DVD
Westfront 1918
Call Number
- DVD FOREIGN (CEN)
Edition
DVD special edition.
Languages
In German and French, with English subtitles.
Performers
Fritz Kampers, Gustav Diessl, H. J. Moebis, Claus Clausen.
Publication Information
[Irvington, NY] : Criterion Collection, [2018]
Physical Description
1 videodisc (96 min.) : sound, black and white ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 folded sheet (illustrations ; 19 cm)
Audience
Not rated.
Summary
G. W. Pabst brought the war movie into a new era with his first sound film, a mercilessly realistic depiction of the nightmare that scarred a generation, in the director's native Germany and beyond. Digging into the trenches with four infantrymen stationed in France in the final months of World War I, Pabst illustrates the harrowing ordeals of battle with unprecedented naturalism, as the men are worn away in body and spirit by firefights, and the disillusion that greets them on the home front. Long unavailable, the restored Westfront 1918 is a visceral, sobering antiwar statement that is as urgent today as when it was made.
Notes
Title from container.
From the novel Four infantrymen on the Western front by Ernst Johannsen.
Originally released as a motion picture in 1930.
Special features: 2K digital restoration ; hour-long French television broadcast of World War I veterans reacting to the film in 1969 ; interview from 2016 with film scholar Jan-Christopher Hora ; new restoration demonstration featuring Martin Koerber and Julia Wallmüller of the Deutsche Kinemathek ; brief audio interview from 1988 with editorJean Oser ; new English subtitle translation.