Grimerlana
Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike
Adeel Hail
Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
LobotomousMonk
He comes down the stairs to his mother's insistence, carries the cat, drinks up his milk as requested, wipes his pudgy mouth, is helped into his clothes while listening passively to his mother's diatribe of the latest gossip about town, is told to hurry up before being late for school and is kissed on the cheek and seen off. A perfect mama's boy sets up the definition for a born coward (ironic because Renoir claimed himself to be a coward). But there is a catch! The cat does not belong to "mummy". The pudgy school teacher fancies his neighbor in fact... but a love triangle will get in the way... and all with Nazi stormtroopers goose stepping through the romantic drama. How perfectly Hollywood... and totally inappropriate for Renoir (whose own romantic drama WW2 film made no direct reference to the Nazis whatsoever). The story lacks in subtlety... the 'united front' is saccharine and cheesy leaving an awful taste in the mouth. The stylistic system allowed for Renoir is no better - one-shot closeups, shot-reverse-shot suture systems, uncreative use of exteriors, tableau depth of field. The film won an Oscar for sound?!! Was it the annoying and unrealistic children's chorus as bombs drop on their heads? My niece cries when the dog barks. This Land is Mine purveys a warped sense of manifest destiny and has a real Stalinist Socialist Realist feel to it. Some will defend that a united front bound by hope and uplift was necessary at the time, but why the moral highfaluting? And why the insidious organization of its presentation? "Heroism is glamorous for children" gets an add-on later by Keller who claims "America is a charming cocktail of Irish and Jews. Spectacular but childish". The only grace that this film would have is if it tripped over its own shoelaces and fell flat on its face. Even Renoir must have recognized this as he implements a bit of directing that could not have been a mistake when in shot one of hands about to go in pockets is jump cut to shot 2 of hands firmly planted in pockets. The loss of continuity is reflective of Renoir's misplacement in the production. Or perhaps it was the producer's choice...a kind of Hollywood branding. There are a couple of exciting moments and good directing when a high angle shot frames urban rebellion in deep space which leads to traceur stunts in a parkour rooftop escape and later when said rebel executes his ultimate escape plan (reminds of Boudu). Like La Chienne, Albert (pudgy teacher) provides a speech to a courtroom. This resistance speech is a far cry from the realism of poison pen letters in Le Corbeau, but it is an understandable device for the occasion. If I were living in France in 1943 and knew of the film, I would hail This Land is Mine as wonderful support for the Allied war effort. I would be proud that it was directed by a fellow Frenchman and I would hope that it would bring France and America even closer on issues of liberty and the fight for freedom. Given that I was born in 1979, I simply expect either clever allusions and allegories or realistic blood and guts portrayals of the experience of war. Somehow the romantic drama genre placates the horrors of war in an obscene way (for this reviewer at least).
idelapa
This is more than a little picture.It is about reality in the world of today.Change does not mean it is good, and usually is not good.In many places like North Korea freedom taken by communism,Indonesia torture and murder by rabid Muslims,even mutilation of children because of their hatred for Christians. The cheap politics of the nations are creeping into America and our own politicians do nothing or they even welcome it. They use slanted words to hide the truth and people are lulled to sleep or excuse their selves because they refuse to stand for what is right.But unlike the school teacher, people can call their courage in to activity against tyranny.This land is ours if you are an American.Tell the jackasses and prevaricators to get out if they do not like our Constitution and our individuality and sovereignty.GREAT Movie; far above any thing that has come out of Fairywood in many years.
mark.waltz
From what I knew about this film, I wasn't expecting all that much since the critical reception I've read wasn't all that good. However, it is actually a rather good story about the Nazi's invasion of France. A milquetoast teacher (Charles Laughton), dominated by his harridan mother (Una O'Connor), finds he must fight for his principals and beliefs when the Nazis take over his town. He is in love with a fellow school teacher (the beautiful Maureen O'Hara---who wouldn't be?) whose brother (Kent Smith) is doing his best to sabotage the Nazis and ends up being betrayed by O'Hara's fiancée (George Sanders), who secretly supports the Nazis. Laughton is accused of his murder and put on trial. He decides to face his fate with dignity and departs his classroom after making a riveting speech to his students that is pure propaganda but magnificent drama! O'Connor may grate on the nerves at times, but everything she does for the obsessive love for her son is believable. O'Hara as always is a combination of graceful beauty and indestructible feistiness. Sanders makes the most scary civilized villain-the worst kind. He makes a good pair with Nazi Walter Slezak (later the Nazi villain in Hitchcock's "Lifeboat"); To see one clean hand (Sanders) washing the other one (Slezak's) and becoming equally filthy (metaphorically speaking) is very interesting, and makes Sanders' downfall most gratifying.
Robert D. Ruplenas
I can vaguely remember seeing this movie on television years ago, and recalled it as a movie with an anti-Nazi message. Seeing it again recently, and with a lifetime of reading behind me, I realize it has further depths of meaning. Despite the pretense of being set "somewhere in Europe," it is beyond doubt that Renoir had France very specifically in mind. He was a French émigré, and it's clear that he has a message for his countrymen about the great number of them that chose to collaborate with the Germans. But the film is not a sledgehammer, in that the Germans are not portrayed as the stereotypical jackbooted thugs. Their official voice in the film, the officer played by Walter Slezak, has a silky sort of charm and shows how easy it can be to cooperate in the name of so many things - peace, order, stability, etc. etc. Laughton's final courtroom speech has so many specific references to the situation in France that it cannot be interpreted as other than such. And the final finishing touch is Laughton's last lesson to his students before being taken away - he reads from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" from the French Revolution.Aside from that it is an excellent story very well told, and the production values are extremely high - the print I saw looked excellent even after 60-some years. The cast, of course, is superb, with Laughton, Slezak, and Maureen O'Hara. Particularly good is George Sanders, in a role very different from his stereotype as the suave and debonair cynic. The whole "mama's boy" aspect of Laughton's character is a bit heavy-handed, but it's still to watch Una O'Connor as his mother (you just can't help recalling her tavern woman's part in "The Invisible Man").Thsi is not just an excellent movie, but an interesting historical artifact as well.
