Finding the Courage: 'This Land is Mine'

We open our second season of "Fascism on Film" with Jean Renoir’s wartime drama "This Land is Mine." This  film boldly dramatizes the internal resistance to fascism—not on the battlefield, but in the classroom, the courtroom, and the soul. 

Released in 1943 while the war was still raging, "This Land is Mine" explores what it means to live under occupation, and what it takes to speak the truth in a world governed by fear. Set in a fictional European town under Nazi rule, the film centers on a timid schoolteacher, Albert Lory (played by Charles Laughton), who undergoes a moral awakening from passive compliance to active resistance.

Through this journey, Renoir offers a commentary on education, conscience, and the price of dissent. This episode looks at the film’s idealistic framing of national character and moral clarity, while also situating it within the political context of wartime Hollywood and Renoir’s own exile from Vichy France.