Lost in Criterion

Jean Renoir made one of the greatest anti-war movies ever with 1937's The Grand Illusion, a war film that is actually an anti-war film designed to showcase that all men are truly brothers, that everyone's essentially the same no matter that country they may hail from. Renoir had seen the writing on the wall and new that war was coming. Having lived through World War I, Renoir was desperate to avoid another one.

War came.

The Rules of the Game (1939) is a second, and much more subtle attempt. After the Munich Agreement found the European powers opting for "peace for our time" and a normalization and appeasement of Hitler's power and land grabs, Renoir knew he had to do more, so he made the greatest anti-war movie of all time and disguised it as a bedroom/upper class farce.

It still didn't work, but goodness is it a valiant attempt.

We recorded this episode November 12, 2016, less than a week after the US election.

We welcome any pushes against normalization and appeasement.

We've seen Roman Polanski before in a cameo in the bonkers Blood for Dracula, but this is our first encounter with him directing. Appropriate, then, that this is his first full length film. Knife in the Water was released in 1962 while Poland was still rather Communist which makes the content of the film perhaps a bit surprising. That doesn't make it good.

The Devil and Daniel Webster makes a feint at confronting something deep and true about America's past and then quickly ignores that hurtful truth for a hopeful cry of "a man shall own his own soul" and "Don't let this country go to the devil." The truth is that the US has always been in step with the Devil. Stephen Vincent Benet knew that when he wrote the story, and when he adapted it for William Deterle's 1941 film.

But by the same turn, as evident by Webster's  speech to the Jury -- a jury made of the "worst of Americans" though not a Confederate or slaver among them? -- we fight the Devil when we allow freedom to ring.

From Loving to Obergefell we overcome the Devil of our past and make America greater when we tear down bigoted laws.

From Brown to Roe to Lawrence we refuse to let this country go to the Devil when we distribute freedom out from the hands of a privileged few and take steps toward liberty and justice for all.

We recorded this November 5th. Somethings have changed since then. But then they haven't, have they?

As the film acknowledges, the devil's always been in power here.

As the film implores: