Westfront 1918: Vier von der Infanterie (1930)
Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Film Review

The release of Westfront 1918, the first sound film to be directed by G.W. Pabst, was almost coincident with that of another significant anti-war film set during the First World War, Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).  Whilst it was massively overshadowed by Milestone's Oscar winning film, Westfront 1918 conveys far more authentically the horror and misery of war and is far more effective in getting across its pacifist message - so effective indeed that it was immediately banned by the Nazis once they had come to power a few years after its release in 1930.  The film is a faithful adaptation of Ernst Johannsen's novel Vier von der Infanterie and is quite possibly the finest of Pabst's sound films, noted for its pioneering use of sound which adds greatly to the film's biting realism.

The film takes place in France in the last year of WWI.  On the German side of the western front, four infantrymen are having a hard time in the trenches as the seemingly endless war drags on.  They are Karl, the Bavarian, the Lieutenant and the Student.  After almost being buried alive when part of their trench collapses, three of the four are rescued by their comrade, before coming under fire from their own side owing to an error in setting the range of fire.  On leave, Karl returns to his hometown to find his wife in bed with the butcher.  She protests she was driven to this by virtual starvation - food in the town is severely rationed - but he can hardly bring himself to forgive her.

Disillusioned both in love and life, Karl returns to the front a bitter man.  Meanwhile, the Student has been killed in the hostilities - all that is visible of him is a hand sticking out of the mud.  Then comes the next big offensive.  As the French army surges forward, the German infantry puts up a fierce defence, but casualties are high.  The Lieutenant completely loses his mind, whilst Karl and the Bavarian are badly wounded and end up being transported to a makeshift hospital filled with mutilated and dying men.  Who is to blame for all this?  As he surrenders to death, Karl sees the answer: 'We are all to blame.'

Here, Pabst applies the New Objectivity approach of his late silent films to devastating effect, with the result that Westfront 1918 feels much closer to documentary than drama.  There are some striking shots where the camera follows the action down the line of the trenches but what are more impactful are the long takes (some as long as a few minutes) where the camera is rigidly fixed and action moves in and out of the frame.  It is these long static shots that bring home the insane brutality of trench warfare - as you watch, you can't help feeling like a helpless spectator trapped in the nightmarish vista that is No Man's Land.  It is this sense of helplessness that pervades the film, and the abject futility of war has never been more powerfully expressed - either in film or literature - than it is here.  'Why don't you make peace out there?' the wife of one of the soldiers asks of her husband.  There is no answer - war has become an accepted fact of life, and most people have long ceased trying to understand what it is for.

The devastation of the war is brought home to us by the impression it makes on four ordinary young men, all of whom will, in one way or another, be destroyed by the conflict, along with countless others.  In sharp contrast with Milestone's film, there is no attempt to make a dramatic or moral point - these are just four arbitrarily selected men who are put through the ordeal of trench warfare and cope as best they can before death or disablement carry them away.  Through their eyes and ears not only do we find ourselves thrust up against the horrific carnage of war and feel its frightening ferocity, we also appreciate its terrible monotony, the hours of waiting in a nerve-straining limbo of anticipation - and how intensely do we feel the soldiers' gratitude for the few hours of relief they enjoy when they are away from the trenches.  

Pabst not only shows us the physical damage of war, he also reveals its emotional and psychological consequences.  In one of the most shocking scenes, one protagonist completely loses his mind and is reduced a raving lunatic - for him at least the war is over.  Then there is the impact of the war on the civilian population - something that tends to get overlooked in films of this kind.  On the brink of starvation, the wife of an infantryman is driven to sleep with a butcher.  Characteristically, Pabst does not condemn the woman, rather he compels us to sympathise with her.  She is just one of the millions upon millions of unseen victims of the war, coping with her own war far from the bullets and bayonets - the war to survive when there is so little to live for.  Made at a time when the German economy was in spectacular freefall, the plight of this unfortunate woman would have struck an immediate chord.  It may have been twelve years since the war ended, but for most of the population of Germany its aftershocks were still being felt.

In the very last shot of Westfront 1918, a wounded French solider takes the hand of a dead German infantryman and deliriously insists he is his comrade, not his enemy.  It is a poignant symbol of solidarity that prefigures Pabst's subsequent film Kameradschaft (1931).  In the final caption the word Ende is followed by a question mark and an exclamation mark.  Of course this was not The End.  After a brief lull, the fighting and the misery would continue, with renewed vigour, and the idea that man might learn something from the First World War and become so revolted by the idea of war that it could never recur proved to be mere delusion.  If the hellish spectacle of pain and destruction presented so convincingly by Pabst and Milestone could not tame man's instinct for mass slaughter and self-induced torment nothing could.  Are there any crumbs of comfort to be found in the final words of Westfront 1918 - 'Moi, comarade.  Pas ennemi, pas ennemi...'?