Of all film directors perhaps Jean Renoir is the most universal in his humanism and compassion for society's outcast and oppressed. The camaraderie of his heroes--the prisoners of Grand Illusion, the communards of Le Crime de M. Lange--is also paramount in La Marseillaise. Produced for the Popular Front, the film views the French Revolution from a class perspective through the eyes of the artisans and farmers of Marseilles who volunteered for a shock battalion to march to Paris where the revolution was threatened by vengeful aristocrats. Made after Grand Illusion and before Rules of the Game, La Marseillaise has long languished in the shadow of those two classics and was for many years available only in a shortened version. This new 35mm print, struck from the original negative in Paris, finally does justice to the film's achievements as a politically astute historical spectacle.