Director: Jean Renoir
When Germany invaded France in 1940, Jean Renoir fled to the United States and worked in Hollywood for several years. The second of the American pictures that he directed was This Land Is Mine, a heartfelt propaganda piece about the importance of revolutions and the personal sacrifices that one needs to make in order to better the world for future generations. Set in an unnamed Nazi-occupied country (clearly meant to suggest France), the incomparable Charles Laughton plays a timid school teacher who finds the will to fight alongside the Resistance. The cast is uniformly excellent – Maureen O’Hara plays the love interest (who also starred with Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), and George Sanders brings the smugness that one would expect from him, but also convincing shades of weakness. This is Laughton’s picture, though, who is surely among the finest that there’s ever been. Few have measured up to the vulnerability and tenderness that he could bring to the screen (I would argue that his Quasimodo is the best performance of that era). While the rousing courtroom speeches at the end of the picture feel excessive today, when one considers the historical context it must have been an appropriately uplifting call-to-arms.
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