Westfront 1918 (1930)
- Original title
- Westfront 1918: Vier von der Infanterie
- Directed by
- Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- Genre
- drama film, silent film
- Country
- Weimar Republic
- Runtime
- 1h 37m
- Rated
- 16
- Rating
- 6.5 of 10 from 60 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A group of German infantrymen live and die in the muddy trenches of World War I. The film shows the physical and mental toll of combat on the soldiers.
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What happens
Westfront 1918 is a German war film, set mostly in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I. It was directed in 1930 by G. W. Pabst, from a screenplay by Ladislaus Vajda based on the novel Four Infantrymen on the Western Front 1918 by Ernst Johannsen. The film shows the effect of the war on a group of infantrymen portrayed by an ensemble cast led by screen veterans Fritz Kampers and Gustav Diessl. The film bears a very strong resemblance to its close contemporary All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), an American production, although it has a much bleaker tone, consistent with Pabst's New Objectivity work through the late 1920s. It was particularly pioneering in its early use of sound – it was Pabst's first "talkie" – in that Pabst managed to record live audio during complex tracking shots through the trenches. Westfront 1918 was a critical success when it was released. Following the rise of National Socialism only a few years later, the new government banned the movie from public viewing for its extremely harsh criticism, similar to many war poets of the era it depicts, of the mechanized and systematic slaughter of a generation of young men during a mere four years of trench warfare. Nazi Party Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels accordingly denounced Westfront 1918 as, "cowardly defeatism". Some shots from the film were used for scene-setting purposes in a 1937 BBC Television adaptation of the play Journey's End. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Die Somme: Das Grab der Millionen (1930)
The Road to Dishonour (1930)
Haunted People (1932)
High Treason (1929)
When the Evening Bells Ring (1930)
The Tragedy of a Lost Soul (1927)
Agitated Women (1927)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.