Classic Film Guide

Westfront 1918 (1930) - full review!

Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, with a screenplay by Peter Martin Lampel and Ladislaus Vajda which was based on a novel by Ernst Johannsen, this above average foreign World War I drama with subtitles is every bit as good as the Academy Award winning Best Picture All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Even though its storytelling is not as straightforward, and its film-makers were not as skilled at manipulating an audience's emotions throughout it (as those who made the American film were), it "touches all the bases" with regards to the total experience, giving a very real feel to the type of war that was waged and the impact it had on those involved in it.

It opens with a scene that gives one a sense of the camaraderie and innocence among the German soldiers who've yet to experience war, they're playing cards, flirting with a barmaid, etc. before they're called to action. Once they've marched and taken their positions among the trenches at the front, lined with barbed wire, some become victims of friendly fire as their own country's artillery fires too short and shells explode around them. The bombardment collapses a bunker used for sleeping quarters, which traps several men temporarily underground; their comrades work to free them from suffocating to death and/or being buried alive. Meanwhile, his communications cutoff, the Lieutenant (Claus Clausen) needs someone to replace the messenger that was killed to tell his superiors to stop shelling his own troops. The youngest recruit, dubbed the Student (Hans-Joachim Moebis), volunteers and attempts to make his way through the melee. Along the way, he sees that the German Shepard messenger dog didn't make it through either. But the Student does make it back, is surreptitiously given some of the General's food that had been snitched by a meal orderly (Vladimir Sokoloff), and returns to Jacqueline (Jackie Monnier), the barmaid with whom he was engaged in an embrace prior to his unit's being called to the front lines.

It's Karl's (Gustav Diessl) turn for a leave (e.g. to go home), something the Lieutenant doesn't usually like granting because of the attitude the men who return from them bring back. On his way back, he passes the Student, who'd almost been caught as a deserter after a night with Jacqueline, returning to the front. There's an interlude that shows war weary soldiers (e.g. on leave, but not able to go home) being entertained in a jam-packed bar by a comedian, some dancing, and a singer who gets everyone to join in. When Karl gets home, loaded down with food supplies, he passes through a breadline; unbeknownst to him, his mother (Else Heller) was in it. Unfortunately he catches his wife (Hanna Hoessrich) in bed with the butcher (Carl Balhaus), and is disillusioned (the disappointment clear upon his face); Karl had discussed how important and different things were for him, with the student, since he had someone back home. After briefly considering shooting her with his rifle, Karl instead lets the butcher, who had to report for duty the next day himself, leave without incident. His wife pleads that it's not her fault, that he'd been gone too long (18 months, 9 days) and that she'd been hungry (for food, but there could be a double entendre here), but he'll have nothing of it. Instead, he behaves as one without feeling, as if he were made of stone, to her while being much more pleasant with his mother, who joins them, to whom he gives the spoils he'd brought. His mother is naturally thrilled to see her son, but also becomes quickly aware that there is something wrong. Karl later returns to the front without cracking his demeanor.

When Karl arrives at the front again, he learns that the Student was killed in an enemy (the French) raid. When the Lieutenant now asks for four volunteers to take the point in preparation for another anticipated raid, Karl is quick to volunteer. He chooses his friend (either Fritz Kampers, known as the Bavarian or Gustav Püttjer, known as Hamburger) to go with him. On their way to the very front, they discover and then bury the Student, who'd been rotting in some water at the bottom of a foxhole. A prolonged battle ensues, one that's not as easy to follow as in most, later war films. It includes trench warfare, poison gas clouds, and even primitive tanks. At the end of the fight, the young Lieutenant goes crazy, screaming continuously; he can't be quieted. His character is followed all the way to the overcrowded hospital where the final horrors of war (e.g. broken bodies, a man screaming that he'd lost his sight, etc.) are witnessed. In the aftermath, Karl (?) is seen lying on his back coming to the realization that "it's everybody's fault" (effectively answering his wife's earlier pleadings). Another memorable image is that of a soldier who's consoling himself by stroking the hand of someone in the bed next to his own, without realizing that the man next to him is dead.