La grande illusion (1937)

I guess La grande illusion, directed by Jean Renoir, represents what middle aged film writers (who go to Sodankylä every year to discuss Godard over a glass of whine) would refer to as the tradition in film of European humanism. I won't take issue with that description even if it is boring to read film writers who appeal to this tradition, lamenting the string of "cynical movies" that have appeared lately. 
The story takes place during WW1. Two French aviators, of different class background, are captured by Germans and imprisoned. The film is, at first, a surprisingly upbeat depiction of life in a prison camp, where the French prisoners eat good food and even arrange a cabaret - that is, when they are not trying to escape by digging tunnels. Many scenes have the ring of comedy. For some reason, I didn't expect that. I imagined that this film would somehow resemble Bresson's austere prison movie. Well, it didn't. This is a film where a group of French officers sing the Marseilles in order to divert attention from an escape plan.
What I realized only after finishing the movie is that these "comedy scenes" of the first part of the film actually have a point, possibly even a political one.
La grande illusion features a few interesting characters. One of them is the commandant, Rauffenstein (played by the famous director Erich von Stroheim) who inhabits his position in the army even though he finds his job contemptible (vulgar, even). A dramatic scene is the one in which the commandant sees it necessary to shoot a French aristocrat, one of the aviators, who sacrifices himself for the escape of two other men. It is evident that the German man is reluctant to shoot the French man: he sees him much as a man as himself, a man for whom the present society might not have a place, and it is hard for him to see the French prisoner as somebody he is obliged to shoot. There is even a deathbed scenes in which the relationship between these two men once again is laden with a notion of common (yet differing) life and destiny. The end of the scene (I think) has Rauffenstein, clouded by deep melancholy, destroying the only flower there is in the place...
If I watch this film again, I will perhaps be able to perceive these themes of aristocracy & class in a richer way. Another important theme that I would pay closer attention to during a second viewing is the critique of duty (the film seems to perceive duty as an almost immoral perspective).