This Land Is Mine

Renoir's film made in America, in exile. The subject is an unnamed European town under Nazi occupation. Albert Lory is a schoolteacher: timid, tied to his mother, unable to stand against anyone. There is a resistance in the town and there are collaborators, and Albert tries to stay outside both. Then an act of sabotage occurs and a false accusation puts him in a courtroom. At the centre is a long speech for the defence: the frightened man says what he thinks for the first time, and it turns into an appeal addressed directly to the audience. The film was made in 1943, in the middle of the war, and that was plainly its purpose. Charles Laughton plays Albert, Maureen O'Hara a fellow teacher and George Sanders the collaborator. Renoir moves away here from the observational tone of the films he made in Europe; the text is direct and hides nothing of what it argues. It won the Oscar for sound recording. Valuable for anyone interested in American wartime cinema and in Laughton. For a viewer expecting the delicacy of Renoir's French period it is very plain-spoken, and it is obviously a studio film.