Four Infantrymen on the Western Front ("Vier von der Infanterie") (1929 novel) by Ernst Johannsen
Produced by
Seymour Nebenzal
Starring
Fritz Kampers Gustav Diessl Hans-Joachim Moebis Claus Clausen
Cinematography
Fritz Arno Wagner Charles Métain
Edited by
Jean Oser
Music by
Alexander Laszlo
Distributed by
Nero-Film
Release date
23 May 1930 (1930-05-23)
Running time
96 minutes
Country
Weimar Republic
Language
German
Westfront 1918 is a German war film, set mostly in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I. It was directed in 1930 by G. W. Pabst, from a screenplay by Ladislaus Vajda based on the novel Vier von der Infanterie by Ernst Johannsen. The film shows the effect of the war on a group of infantrymen portrayed by an ensemble cast led by screen veterans Fritz Kampers and Gustav Diessl.
The film bears a very strong resemblance to its close contemporary All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), an American production, although it has a much bleaker tone, consistent with Pabst's New Objectivity work through the late 1920s. It was particularly pioneering in its early use of sound – it was Pabst's first "talkie" – in that Pabst managed to record live audio during complex tracking shots through the trenches.
Westfront 1918 was a critical success when it was released. Following the rise of National Socialism only a few years later, the new government banned the movie from public viewing for its extremely harsh criticism, similarly to many war poets of the era it depicts, of the mechanized and systematic slaughter of an entire generation of young men during a mere four years of trench warfare. Nazi Party Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels accordingly denounced Westfront 1918 as, "cowardly defeatism".[2] Some shots from the film were used for scene-setting purposes in a 1937 BBC Television adaptation of the play Journey's End.
^"Western Front 1918". Filmportal.de. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
^Reimer, R.C.; Reimer, C.J. (2010). The A to Z of German Cinema. Scarecrow Press. p. 206. ISBN 9780810876118. Retrieved 12 July 2016.
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