Westfront 1918

Four German infantrymen in the trenches in France. Their days pass waiting, sitting in mud, listening to artillery. In a village behind the lines they find a short break, with drink, women and a few hours of forgetting. Karl takes leave and goes home, and sees what the war has done to his family: hunger, poverty, and how his wife has met it. By the time he returns the final great offensive has begun. Georg Wilhelm Pabst's film was his first with sound. Sound is used here not as a demonstration of novelty but as the source of fear: artillery, aircraft and the noises of the trench come before the image. The battle scenes contain no heroism; movement means going forward without seeing the enemy. It counted as one of the harshest examples of anti-war cinema in Germany and was banned by the Nazi government. Who it's for: Viewers who like early sound cinema, First World War narratives, and German cinema of the Weimar years. Who it's not for: The pace is slow and the characters are hard to tell apart. The ending is also entirely without hope.