Fritz Kampers, Gustav Diessl, H. J. Moebis, Claus Clausen, Jackie Monnier, Hanna Hoessrich, Else Heller. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1930. Based on the novel Vier von der Infanterie / Ernst Johannsen. 1.19:1 aspect ratio. A 2K digital restoration by the Deutsche Kinemathek in cooperation with the British Film Institute. Special features: Les dossiers de l'écran (hour-long French television broadcast of World War veterans reacting to the film in 1969); 2016 interview 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 editor Jean Oster; in booklet: essay by author and critic Luc Sante.
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.
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