Westfront 1918

G. W. Pabst, Nero-Film, 1930, after Ernst Johannsen's Vier von der Infanterie. Four German soldiers in the trenches of the Western Front: a leave in France, a return, the line. Early German sound used for artillery and overlapping talk, not speeches. Pabst shot studio trenches and locations so the explosions sit in the same frame as the faces. The Nazi regime banned it in 1933 as damaging to national morale. Often paired with All Quiet on the Western Front (also 1930) as that year's other major film to treat the infantry as exhausted men, not emblems.