WWII propaganda reached its glorious peak in 1943. You can find anything from gripping war-time thrillers like Wilder's 'Five Graves to Cairo' to preachy, predictable full-blown propaganda pieces like Dmytryk's 'Hitler's Children.' Jean Renoir did his duty, as well. When Germany invaded and occupied France in 1940, the French director fled to the United States, where he found it difficult to find film projects that suited his unique skills and interests. 'This Land is Mine (1943)' was obviously very close to Renoir's heart, for his own homeland was now under Nazi control; indeed, despite an opening title card that vaguely specifies a city "somewhere in Europe," he obviously has a French locale in mind. The film works, aside from Renoir's skills as a director, because of the level of respect shown towards the audience. It doesn't speak down to them from a podium, but rather addresses them as comrades, all men and women being equal. It's a call for action; a plea for courage. If the Germans are to be defeated, we must be willing to place everything on the line.
It's also beneficial that Renoir had a stellar cast with which to work. Maureen O'Hara is pretty and independent as a patriotic school-teacher who doesn't bother to hide her disdain towards the Germans. Her boyfriend, played by the ever-charming George Sanders, is a smarmy businessman who would rather cooperate with his enemies than feel the sear of their bullets. Walter Slezak, the captured Nazi captain in Hitchock's 'Lifeboat (1944),' plays the German commander who manipulates the oppressed French with sickly appeals to their sense of righteousness. But the film belongs to Charles Laughton. Though he himself only helmed the production of one film (a little thriller called 'The Night of the Hunter (1955)'), directors easily related to him because, unlike most of Hollywood's leading men, he was not a generically handsome and romantic lover, but a generously-proportioned man with substantially more personality than looks. Furthermore, he could play it mean, which pleased directors like Hitchcock and Wilder, or he could play it sympathetic, which more closely suited Dieterle and Renoir.
In his excellent book "The Hitchock Murders," critic Peter Conrad proposes that Charles Laughton's characters in two Alfred Hitchcock movies, 'Jamaica Inn (1939)' and 'The Paradine Case (1949),' served to symbolise the director's own unspoken thoughts and desires; Laughton, in effect, played the role that Hitchcock himself would have played had he been comfortable with any more than a brief appearance in each of his films. I can see Jean Renoir utilising Laughton in the same manner, employing him as a doppelganger of sorts. Renoir was quite used to playing important roles in his own films, but obviously his leading man in a Hollywood production had to be somebody more recognisable. Not only did he choose an actor with whom he shared a reasonable physical likeness, but his character is reminiscent in many ways of Renoir's role in 'The Rules of the Game (1939). Like Octave, Albert Lory is humble, softly-spoken and utterly lonely in love, but clearly forms the emotional backbone of the picture, for it is he with whom the audience most closely sympathises.
It's also beneficial that Renoir had a stellar cast with which to work. Maureen O'Hara is pretty and independent as a patriotic school-teacher who doesn't bother to hide her disdain towards the Germans. Her boyfriend, played by the ever-charming George Sanders, is a smarmy businessman who would rather cooperate with his enemies than feel the sear of their bullets. Walter Slezak, the captured Nazi captain in Hitchock's 'Lifeboat (1944),' plays the German commander who manipulates the oppressed French with sickly appeals to their sense of righteousness. But the film belongs to Charles Laughton. Though he himself only helmed the production of one film (a little thriller called 'The Night of the Hunter (1955)'), directors easily related to him because, unlike most of Hollywood's leading men, he was not a generically handsome and romantic lover, but a generously-proportioned man with substantially more personality than looks. Furthermore, he could play it mean, which pleased directors like Hitchcock and Wilder, or he could play it sympathetic, which more closely suited Dieterle and Renoir.
In his excellent book "The Hitchock Murders," critic Peter Conrad proposes that Charles Laughton's characters in two Alfred Hitchcock movies, 'Jamaica Inn (1939)' and 'The Paradine Case (1949),' served to symbolise the director's own unspoken thoughts and desires; Laughton, in effect, played the role that Hitchcock himself would have played had he been comfortable with any more than a brief appearance in each of his films. I can see Jean Renoir utilising Laughton in the same manner, employing him as a doppelganger of sorts. Renoir was quite used to playing important roles in his own films, but obviously his leading man in a Hollywood production had to be somebody more recognisable. Not only did he choose an actor with whom he shared a reasonable physical likeness, but his character is reminiscent in many ways of Renoir's role in 'The Rules of the Game (1939). Like Octave, Albert Lory is humble, softly-spoken and utterly lonely in love, but clearly forms the emotional backbone of the picture, for it is he with whom the audience most closely sympathises.