Jon Mirsalis on Piano. Renoir's only silent comedy suggests the unthinkable: what if Grand Illusion, with its themes of camaraderie and class, were played out as a comedy? (Renoir would do just that in The Elusive Corporal, see December 16.) A poet is inducted into the army and, horrified by the prospect, pulls strings to allow his manservant (the marvelous Michel Simon) to serve alongside him. (Both their ladyfriends are also at hand to add to the confusion.) Renoir took an oft-produced stage farce and turned it into a cinematic tour-de-force, one which was a favorite of Truffaut, who saw its debt to Chaplin and, in turn, its influence on Vigo's Zero for Conduct. More recently, Jean Douchet wrote an appreciation in Cahiers du cinéma: "It is in this film, I think, that one best sees the genius of Renoir's mise-en-scène: he dares to do everything that is 'forbidden', and the way he has characters enter and leave the frame, sometimes in the same scene, with only an arm, a leg, or a hand passing in front of the camera, gives the impression that life surges from all sides, then sets out again in every direction. It's as if there is no directing, and it is this game of 'as if' that would become the great form of Renoir. It is because of this film that Boudu would be possible."