Le Grand Jeu
is Jacques Feyder's film about a lonely young Frenchman, ruined in love, who joins the French Foreign Legion and finds in a Moroccan prostitute a substitute for the woman who deserted him. This was Feyder's first film made in France after his return from the United States and his collaborators read like a star roster of 1930s French cinema: Marcel Carné; Charles Spaak; and Hans Eisler....” (Facets Multimedia, Chicago) Feyder's focus on the “then popular theme of legionnaires and passion in the hot sands of North Africa” may appear too melodramatic by today's standards, but as Sadoul in his “Dictionary of Films” points out, the film “offers an evocative portrait of colonial life. Marie Bell gives a remarkable dual performance as the two women (but with the prostitute's voice ingeniously dubbed by another actress) and Françoise Rosay and Charles Vanel are excellent as the managers of a large bistro frequented by legionnaires.”