The 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme yesterday seemed to be an appropriate time to view WESTFRONT 1918. This German film of the trench warfare of 1918 is possibly the most realistic depiction we have of the First World War. The film is justly famous to those who are interested in cinema history and in the work of one of Germany's most talented directors, G. W. Pabst. The action is set in the trenches of Eastern France, and the film commences in Besancon, where the German soldiers are billeted. The story is based upon a novel by the German author Ernst Johannsen (1898-1977), entitled VIER VON DER INFANTRIE: IHRE LETZTEN TAGE AN DER WESTFRONT 1918 (FOUR INFANTRYMEN AND THEIR LAST DAYS ON THE WESTERN FRONT, 1918), published in 1929. The book was also published in French in 1929 as QUATRE DE L'INFANTERIE-FRONT OUEST 1918, published in England in 1930 as FOUR INFANTRYMEN ON THE WESTERN FRONT and also in America in 1930 as THE FOUR INFANTRYMEN. IMDb is in error in its references to Ernst Johannsen. however. It claims that this novel was also the basis for a 'TV short' of 1938 entitled BRIGADE-EXCHANGE. In fact, the 1938 production was not a filmed production but a radio play, which was broadcast by the BBC and was based upon a radio play by Johannsen entitled BRIGADE-VERMITTLUNG (BRIGADE-EXCHANGE). BBC Television did not even exist in 1938! IMDb please note this correction. Johannsen himself fought in the First World War and took part in the Battle of Verdun. His writings on the subject are wholly authentic. It is important to remember that this film was made only 12 years after the end of the War, and the sets and atmosphere portrayed were based upon personal knowledge and memory. The story is ostensibly about four individual soldiers, but the film spreads the attention to a larger cast as well. We see the return home to Germany on leave of one of the soldiers, named Karl. He arrives at his flat, full of joy at the prospect of seeing his beloved wife again. He has been away for more than a year and a half. He enters quietly, lays down his rifle, takes off his gear, and hears his wife giggling in the bedroom. He enters and finds her in bed with another man. He goes and gets his rifle and considers shooting them, but changes his mind. The wife cowers and cringes and can only say: 'I couldn't help it,' so that her 'apology' amounts only to whingeing self pity because he had deserted her to go to war. Karl is glad to leave and get back to the sanity of the trenches. Another of the four soldiers, 'the kid' or 'the student', has an affair with a French girl in Besancon, and they decide they want to marry. However, bombardments force her evacuation and she never even learns that he has been killed. The continual bombardments have become so commonplace to the soldiers that when they go to sleep, they say to the one on watch: 'Wake me up when you get the signal (to attack).' The explosions crashing down over their heads without cease are no longer even noticed, and do not interfere with their exhausted sleep. The only thing missing from the film is the plague of rats. Otherwise, we see them encrusted with mud which they have long since ceased to try to remove, and how they are continually rushing from shelter to shelter to avoid the locations where the artillery shells are falling thickest. At one point, their own artillery is decimating them in a friendly fire fiasco. The phone lines have collapsed and the messenger dog sent with a message tied round his neck to Divisional Headquarters (a miserable half-buried shack) fails to get through and is killed by a shell. But a man does, and the artillery extends its range and stops killing the German soldiers by mistake. The latter part of the film is based upon the chapter of the novel called 'Inferno', and it shows the most incredibly detailed prolonged staging of a battle situation where the French troops storm the German trenches, assisted by the quaint little battle tanks of that era, with men hiding behind them in their advance for cover. The carnage is immense, and nearly everyone on both sides gets killed. This part of the film lasts about 15 or 20 minutes. It is possible that this is the most authentic portrayal in a feature film of First World War trench warfare and its indescribable, incessant horrors. Cinéastes and war historians will wish to compare these scenes with Lewis Milestone's film ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, based upon Erich Maria Remarque's novel IM WESTEN NICHTS NEUES, which was also made in 1930. The most famous German war novels were IN STAHLGEWITTERN (1920, English title STORM OF STEEL) and a sequel dealing with the trench warfare of 1918, DAS WAELDCHEN 125 (1925, English title COPSE 125), both written by a German military hero of the First World War, Ernst Juenger. However, these have never been filmed. WESTFRONT 1918 has the end credit: 'ENDE ?!', which means 'THE END?!' Since the film was released only three years before Hitler came to power, its prophecy of more war ahead was obvious to everyone. It is no surprise that the film was banned and heavily criticised by the Nazis. The last thing they wanted was anti-war propaganda, as they prepared their future wars. But Pabst's message had already been delivered: war was a monstrous nightmare in which everyone loses, everyone starves, everyone dies. But the problem is that not enough of the German public were listening to such warnings, and those that were soon would find themselves rounded up and executed or sent to camps. The jackboot was well and truly on the front foot, and the world would pay.
Review of Westfront 1918
