This Land Is Mine

Here is a film that everyone should see. It is real and sublime and

each character in the picture has a growth arc that is fascinating to

watch. Charles Laughton is the master in this as we see him as

the town coward a man afraid of everything. An older man who has

learned little of life and less about expressing his love for his

school teaching colleague played by O'Hara.

Laughton learns hard lessons as the film progresses. Walter Slezak's portrayal of a Nazi officer in

charge of the French town is marvelous. He captures the nature of

the will of Fascism and it's unrelenting and sinister application of

pure power using the minds of men. George Sanders, is the

businessman who makes sure things work for the Germans, who

doesn't strain over the matter of occupation by the Nazis until he is

forced to reveal his best friend is the saboteur fighting the

occupation. There is so much more in this film that deals with

oppression and the only way to fight it.

I love this film.

Charles Laughton delivers one of the finest courtroom speeches that you are ever likely to see (it certainly ranks with Spencer Tracy in "Inherit the Wind", or Gregory Peck in "To Kill a Mockingbird" ). Here, though, Laughton is not pleading the case for the defense or the prosecution, he is pleading for his own life in a Nazi "show-trial".

Rather than saving his own life by following the instructions of the German authorities, Laughton chooses to use the opportunity presented by his conducting his own defense to launch a masterful indictment of the Nazi regime. His speech to the jurors and the packed, public galleries is delivered with the sincerity and authority which only an actor with Laughton's many talents, could hope to muster. Inspired by Laughton's speech, the jurors find the courage to acquit him and Laughton dashes from the court to the school where he is a teacher.

Having made such a speech, Laughton knows that he has signed his own death warrant. There is just time, before the German soldiers come to take him away, for one final speech to his beloved class of school-children. Once again, Laughton produces the goods in this very touching scene as he reads to the children articles from the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Most of this film is typical, low-budget, World War Two propaganda but Laughton raises it above the mediocre. Maureen O'Hara is gorgeous as the fellow teacher with whom Laughton is in love. Also worth watching, as ever, is Una O'Connor as Laughton's mother.

Jean Renoir managed to flee France because of the Nazi invasion and spent World War II turning out some pretty good films in America. Maybe the best is this heartfelt tribute to his beloved and occupied France.

He got the best possible actor for his protagonist. Charles Laughton could play tortured and flawed human beings like no other actor ever could in the English speaking world. Here he is a French schoolteacher, middle-aged, shy, and mother dominated by Una O'Connor. And he's afraid of his own shadow.

He also loves neighbor and fellow schoolteacher Maureen O'Hara and she's got a fiancé who's a collaborator and a brother in the resistance played by George Sanders and Kent Smith.

It's all these people's story and even the local gauleiter Walter Slezak is not a simple brute as Nazis are so often portrayed.

The story involves Laughton's growth as a human being, seeing what is happening to his town, the people around him, and most of all to the school to both the children and the teachers. The last twenty minutes of the film are almost exclusively his. In both a courtroom and a classroom, he has some brilliantly delivered speeches explaining to the town why they must resist the evil upon them.

For me the best scene is in the courtroom where Laughton is accused of murder and throws away a carefully prepared script that Slezak has offered him. He tells the town what they need to hear and then declares his love for O'Hara and the reasons for him doing what he's doing.

During that part of Laughton's speech the camera focuses totally on Maureen O'Hara and her reactions to Laughton's words. It's a beautiful crafted scene by a great director.

A film classic for the ages.

I can vaguely remember seeing this movie on television years ago, and recalled it as a movie with an anti-Nazi message. Seeing it again recently, and with a lifetime of reading behind me, I realize it has further depths of meaning.

Despite the pretense of being set "somewhere in Europe," it is beyond doubt that Renoir had France very specifically in mind. He was a French émigré, and it's clear that he has a message for his countrymen about the great number of them that chose to collaborate with the Germans. But the film is not a sledgehammer, in that the Germans are not portrayed as the stereotypical jackbooted thugs. Their official voice in the film, the officer played by Walter Slezak, has a silky sort of charm and shows how easy it can be to cooperate in the name of so many things - peace, order, stability, etc. etc. Laughton's final courtroom speech has so many specific references to the situation in France that it cannot be interpreted as other than such. And the final finishing touch is Laughton's last lesson to his students before being taken away - he reads from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" from the French Revolution.

Aside from that it is an excellent story very well told, and the production values are extremely high - the print I saw looked excellent even after 60-some years. The cast, of course, is superb, with Laughton, Slezak, and Maureen O'Hara. Particularly good is George Sanders, in a role very different from his stereotype as the suave and debonair cynic. The whole "mama's boy" aspect of Laughton's character is a bit heavy-handed, but it's still to watch Una O'Connor as his mother (you just can't help recalling her tavern woman's part in "The Invisible Man").

Thsi is not just an excellent movie, but an interesting historical artifact as well.

In an unnamed European town (it's a symbolic stand-in for France, but the characters are all British), the German army moves in and sets up occupation. Local school teacher Albert (Charles Laughton) is more concerned with his romantic feelings for co-worker Louise (Maureen O'Hara) and escaping from the clutches of his over-protective mother (Una O'Connor). However, when a resistance movement begins against the occupation, Albert may find himself drawn into it.

Director Renoir manages to inject some originality into well-trod territory. Laughton is very good as the weak-willed Albert, and he's ably matched by the strong and beautiful O'Hara. George Sanders seems a bit wasted in his role as a collaborator, but he gets one really good scene. The biggest surprise was Kent Smith, an actor who I usually regard as a waste of space. Here, playing a daring resistance fighter operating right under the Germans' noses, he's charismatic and exciting. The movie won an Oscar for Best Sound.

One last bit of comparative trivia: This Land Is Mine was a big hit, with a record-breaking opening weekend. This was because it opened on a then-unheard-of 72 screens. Today, the big superhero movies open on thousands of screens.