An Old Man Laughs

The Elusive Corporal. "The young man who has not wept is a savage," said George Santayana, "and the old man who will not laugh is a fool." In Grand Illusion, made in 1937, when he was 43, Jean Renoir wept for the worlds that die in wars. In Corporal, made last year, when he was 67, Renoir laughs for the worlds that are born in debacle. And while he's about it he laughs at the ridiculous ideas people have about freedom. Renoir's laughter is contagious. Nobody will consider his new war film as fine as his old one, but even those who do not hear the philosophical overtones will seldom stop grinning at its giddy getaway gags.

The moral of the movie is announced in the first reel. "If you live in merde" the corporal (Jean-Pierre Cassel) declares on a dreary day in 1940, "you are bound to die in it. I'm getting out." Since the corporal is French and the merde is a German prison camp, getting out presents a problem. The corporal provides a series of hilarious solutions. Blithely he:

> Takes French leave of his work gang, hides in a dump truck loaded with gravel, goes for a nice long ride, figures he's just about got it made, gets dumped in the midst of another work gang.

> Arranges transfer to a farm crew, slips out of bed one night, tiptoes past the sleeping guard, opens the doorway to freedom--and admits a flock of raucously cackling geese.

And so on, till at last he reaches Paris. And what does he find in Paris? Germans. He has escaped from a little prison into a big one. The whole world, Renoir seems to be saying, is a kind of prison, and the only freedom a man really has he has inside himself. Stern words, but Renoir says them with an old man's smile.

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