Saturday | December 18, 2010 9:00 pm

Westfront 1918

Screening on Film

Directed by G.W. Pabst.
With Gustav Diessl, Fritz Kampers, Hans-Joachim Moebis.
Germany, 1930, 16mm, black & white, 90 min.
German with English subtitles.

Pabst’s sharp and unyielding film about trench warfare in the last days of WWI follows a German squadron as it tries to hold its line against the French. Clearly pacifist in its intentions, the film documents the horrors of war with a constantly moving camera that dispassionately takes in the stark devastation of the battlefield. The unsparing realism of the film, along with Pabst's refusal to valorize or romanticize the sacrifices of the soldiers, caused controversy on its release, and, inevitably, suppression when the Nazi’s rose to power three years later.