"The Elusive Corporal, Renoir's Grand Illusion of World War Two, is the wickedly and tenderly witty chronicle of a prisoner-of-war's persistent attempts to escape from a German prison camp after the fall of France in 1940, against odds as unbendingly hostile as any Buster Keaton ever had to face...(T)he corporal (Jean-Pierre Cassel) comes cheerfully back for more, a little wiser, a little more determined, after each successive defeat and the cruel disciplining which follows. Every foot of the film is shot through with the endearing stamp of Renoir's personality, just as irreverent as the nouvelle vague, and a good deal more loving." -Tom Milne, Sight & Sound Renoir said, "My saddest film is The Elusive Corporal, despite my desire to make people laugh. I think it's sort of creepy, don't you? In a story as formless as-I was going to say the invasion of France in 1940, but I could say the history of the world since 1939-in this kind of shapeless lump...purely human values, like, let's say, simply the pleasure of being with a friend, stand out."