enemy Number 1". For many years it was assumed that the film had been destroyed in an Allied air raid in 1942. However, a German film archivist named Frank Hansel, then a Nazi officer in Paris, had actually smuggled it back to Berlin. Then when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945, the film found its way to an archive in Moscow. When Renoir came to restore his film in the 1960s, he knew nothing of Hansel's acquisition and was working from an old muddy print. Purely by coincidence at the same time, the Russian archive swapped some material with an archive in Toulouse. Included in that exchange was the original negative print. However, because so many prints of the film existed at the time, it would be another 30 years before anyone realized that the version in Toulouse was actually the original negative.