Based on the novel "Vier von der Infanterie" by Ernst Johannsen

1918, France during the first world war: Four German soldiers from different parts of the country and different social backgrounds are enjoying a brief pause in the rear and then return to the front. The happy Bavarian is unshakeable and optimistic. Karl from Berlin has been home on leave, but finds another man in his wife's bed and is glad to return to his comrades. The lieutenant only knows his duty and seems not to be interested in anything but his duty. The fourth man is a student who has fallen in love with a young French woman to whom he must bid farewell as the company moves on.

The war brings a gruesome end for all four men. The student is killed in no man's land; his comrades find only his hand sticking out of the mire filling a crater left by a grenade. The Bavarian is badly injured during a reconnaissance mission. The man from Berlin dies in a field hospital with the accusation "we are all to blame!" on his lips. The lieutenant, whose upright bearing made him appear invulnerable, loses his countenance and his sanity and is sent to a field hospital as a mental wreck. But the war goes on. Pabst concluded his film with a question mark: End?

Pabst produced this film with the intention of portraying war as realistically and as unadorned as possible. He has therefore subjected his story to a certain dramatic chronology in which there are no moments of great tension, just an almost brutal succesion of events. Some of the sequences are indeed reminiscent of documentary films of the first world war; this applies particularly for the direct battle scenes and the scenes of the trenches, the tank and artillery attacks. The viewer is only reminded that this is fiction and not fact by the four run-of-the-mill heroes, none of whom stands out in any great way. It is precisely their normality that makes them representative of an entire generation lost in the war. In line with this intention, the film dispenses with all immediately identifiable virtuosity, both with regard to the handling of the actors and in respect of the arrangement of individual settings. "Pabst was decidedly against using music, appropriately arguing that this would bereave the film of its authenticity." (Jerzy Toeplitz in "History of Film")

Toeplitz draws attention to one scene which, although shot by Pabst, was not included by the producer. Apparently the scene showed a German general visiting the troops during a ceasefire who raged over the lack of dicipline and ordered that fire immediately be opened on the enemy positions, resulting in a terrible massacre. "Pabst does not try to show the reasons for the war. This was no doubt one of the film's weaknesses, since his accusation against war was not based on any political arguments. The scene with the general might have offered a possibility for a deeper analysis ..." (Toeplitz)

Pabst's production concentrates on the conditions and effects, on the misery, dirt, physical and mental destruction. However, he sometimes moves beyond these limits, setting clear signs and references: in one scene, we see the student passing a carpenter's shop which produces the crosses for graves as though they were mass-produced items. Pabst's pacifist intention was to show the people affected by the war, the real and the potential soldiers, to show them the madness of war; this intention was apparently more important to him than any political analysis. "The prevailing urge to give a faithful reproduction of war's gruesome face results in two scenes which almost go beyond the limits of what can be expressed: one shows an individual battle which ends with an infantryman drowning in the mire in full view of the spectators; the other shows the front-line field hospital in a church filled with mutilated patients, doctors and nurses so exhausted that they can hardly continue with their work. It is almost as if pictures of medieval torture had come to life." (Siegfried Kracauer in the "Frankfurter Zeitung", 1930)

WESTFRONT 1918 has often been compared with the film version of Remarque's novel ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT produced by the American director Lewis Milestone at the same time.
However, "WESTFRONT 1918 is the only film which denounces war and refuses to do the army any favours whatsoever; it is purer that Milestone's film in this respect" (Roger Boussinot in "L'Encyclopédie du Cinéma")

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1930

Production Year

1930

color

b/w

Aspect Ratio

1:1,19

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Literary Adaptation, Anti-war / War Film, History Film

Topic

Violence, World War I, Europe, Psychology

Available Media

DVD, DCP, Blu-ray Disc

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

English (en), German (partly), German (full), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Italian (it), Turkish (tr)

Note on the Format

DVD im Einzelhandel mit diversen UT Fassungen erhältlich und lizenzrechtlich abgedeckt.

DVD: deutsch Teil UT, deutsch Voll UT, englisch, französisch, spanisch (Lateinamerika), portugiesisch (Brasilien), chinesisch Kurzzeichen, russisch, arabisch, türkisch, italienisch

DCP

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Turkish (tr), Italian (it)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

English (en), German (full), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Italian (it), Turkish (tr)