This book takes a vivid and comprehensive look at three films, each made by a pantheon director of European cinema. The first chapter looks at liberty as represented by Jean Renoir’s masterpiece Grand Illusion, made in 1937 right before World War II. Aside from an overview of Renoir’s career and the film as a whole, the chapter also includes a detailed frame-by-frame analysis of an eleven-frame sequence from the second reel and a letter from Renoir to the author written just before the director’s death indicating his inability to be interviewed for the project. Chapter Two looks at love as represented by Max Ophuls’ Letter to an Unknown Woman, and includes a letter to the author by lead actress and Academy Award-winner Joan Fontaine (Suspicion, Alfred Hitchcock, 1941). Chapter Three examines both love and liberty as represented by Luis Buñuel’s Tristana, with Catherine Denueve, Franco Nero and Fernando Rey.