I found this film utterly gripping. If Wilfred Owen's poems about the first World War could be transferred to film, this would be the result -- dirty, frightening, wholly concerned with the men in the trenches and their loved ones, not the high strategy of war.
The crude photography (by later standards), unsophisticated but realistic special effects, the constant barrage of explosions in the soundtrack somehow make this picture of trench warfare more real, as though it were a home movie. But behind the apparent crudity is expert film-making; for example, when the clouds of poison gas blow away only to reveal the advance of unstoppable tanks against a bleak landscape of posts and barbed wire we realize the futility of the entire operation. There is never a distant horizon, just the immediate surroundings or the next line of barbed wire and pickets. Nevertheless, there is little symbolism here, just a close-up picture of how life (and death) in the trenches must really have been.
** Possible spoilers follow **
In one of the most compelling scenes, the Student's comrades find his dead body in a mud hole; all they can do for him is throw a few spadefuls of earth on the body. The tight, understated camera-work underlines the restricted world and helplessness of the protagonists. There is a strong emphasis on how the ordinary person is trapped in the process of war. In several scenes an actor apologizes, both in the trenches and when Karl finds his wife in bed with the butcher: each time the subtitle says "It wasn't my fault", but the German is closer to "I couldn't help it".
At the end, the mad and dying Karl (Diessl) sums it up: "It's everybody's fault". A French soldier tries to gain comfort from pressing Karl's dead hand; is it hope for rapprochement, or more futility?
The crude photography (by later standards), unsophisticated but realistic special effects, the constant barrage of explosions in the soundtrack somehow make this picture of trench warfare more real, as though it were a home movie. But behind the apparent crudity is expert film-making; for example, when the clouds of poison gas blow away only to reveal the advance of unstoppable tanks against a bleak landscape of posts and barbed wire we realize the futility of the entire operation. There is never a distant horizon, just the immediate surroundings or the next line of barbed wire and pickets. Nevertheless, there is little symbolism here, just a close-up picture of how life (and death) in the trenches must really have been.
** Possible spoilers follow **
In one of the most compelling scenes, the Student's comrades find his dead body in a mud hole; all they can do for him is throw a few spadefuls of earth on the body. The tight, understated camera-work underlines the restricted world and helplessness of the protagonists. There is a strong emphasis on how the ordinary person is trapped in the process of war. In several scenes an actor apologizes, both in the trenches and when Karl finds his wife in bed with the butcher: each time the subtitle says "It wasn't my fault", but the German is closer to "I couldn't help it".
At the end, the mad and dying Karl (Diessl) sums it up: "It's everybody's fault". A French soldier tries to gain comfort from pressing Karl's dead hand; is it hope for rapprochement, or more futility?