Westfront 1918

rdf:langString Westfront 1918

rdf:langString Westfront 1918

rdf:langString Westfront 1918

rdf:langString Film poster from the world premiere

rdf:langString Charles Métain

rdf:langString German

rdf:langString Claus Clausen

rdf:langString Hans-Joachim Moebis

rdf:langString Westfront 1918 is a German war film, set mostly in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I. It was directed in 1930 by G. W. Pabst, from a screenplay by Ladislaus Vajda based on the novel Vier von der Infanterie by Ernst Johannsen. The film shows the effect of the war on a group of infantrymen portrayed by an ensemble cast led by screen veterans Fritz Kampers and Gustav Diessl. The film bears a resemblance to its close contemporary All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), an American production, although it has a bleaker tone, consistent with Pabst's New Objectivity work through the late 1920s. It was particularly pioneering in its early use of sound – it was Pabst's first "talkie" – in that Pabst managed to record live audio during complex tracking shots through the trenches. Westfront 1918 was a critical success when it was released, although it was often shown in truncated form. With the rise of National Socialism, the German authorities quickly judged the film to be unsuitable for the public for its obvious pacifism and for its denunciation of war, which propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels labelled as "cowardly defeatism". Some shots from the film were used for scene-setting purposes in a 1937 BBC Television adaptation of the play Journey's End.