Westfront 1918

In 1918 in France during the last months of the First World War, four infantrymen – the Bavarian, a young man known as 'the Student', Karl, and the Lieutenant – spend a few rest-days behind the front. The Student falls in love with a French peasant girl, Yvette. Back at the front, the four suffer again the everyday hardships of war: dirt, trench warfare and the constant danger of death. The Bavarian, Karl and the Lieutenant become trapped when part of the trench collapses and the Student digs them out. Later they are mistakenly fired upon by their own artillery due to a misjudgement of distance and are again saved by the Student, who as a messenger risks his life to relay instructions to the soldiers setting the firing range of the artillery. Karl receives leave, returning to his starving home town and promptly catches his wife in bed with a butcher. Embittered, he returns to the front. In his absence, the Student is stabbed in a melee; his body lying in the mud of a shell-hole, only one hand sticking out. An offensive by the Allies begins, supported by tanks, and a mass of French Army Poilus breaks through the German defences. During the battle against the French, Karl and the Bavarian are seriously wounded, covering the remaining members of the group. The Lieutenant has a nervous breakdown and falls into insanity. Shouting "Hurrah" non-stop, he salutes a pile of corpses. He is admitted to the field hospital together with Karl and the Bavarian. While the Lieutenant is being carried though the hospital, many injured soldiers can be seen. In a fever, Karl sees his wife again and gasps, "We are all to blame!". He dies and is covered up, while his hand still hangs out. The wounded French Poilu lying beside him grasps Karl's hand and says, "Comrades, not enemies". The final message is then displayed, "The End?!" ==Cast==

• Fritz Kampers as The Bavarian • Gustav Diessl as Karl • Hans-Joachim Moebis as The Student • Claus Clausen as The Lieutenant • Jackie Monnier as Yvette • Hanna Hoessrich as Karl's Wife • Else Helle as Karl's Mother • Carl Ballhaus as Journeyman butcher • Vladimir Sokoloff as Purser ==Reception==

Contemporary reviews for Westfront 1918 were generally positive, according to film scholar Jan-Christopher Horak in a video interview accompanying the Criterion Collection release package. Alfred Kerr writing in the Berliner Tageblatt in 1930 said of it: "Apart from anything I saw in the winter, a sound film stirred me most: because it exposes the face of war for non-participants in the most shocking way. The numbing impression lasted for weeks and months. One should perform this piece every New Year's Day in every village, in every school by law. What are theatre plays?" In the Frankfurter Zeitung in the same year, Siegfried Kracauer wrote: "From the truthful reproduction of horror that prevails here, two scenes that almost exceed the limit of expression stand out. One: a single battle ends with an infantryman being drowned in the swamp in front of everyone. (The fact that you can still see his hand protrude from the bubbling mud later is unnecessary sensationalism.) The other is the front military hospital in the church with the maimed, nurses and doctors who can barely operate from exhaustion. It is as if medieval torture pictures come to life". More recent reviews of the film, though generally positive, are more subdued. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes records 9/9 positive professional reviews, with the average score 7.9/10. Walter Goodman, in his review in The New York Times on 22 November 1987, compares the film unfavourably to Lewis Milestone's All Quiet in the Westfront, stating: "Although the German work ... isn't nearly as moving as "All Quiet", it has a power of its own... Pabst is especially good at giving a gritty documentary quality to the battle scenes; the pointless slaughter comes through. The movie is weaker when it focuses on individual soldiers. ... The truth of the movie is all in the trenches." J. Hoberman reviewed the film positively in The Village Voice on 10 May 2005, writing "The always protean Pabst made a brilliant adjustment to sound." == Home video ==

The Criterion Collection releases the film in the 2014 2K digital restoration by Deutsche Kinemathek in Blu-ray and DVD formats. ==References==