G.W. Pabst (director)
Eureka (studio)
PG (certificate)
96 min and 90 min (length)
24 July 2017 (released)
26 July 2017
This anti-war double whammy by acclaimed German director G.W. Pabst offers two thought-provoking titles in a new Dual Format edition: WESTFRONT 1918 and KAMERADSCHAFT.
The first film, Westfront 1918, was made in 1930 and is quintessentially about four infantrymen of different age and different backgrounds who form a close companionship in order to make it through the horrors in the trenches at the Western Front during the First World War. The four men are the Bavarian (Fritz Kampers) who speaks with a strong Bavarian accent throughout, the young Student (Hans-Joachim Moebis), Karl (Gustav Diessl) and the Leutnant (Claus Clausen). Prior to heading to the Western Front, the men hang out together and take it easy – smoke, drink and try to remain as positive as can be given the circumstances. The young Student falls for a poor French peasant girl by the name of Yvette (Jackie Monnier) and promises to return to her despite all odds. The four men and the rest of the regiment make their way to the Front where they have to endure unspeakable hardship and the constant anxiety that they might be killed by the French enemy any minute. The young Student saves the lives of his three companions twice during the fight in the trenches. Karl is allowed on leave and returns to his hometown where the local people are starving. Entering the flat he catches his wife (Hanna Hossrich) in bed with a travelling butcher (Carl Ballhaus) – talk about unfortunate timing! At first, Karl pretends to kill both his wife and the butcher with his rifle but has a change of heart and kicks the butcher out of the flat. His wife tries to explain to Karl in vain that she didn’t cheat on him because she fancies the butcher but simply because she was starving like everyone else during war times. Nonetheless Karl makes no attempt to see things from his wife’s point of view, not even when the mother arrives who tries to reconcile the couple. Bitter and frustrated, Karl announces his return to the Front where real warmth and loyalty would await him and that he looks forward to be united again with his three friends. Meanwhile and unbeknownst to him, the young student had been killed during a scuffle and his dead body lies in a muddy shell hole with only his hand sticking out. When the Bavarian and the Leutnant tell Karl what happened he attempts to pull the Student’s body from the hole but the approaching French troops make it impossible. After further fighting, the Bavarian is killed, Leutnant suffers a breakdown and goes insane, and Karl is badly wounded. Back in the military hospital, where harrowing scenes take place, Karl, in a feverish state, murmurs: “We are all to blame” while staring at his imaginary wife. Shortly after, he dies of his injuries with his arm hanging out of the makeshift bed. A wounded French soldier who lies next to the deceased Karl takes his hand and whispers “Freunde, nicht Feinde” (“Friends, not enemies”) – with the word END?! projected as the final message.
The second film, Kameradschaft (1931) is an anti-war film without a single battle scene… based on true events which happened in 1906 and updated by director Pabst. Here, the story is set after the First World War when tensions between the French and the Germans still run high. The action takes place in the French Lorraine and German Saar region, in short, along the French-German border. After the war, both countries are riddled with economic hardship and unemployment – to complicate matters an underground mine has been split in two with a gate dividing the French and the German section. A group of Germans miners cross over and visit a dancehall but one of the Germans feels insulted when a local girl called Francoise (Andree Ducret) refuses to dance with him, prompting him to assume she does so because he is German though in fact her feet are simply tired. She leaves with her boyfriend Emile (George Charlia) and later on the couple have a row over the fact that he works as a miner, something she is not happy about due to her constant fear of the dangers his job entails. The next morning she takes the train to Paris while Emile and her younger brother Jean go back to work in the mine. Just as the train is about to leave the platform, smoke and fire can be seen coming from the mine, indicating that a major explosion took place with many workers buried alive. On the other side, a young German miner called Wittkopp (Ernst Busch) hears of the disaster and immediately asks his bosses for permission to send a German rescue team to the aid of the buried French colleagues. The rest of the film depicts the heroic efforts of that team to see the survivors to safety. At the end, both the German and the French miners assemble for a jolly get-together and speeches can be heard about the fact that no matter what nationality, everyone is a human being and that all the miners are bonded by comradeship (Kameradschaft).