Wooden Crosses

Raymond Bernard's 1932 French film is adapted from Roland Dorgelès's novel of the First World War, with the author working on the screenplay. Demachy, a law student, volunteers in 1914 and is sent to the trenches in Champagne. The film does not tell the war through victory or heroism; waiting, mud, lice, the new men who arrive to replace the dead and the wooden crosses driven into graves are its body. Its best known passage is the hours the soldiers spend waiting for an explosion after hearing the Germans digging beneath their trench. It was shot on actual battlefields and many in the cast had fought in the war. It belongs to the first years of sound and its audio work is advanced for the time. Who it's for: viewers who like antiwar classics and early French cinema. Who it's not for: anyone looking for hope; the film describes loss from beginning to end.