The horrors in the trenches of WWI

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2010)

Each film has its own audience. Until today the war film "Saving private Ryan" managed to attract more than 2000 reviews. I guess that the film "All quiet on the Western front" draws a somewhat more advanced public. On careful consideration, it is the First World War that appeals most to the imagination when reflecting upon the horrors of war. After WWI war has never again been the same. With "Im Westen nichts Neues" Remarque wrote an outstanding account of the misery in the trenches. This is the first try of a cinematic translation, and than there was a remake, in "The Hallmark Hall of Fame". Most reviews appreciate the 1930 version, but to me it seems that the remake more closely follows the narrative and the atmosphere of the book. I also found some comments lamenting that it is an English-spoken produce, and so the typical German expressiveness is lost. There is some truth in this critique, and in fact there is a really German counterpart. This is the film "Westfront 1918", which was also made in the early thirties and based on a novel (titled "Vier von der Infantry"). If you appreciated "All quiet on the western front", then "Westfront 1918" is definitely a film for you. The main difference between both films is that the German version has an almost documentary style. Both films have a similar main character (resp. Paul Brenner and Karl), but in "Westfront 1918" the story line is even thinner. The central theme is war, trenches, barbed wire, death, destruction, and decay. I guess the documentary style of "Westfront 1918" was inevitable, since the makers had been in the middle of the conflict and had experienced the horrors by themselves (even on the "homefront"). Whereas the American makers of "All quiet on the western front" maintain some distance and try to give an interpretation from a personal point of view, the makers of "Westfront 1918" can only recount what happened. There is no room for empathy with anything. This makes in my opinion the latter film more impressive and horrific. Therefore I will probably not like "Saving private Ryan", since it tries to transform the collective nature of war into an individual affair. Anyway, "All quiet on the western front" goes like this. In 1914 Paul Baumer volunteers together with 20 of his classmates. At the front in France they soon discover the gruesome reality. They are confronted with the terrible routine in the trenches. A highly emotional aspect is the proximity of the conflict, since apart from the perpetuating anonymous shelling it is still largely a man-to-man fight with drawn bayonets and experimental flame-throwers. You can yet by accident find yourself in a bomb crater, together with an armed enemy volunteer. It also helps to place the film into the context of military history. In the second half of the nineteenth century the wars were often short encounters between professional armies, which hardly affected the population. However, by the end of the century the rise of imperialism had caused an arms race (something like the Cold War), which stupefied the common people. The mass destruction reached proportions, that surpassed the contemporary human imagination. Man lost what had remained of his innocence. It was this war, that ended the remaining absolute monarchies and even caused the birth of an entirely new society system in Russia. It created the first insane forms of art (Dada), and strongly furthered the foundation of pacifism and the League of Nations.