On the message of "La Grande Illusion", Renoir himself said, in a film trailer, dating from the re-release of the film in 1958: "["La Grande Illusion" is] a story about human relationships. I am confident that such a question is so important today that if we don’t solve it, we will just have to say ‘goodbye’ to our beautiful world." Despite widespread interest in the subject, Renoir found it difficult to find a producer and distributor, having to "shop around" the project for years. "La Grande Illusion" examines the relationships between different social classes in Europe. Two of the main characters, Boëldieu and Rauffenstein, are aristocrats. They are represented as cosmopolitan men, educated in many cultures and conversant in several languages. Their level of education and their devotion to social conventions and rituals makes them feel closer to each other than to the lower class of their own nation. They share similar social experiences: dining at Maxim's in Paris, courting dalliances with the same woman, and even know of each other through acquaintances. They converse with each other in heavily formal French and German, and in moments of intimate personal conversation, escape into English as if to hide these comments from their lower class counterparts. Renoir depicts the rule of the aristocracy in "La Grande Illusion" as in decline, to be replaced by a new, emerging social order, led by men who were not born to privilege. He emphasizes that their class is no longer an essential component to their respective nation's politics. Both Rauffenstein and Boëldieu view their military service as a duty, and see the war as having a purpose; as such, Renoir depicts them as laudable but tragic figures whose world is disappearing and who are trapped in a code of life that is rapidly becoming meaningless. Both are aware that their time is past, but their reaction to this reality diverges: Boëldieu accepts the fate of the aristocracy as a positive improvement, but Rauffenstein does not, lamenting what he sarcastically calls the "charming legacy of the French Revolution". In "La Grande Illusion", Renoir contrasts the aristocrats with characters such as Maréchal (Gabin), a mechanic from Paris. The lower class characters have little in common with each other; they have different interests and are not worldly in their views or education. Nonetheless, they have a kinship too, through common sentiment and experience. Renoir's message is made clear when the aristocratic Boëldieu sacrifices himself by distracting the prison guards by dancing around, singing, and playing a flute, to allow Maréchal and Rosenthal, members of the lower class, to escape.