Product Description

Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD:it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Mono ),Spanish ( Mono ),Spanish ( Subtitles ),SPECIAL FEATURES: Biographies, Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Scene Access,SYNOPSIS: Written by Dudley Nichols and directed by French expatriate director Jean Renoir, This Land is Mine is one of those 'inspirational' wartime dramas... The scene is an unnamed European country, recently overrun by the Nazis (this takes place during a 'silent' opening sequence that's the best thing in the film). Charles Laughton plays Albert Lory, a mama's-boy schoolmaster who is the object of his students' ridicule. A craven coward, Lory is held responsible when resistance fighter Paul Martin (Kent Smith), the brother of beauteous teacher Louise Martin (Maureen O'Hara), is executed by the Nazis, though in fact it was Lory's panic-stricken mother (Una O'Connor) who betrayed Paul by informing on him to his friend and collaborator George Lambert (George Sanders).
SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Oscar Academy Awards,

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58426 in DVD
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Running time: 103 minutes

Customer Reviews

Highly relevant today

The movie told of the early days of a small town in France under German occupation. How the townsfolk responded and reacted to the shrewd and manipulative German leadership? For one, the mayor and the business owners were speculators and still made good money out of the situation. To the middle class, like the railway executive George (George Sanders), peace was so important that they cooperated with the Germans as much as they disliked them. For most folks, they made do with the scarcity of food and milk by paying a hefty price for petty portions in the black market. Still underground resistance came from the educators (the Jewish headmaster and the beloved school teacher Louise (Maureen O'Hara)), who ensured that the seed of freedom was uninhibited in the minds of the school children, and also the pragmatists, who printed propagandas and orchestrated sabotage.

The one who made the complete transformation was the older school teacher Albert Lory (Charles Laughton) - a mama's boy who was terrified by air raid, choked by smoking a cigarette, shook before the Germans and unable to declare his love for Louise. His unflattering face, timidity and senior age gave him a big handicap; he was an impossible candidate for a hero. Yet impossibilities are improbable possibilities in desperate times. Imprisoned for allegedly throwing a bomb, released but then accused of being an informant for the Germans, being put in a murder trial and offered his freedom by the German if he played properly his new role as the new headmaster. Mr. Lory was relieved for this arrangement until he saw the end of the highly respectable former headmaster. Hereafter, a hero was born.

Charles Laughton not only made the change plausible, he amplified and emphasized it with his superb acting. To his credit, Mr. Lory was as cowardly then as he was heroic now. The two speeches Charles Laughton made in the murder trial, before and after the German's offer, epitomized their lives under the German occupation. His last lesson, albeit a short one, to the school children was his one chance to win them over - for the future of the country lay in their hands. And he delivered the message across the classroom with conviction and power, as only a hero could.

Thanks to the director and the script, Mr. Lory underwent change not because of his love for Louise but for his country. He needed not be handsome and young to be the leading hero, as present movies would undoubtedly prefer. Maureen O'Hara, as Louise, lent her good sense, strength of character and beauty to make the heroine complete. Una O'Connor, as Mrs. Lory who betrayed a young man for his son's freedom, was impeccable.

More to that, Mr. Lory accused the mayor who, even though from poor background, once assumed power, was reluctant to relinquish what he had at the expense of their countrymen. How true this still is from developing to developed countries all over the world. Should countrymen resort to sabotage so that foreign occupiers were engaged at all fronts and stretched thin? This is a double-edged sword which could work against the evil as well as the peacekeeping force. This is a movie who raised provoking questions rather than offering solutions.

Another courage expression and dignity!
This title is frequently forgotten or at least overlooked, at the moment to make a whole account about the major films of the master Jean Renoir. This is an epic portrait about a simple French professor who overtly emerges as a hero before the Nazis in plain German besiege. As always the giant Charles Laughton delights us with his monumental performance.

This movie won an Academy Award as Best Sound in 1943.

Wartime in occupied Europe
This Land Is Mine is set "somewhere in Europe" according to its credits ;director Jean Renoir is being a tad disingenuous here because it quite clearly takes place in his native France during World War 2, a nation then under Geram occupation and from which Renoir had fled to avoid possible censorship and arrest by the Germans.

Charles Laughton plays a cowardly schoolteacher ,Arthur Lory,openly mocked by his students and prone to whimper ,cringe and seek solace from his mother during air-raids.(Una O'Connor).He looks to keep a low profile during the occupation until he comes under the influence of Professor Sorel(Philip Merrivale)a man passionate about the need to resist tyranny.He also turns to a fellow teacher Louise Martin(Maureen O'Hara)who is sympathetic both to his individual plight and to the Resistance .His brother (Kent Smith )is an active member of the Resistance also and Arthur is increasingly drawn to that group.He is placed on trial for a murder of which he is innocent and the movie culminates in his trial and its consequences

The script is overly preachy and VERY talky but its themes are important ones and the picture has real substance .It is also quite a bold movie for its time -it was made when the war was ssill going on- in that it does not see things in stark black and white terms .The occupying Geramns are not all evil and the French are shown as partly colluding with their occupiers and not simply as innocent victims .Many collaborate with the Nazis to ensure they stay immune from punishment and be able to maintain the even tenor of their prewar lives.It is not an overtly propandist movie and it takes into account the flaws in human nature that result in evil being allowed to flourish .

It is more an anti=propaganda movie than it is a propaganda piece and gives a collaborator -played well by George Sanders-reasons for his stance and captures the fear and suspicion engendered by military occupation very forcefully indeed .It is ultimately a movie about human nature under pressure
Laughton is as ever superb especially in scenes of his terror which is presented nakedly and with total honesty and the rest of the cast are more than adequate

I urge people to see the movie to get a sense of life under the jackboot and how they might react themselves in a similar situataion