Production
According to Renoir's memoirs, von Stroheim, despite being born in Vienna, Austria (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire) did not speak much German, and struggled with learning the language along with his lines in between filming scenes.
The exteriors of "Wintersborn" were filmed at the Haut Koenigsbourg Castle in Alsace. Other exteriors were filmed at the artillery barracks at Colmar (built by Wilhelm II) and at Neuf-Brisach on the Upper Rhine.
An early script version had Rosenthal and Maréchal agreeing to meet in a restaurant at the end of the war. In the final scene, everyone there would be celebrating the armistice, but instead of these men, there would be two empty chairs at a table.
Renoir was a French aviator during World War I. Gabin wears Renoir's uniform in the film.
Read more about this topic: La Grande Illusion
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
“[T]he asphaltum contains an exactly requisite amount of sulphides for production of rubber tires. This brown material also contains “ichthyol,” a medicinal preparation used externally, in Webster’s clarifying phrase, “as an alterant and discutient.””
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)