Best Movies about Trench warfare

Movies about Trench warfare

WW1 movies are sadly rather rare in comparison to WWII, perhaps because of America’s late entry and comparatively light casualty count. The so-called “War to end all Wars” was unable to bring an end to the violence, instead ushering in a seemingly endless variety of new weapons and tactics. Battle continues to exist, but World War 1 changed it forever. These movies will show you exactly how WW1 changed the world, for better and worse.

Velmi dlouhé zasnoubení

This French film starring Audrey Tautou and Gaspard Ulliel follows a woman named Mathilde as she searches for her beloved fiancé who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during the war. Her fiancé, along with four other soldiers, was convicted of trying to escape military service, and sent to “No Man’s Land” to meet his end at the hands of the Germans. However, Matilde refuses to believe her fiancé is dead, and through her investigations and battlefield flashbacks, Matilde and viewers alike discover the brutalities and atrocities of World War I.

veselé Vánoce—written and directed by Christian Carion—is a fictionalized retelling of an actual historical event. In the December of 1914, a German opera singer travels to the front line to sing carols for the Christmas holiday. A truce from all sides commences, and the various soldiers come together to exchange gifts and stories from home. This film gives the perspective of the French, Scottish, and German men sent off to war, and details not only the disconnect of the higher ups from the sacrifices of the battlefield, but the negative fallout from a Christmas truce which celebrated humanity.

The German-British biographical film Rudý baron boasts stars Matthias Schweighöfer, Joseph Fiennes, Lena Heady, and Til Schweiger. Based on the fighter pilot Baron Manfred von Richthofen, who was one of the most acclaimed German pilots of World War I, this film follows his journey of disillusionment. While at first Richthofen regards combat as an exciting challenge, his growing feelings for the nurse Käte and the time he spends in the military hospital opens his eyes to the true extent of war’s atrocities.

This box-office hit was turned into a drama film after the original novel of the same name was published in 1982 and a subsequent stage play was adapted in 2007. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the movie stars Jeremy Irvine in his big screen debut, as well as other notable actors such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, and David Thewlis. A beloved Thoroughbred—Joey—belonging to a young English farmer is sold to the army, and over the course of four years he experiences the dark realities of war through the hands of the English, German, and French soldiers. Telling stories of desperation, loss, determination, and love, Válečný kůň captures the scope of World War I on and off the battlefield.

flyboys—featuring James Franco during his rise to stardom—follows a group of American men who enlist in the French Air Service in 1916. In a squadron known as the Lafayette Escadrille, volunteers including a Texan rancher, a black boxer, and a New York Dilettante undergo training which can’t even begin to compare to the rain of fire in air combat. As they face battle, some rise as heroes, while others succumb to enemy fire. Though these characters are fictional, their actions and fates were based upon real men who became the first American fighter pilots.

Want more war movies? Sign up for Archiv‘s newsletter, and get thrilling recommendations delivered straight to your inbox.

Ano! Chci také dostávat newsletter Early Bird Books se skvělými nabídkami e-knih.

Three British soldiers find themselves stranded in No Man’s Land in this 2013 Australian film. Survivors of an Allied charged gone wrong, they won’t survive for long if they can’t find a way out of the muddy purgatory. German forces close in on the men, and an all-out attack from both sides could get them killed in the crossfire. With grenades exploding and time running out, will the soldiers make it through the night?

Ach! Jaká krásná válka

A bit of a change of pace, Ach! Jaká krásná válka is a British musical comedy directed by Richard Attenborough. Though the film—like its characters—starts out upbeat and optimistic, a darker perspective gradually consumes the tone. Mostly focusing on the Smith family as different members go off to war, the action also tackles infamous events that occurred during World War I, such as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the truce during the Christmas of 1914. Keep an eye out for cameos from notable actors like Maggie Smith and Laurence Olivier.

Všichni muži krále

First broadcast by the BBC as a television drama, this 1999 film is based on the non-fiction book by Nigel McCrery. After the men of King George V’s estate joined the 1/5th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment, they went into battle at Gallipoli under the command of the manager of the estate, Captain Frank Beck. However, no soldiers returned from that fateful battle. Rumored to have disappeared after walking into a strange mist, the Royal Family sends an investigator to discover the truth behind the odd disappearance of the soldiers.

With Gary Cooper in the titular role, Seržant York is based on the diary kept by the real-life Sergeant Alvin York. This film takes viewers from York’s humble beginnings as a farmer in Tennessee to his rise as one of the most celebrated American servicemen of World War I. Though York is an incredible marksman, his recent devotion to religion leaves him feeling conflicted about taking lives in war. As battle leaves no room for the indecision of men, York must kill or be killed, and rise to the occasion when the lives of his fellow soldiers are endangered.

For the viewers with a taste for the artsy out there, the 1963 recording of Benjamin Britten’s classical “War Requiem” acts as the soundtrack to this film, with no spoken dialogue to contrast the music and lyrics. As some of the lyrics of Britten’s composition are pulled from poems written by World War I veteran Wilfred Owen, the film uses Owen as the central character. Using imagery that depicts the horrors of war, the nonlinear narrative also branches out to portray other soldiers, as well as a nurse. This film stars notable actors Nathaniel Parker, Tilda Swinton, Laurence Olivier, and Sean Bean.

First filmed in 1930, the 1938 remake of Dawn Patrol is the one best remembered by film buffs. Based on John Monk Sunders’s short story “The Flight Commander” and directed by Edmund Goulding, it stars Errol Flynn, David Niven and Basil Rathbone as pilots with the 59th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps (today’s Royal Air Force). A significant amount of footage from the 1930 original was reused to lower production costs, although that doesn’t detract from the film’s themes of death, fear and the stresses of command. It’s also known for “Stand to your glasses steady”, a wartime pilots’ song still sung today.

Though not without its historical inaccuracies, 1981’s Gallipoli is a World War 1 classic. Directed by Peter Weir and starring Mark Lee and Mel Gibson, it depicts two young Australians on their way to the disastrous Dardanelles campaign. On their journey they—like their country—come of age and lose their innocence as the Great War lingers on. Gallipoli is sometimes criticized for its anti-British bias, but the final scenes, depicting the slaughter at the Battle of the Nek on August 7, 1915, are unforgettable.

Want more war movies? Sign up for Archiv‘s newsletter, and get thrilling recommendations delivered straight to your inbox.

Ano! Chci také dostávat newsletter Early Bird Books se skvělými nabídkami e-knih.

1957 je Cesty Glory is one of the all-time classic anti-war movies. Stanley Kubrick directed the adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s novel, with Kirk Douglas starring as Colonel Dax. Dax is forced to defend his men not against the enemy, but their own troops when his superiors demand summary punishment after they fail an impossible mission. Cesty Glory examines war differently, looking at cowardice, betrayal and the disregard for ordinary soldiers by their commanders. Hailed as a classic now, it was highly controversial in its day.

Příkop is a rather overlooked gem. An independent production released in 1999, it stars a pre-Bond Daniel Craig as a battle-hardened veteran about to begin 1916’s Battle of the Somme. July 1, 1916 is believed to be the worst day in British military history, with some 57,000 men killed, wounded, missing or captured on that day alone. The Trench follows Sergeant Winter (Craig) as his platoon prepares to go over the top. Claustrophobic, grim and often depressing, it’s still a superb depiction of daily life in the trenches on the Western Front.

Celý klid na západní frontě

1930 je Celý klid na západní frontě, adapted from the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, is a classic not only within the genre, but filmmaking itself. Directed by Lewis Milestone, the film achieves (ahem) a milestone in its depiction of World War 1. From their initial patriotic, nationalistic fervor, a group of young Germans lose their innocence (and their lives) amid the carnage of the Western Front. 1979’s television adaptation, which won a Golden Globe, is also worth watching. The novel’s title came from a German Army communiqué issued near the war’s end reading “Im Westen nichts neues”, which translates most directly to “in the West, nothing new.”

The underground war fought on the Western Front and at Gallipoli has been, until recently, a rather overlooked aspect of WW1. With both sides facing stalemate, above ground tunneling and detonating vast mines beneath enemy trenches became one way to try breaking the deadlock. Both sides deployed Tunneling Companies, often composed of skilled laborers and miners drafted for their specialist skills. The underground war involved stealth, patience, nerves of steel and the constant risk of being buried alive as tunnelers tried to explode counter-mines to destroy their opponents. Pod kopcem 60 follows one of Australia’s tunneling units as they prepare to destroy German defenses at Messines Ridge, and has a truly tragic ending.

Vydáno v 1976u, Aces High is a combination of R.C. Sherriff’s Konec cesty a Střelec stoupá, the memoir of RFC ace Cecil Lewis. Colin Firth plays rookie pilot Croft; the movie follows him over his first (and last) week as a frontline fighter pilot. Directed by Jack Gold, it also stars Malcolm McDowell as squadron commander Gresham, cracking under the constant strains of casualties and command. Christopher Plummer plays veteran pilot Uncle Sinclair, who takes Croft under his wing, all while Simon Ward’s Lieutenant Crawford is driven mad by constant fear. At this point, the average life expectancy of a rookie RFC pilot was a matter of days. Mostly around 20 years old, these rookies had two choices: Learn quickly, or die.

Lawrence z Arábie

This 1962 epic had all the usual Hollywood trappings without the now-customary Hollywood schmaltz. The cast alone makes it worth watching. Peter O’Toole plays the legendary T.E. Lawrence, sent to assess and advise Arab forces in their campaign against the German and Turkish opposition. Instead, Lawrence turned himself into a WW1 legend—and the Arabian forces into a major threat against their opponents. Lawrence was always torn between loyalty to his country and his Arab ‘irregulars’, and O’Toole plays him masterfully. Lawrence was also right to be suspicious of British intentions in the region, especially when British officials claimed not to have any.

Vydáno v 2008u, Passchendaele focuses on the experiences of a Canadian WWI soldier, Michael Dunne. Written, directed by, and starring Paul Gross of Due South sláva, Passchendaele was partly inspired by the experiences of Gross’s grandfather Michael Joseph Dunne on the Western Front. The grim opening scenes, in which Dunne bayonets a German soldier through the forehead, were taken directly from Gross’s grandfather’s experience. While the battle scenes are graphic, Passchendaele is far from a guts’n’glory epic or a voyeuristic gorefest. The effects of the war, both on those Canadians who fought and those who remained at home, are well portrayed without being unduly schmaltzy or overly worthy. Unfortunately underpromoted on its release, it’s well worth watching.

Howard Hawks, one of early Hollywood’s most celebrated directors, was obsessed with aviation. He transformed this interest into a prolific career in movies when he realized that he could film the stunts he loved so much as part of a larger narrative. Although 1930’s original Dawn Patrol (mentioned earlier) is said to be even better than 1926’s Cesta ke slávě, Hawks’s earlier film is still available for viewing today and exemplifies the ways in which World War 1 was portrayed in the interwar years in the United States.

Released the year after Cesta ke slávě, Křídla is not only a great WWI film—it was also the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film stars silent film starlet Clara Bow as Mary Preston a girl wildly in love with her neighbor, Jack Powell (Charles Rogers). When Powell is sent off to France, Mary follows as an ambulance driver. This war-romance drama, which was also one of the first to show nudity, remains relevant and utterly watchable to this day.

Want more war movies? Sign up for Archiv‘s newsletter, and get thrilling recommendations delivered straight to your inbox.

Top Ten World War I Films

Starting on July 28, 1914, a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a series of European powers declared war on each other, and by August 4, 1914, World War I had broken out. The so-called «Great War» was fought on an industrial scale, with technical advances previously unknown in the annals of combat, including machineguns, poison gas, flamethrowers, «Big Bertha» long-range artillery, tanks, submarines, zeppelins and biplanes which, when combined with trench warfare, led to unprecedented mechanized mass slaughter on the battlefield. Cinema also got into the act, with Tinseltown’s D. W. Griffith shooting battle scenes on location in Europe for the anti-German morale booster «Hearts of the World,» starring Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Erich von Stroheim, and Noel Coward, which came out in 1918. The military’s whiz-bang gadgetry, especially aerial warfare, inspired a lot of cinematic spectacles that followed. In 1927, William Wellman’s «Wings» came out and won the first Best Picture Oscar. In 1930, Howard Hughes directed «Hell’s Angels. In 1958, «Lafayette Escadrille,» was shown, the last film by «Wild Bill» Wellman, an actual 1917 fighter pilot. Fought on a planetary scale, World War I also prompted big screen epics, such as David Lean’s «Lawrence of Arabia,» which won seven Oscars, among them Best Picture and Best Director, plus three nominations, including for a screenplay secretly co-written by blacklisted ex-Red Michael Wilson. But due to World War I’s staggering death toll and endless casualties, patriotic propaganda gave way to the genre’s dominant characteristic: Motion picture pacifism. Unlike Hollywood’s movies about the American Revolution, the Civil War and, later, World War II, the First World War generated international outrage at the futility of war as a meaningless, senseless endeavor to be questioned and criticized. Instead of accentuating heroics and mindless jingoism, war’s horrors were highlighted with cinema asking «What Price Glory» (as the title of Raoul Walsh’s 1926 WWI movie put it). Fueled by these antiwar sentiments, America experienced almost a quarter century of peace and disarmament — until Pearl Harbor burst the isolationist bubble. World War I was no more «the war to end all wars» than its movies were the films to end all films. To mark the 100th anniversary of the not-so-Great War, here’s a list with links to clips of the Top 10 WWI pictures from around the world that prove, in vivid black and white and living color, war is hell.

«The Big Parade»

In King Vidor’s 1925 epic, while «over there» in France. James Apperson (John Gilbert), who enlisted in the American Expeditionary Forces, falls in love with Melisande (Renée Adorée). In a memorable movie moment, the U.S. doughboy teaches the Frenchwoman how to chew gum. The scene where Melisande tries to find James during a massive, impersonal troop movement — the titular big parade — is unforgettable. So are harrowing, realistic scenes of trench warfare and combat in No Man’s Land. The maiming of silent screen idol Gilbert — decades before the prosthetics available to today’s Iraq and Afghan War vets — brought the war home to millions of viewers. (See the video here.)

«The End of St. Petersburg»

Commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik uprising, Vsevolod Pudovkin’s 1927 Soviet silent film shows how WWI triggered the Russian Revolution. As in many other WWI movies, there are gruesome shots of mud, blood, barbed wire, and troops in trenches drenched with water. But unlike most other First World War pictures which simply decry man’s inhumanity to man, the politically astute Pudovkin explains war’s root causes. A bloody battle sequence is intercut with stockbrokers profiteering from the conflict. Hungry women on the home front riot for food as a title proclaims: «Cannon shells instead of bread.» When Kerensky withdraws troops from the frontlines to protect him from the masses, a Bolshevik agitator sways them to shoot their commanding officer and join the revolt. The revolutionary role of radicalized soldiers and sailors is shown as they participate in storming the Winter Palace, overthrowing the government. Unlike many social democrats, who backed WWI, the Bolsheviks and other leftists opposed it with the slogan: «Bread! Peace! Land!» (See the video here.)

«All Quiet on the Western Front»

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 masterpiece of pacifism won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, and playwright Maxwell Anderson was co-nominated for this Hollywood adaptation of German writer Erich Maria Remarque’s novel about German soldiers that dared humanize the dreaded «Hun.» As war is declared, a teacher exhorts Paul (Lew Ayres) and other schoolboys to fight for the fatherland; the rest of the movie debunks this chauvinistic brainwashing. The German soldier Kat asserts that instead of countries fighting it out: «Whenever there’s a big war comin’ on, you should rope off a big field . take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put ’em in the center dressed in their underpants, and let ’em fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.» The finale — when Paul is shot while reaching out from a trench for a butterfly — is heartbreaking in this tour de force against the use of force. (See the video here.)

«Westfront 1918»

This classic by Austrian director G.W. Pabst — a master of Weimar Republic cinema — which also opened in 1930 and is told from the point of view of Central Powers soldiers, is even more bone-chillingly terrifying than Milestone’s movie. Long tracking shots in Pabst’s first talkie convey the cruelty of combat in No Man’s Land. In addition to realistically portraying the bleakness of life at the French front. it depicts hardships on the home front. When a German infantryman returns home on leave after 18 months in the trenches, he discovers his lonely wife in bed with the neighborhood butcher, exchanging sexual favors for meat. A shell-shocked officer goes stark-raving mad and a hospital is full of maimed combatants. Pabst, the profound social critic, prophetically follows the title announcing «the end» with a question mark. (See the video here.)

«La Grande Illusion»

In Jean Renoir’s 1937 critique of the delusion that war is a glorious, ennobling enterprise, Jean Gabin plays a downed French pilot who becomes a prisoner of war. Erich von Stroheim — noted for portraying Prussian militarists — is a flying ace and, after being wounded, a POW camp commandant at a medieval fortress. Shot around the time of Prime Minister Léon Blum’s Popular Front government in France, Renoir’s humanist picture also denounced class snobbery and anti-Semitism, and — in another contemporary reference to Nazis — book burning. Full of the POWs’ longing for female companionship, «Illusion» depicts a touching affair between Gabin and a lonely German woman whose husband was killed in combat. Gabin ultimately escapes with a Jewish officer to neutral Switzerland, refuge from the warfare devastating Europe. Few films have ever questioned war’s underlying rationales as poignantly as Renoir’s expose of the emptiness of the officers’ code of honor. (See the video here.)

«Paths of Glory»

While America prepared to enter WWII, the pacifist strain in WWI movies disappeared; indeed, in Howard Hawks’ 1941 biopic «Sergeant York,» Gary Cooper puts aside his «thou shalt not kill» religious convictions to become a war hero. But anti-militarism returned with a vengeance in Stanley Kubrick’s hard hitting 1957 expose, based on an actual incident. With hyper-realistic black and white scenes of trench warfare and great tracking shots, a suicidal advance across No Man’s Land to take the Ant Hill is ordered by General George Broulard (Adolphe Menjou). But when French forces fail to prevail, as a face-saving measure for the brass, three infantrymen are court-martialed for cowardice. Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) defends the trio, and lambastes the military bureaucracy and the vaingloriousness of high-ranking officers who thoughtlessly sacrifice soldiers for promotions and prestige. (The film also has an intriguing Hollywood Blacklist subtext: Its kangaroo court suggests the House Un-American Activities Committee’s hearings, where the virulently anti-communist Menjou was a «friendly witness.» «Paths» was produced by Douglas’s company Bryna Productions, which three years later made «Spartacus,» starring Douglas, directed by Kubrick — and written by former Communist Dalton Trumbo, who received screen credit, thus helping to end the Blacklist.) (See the video here.)

«King of Hearts»

Director Philippe De Broca’s whimsical 1966 comedy-drama questions the notion of sanity as the inmates literally take over the asylum in a war-torn French village. Who’s crazier: War mongers or the mentally ill? Alan Bates co-stars as Scottish soldier Charles Plumpick, who is trying to defuse a bomb, while Genevieve Bujold plays the lovely «lunatic» Coquelicot. (See the video here.)

«Oh! What a Lovely War»

WWI stands-in for Vietnam in Richard Attenborough’s surreal 1969 satire, which opens with Europe’s grand pooh-bahs — John Gielgud as Count Leopold, Jack Hawkins as Emperor Franz Joseph, Ralph Richardson as Britain’s Foreign Secretary, etc. – bungling their way into global Armageddon. Laurence Olivier plays a field marshal who explains trench warfare’s policy of attrition. But in a bit of canny casting, English activist/actress Vanessa Redgrave steals the show as British socialist suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, who traveled to the USSR and was convicted of sedition. At a pro-peace suffragette rally, Pankhurst reads an antiwar letter by George Bernard Shaw. Hecklers shout: «pacifists is traitors!» Pankhurst responds: «Who tells you this? The newspapers who refuse to publish the pacifists’ letters. Who distort the facts about our so-called ‘victories’… The sons of Europe are being sacrificed on the barbed wire because you misguided masses are crying out for it. War cannot be won. No one can win a war. Is it your wish that the war goes on and on?» Another highlight includes spontaneous Christmas Eve fraternization of enemy soldiers, who leave their trenches to celebrate together in No Man’s Land, which was the basis of Christian Carion’s 2005 «Joyeux Noel.» (See the video here.)

«Gallipoli»

Director/co-writer Peter Weir’s 1981 Australian New Wave movie about the infamous 1915 campaign at the eponymous Turkish peninsula depicts the ultimate futility of war, with ANZACS soldiers cavalierly used as cannon fodder the Brits. Mel Gibson plays Frank, an Aussie sprinter whose loss of innocence during the war symbolizes Australia’s harsh coming of age. As Turkish machinegunners mow down Australians and New Zealanders, Frank desperately tries to relay a message during the melee to halt the carnage. The final freeze frame, as his mate and fellow runner Archy (Mark Lee) is shot, is reminiscent of Robert Capa’s famous photo of a Spanish Civil War Loyalist soldier at the moment of death. Tomaso Albinoni’s elegiac «Adagio in G Minor» helps set the tearful tone. (See the video here.)

«Sarajevo»

According to conventional thinking, Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination was carried out by members of the Serbian extremist group «Black Hand.» However, like Oliver Stone’s 1991 «JFK,» this 2014 Austrian film directed by Andreas Prochaska and written by Martin Ambrosch proposes a counter-narrative to the official version of events. After Ferdinand’s shooting, the authorities assign examining magistrate Dr. Leo Pfeffer (Florian Teichtmeister) to investigate the crime. Pfeffer uncovers the hidden hand of Austro-Hungarian and German military intelligence services, which have their own covert agendas: The liberal-minded Archduke wanted to grant the Empire’s ethnic groups greater autonomy, so reactionary agent provocateurs eliminated him by secretly financing Serbian radicals before Ferdinand could ascend to the throne. His orchestrated liquidation provided the pretext that gung-ho German and Austro-Hungarian hawks needed to declare war on Serbia. The thought-provoking thriller premiered this year at the South East European Film Festival.

Tagy

Ed Rampell

L.A.-based film historian/reviewer Ed Rampell co-authored the third edition of “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book.” Read more by Ed Rampell

Best war film for years: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’

‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is now streaming on Netflix.

“Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.” Those words, spoken by Bertrand Russell, came to mind the other day as my eyes fixed upon a wooden tank that sat above my bookshelf. It was made by my grandfather while he was stationed in the Middle East during the Second World War. A master carpenter, he made it for my father, who then passed it on to me. That model tank was the only connection any of us would have with his time in the war. According to my grandma, he arrived home in full uniform, took it off at the door and, for the next 50 years, never spoke about it.

It is often said that history is written from the perspective of the winner. But in 1928, Erich Maria Remarque published a book that changed that. Celý klid na západní frontě was based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World War 1.

The anti-war novel has been adapted for the big screen twice over the years—once in 1930 and again in 1979, both of which are American. This new iteration, released on Netflix and directed by Edward Berger, is the first German-made version of Remarque’s novel. While the prospect of watching a modern retelling of a classic story usually leaves me feeling uneasy, this is one of the finest war movies I have seen in years. It expands upon the source material without losing anything that made it so powerful in the first place. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a rare example where deviating from the original actually enhances the story it tells here.

The film sets the scene with a chilling prologue. It’s summer 1917; the first world war has been raging for three years, and as casualties mount, the German Army is in desperate need of new recruits. As the camera pans a battlefield littered with corpses, it focuses on a young German soldier just as he is killed. We are then taken on a journey — that of the recruit’s uniform, as it is cleaned of blood and mud, patched up and dispatched to the recruitment office to be recycled.

It is with a dark sense of irony that this uniform is then given to Paul Bäumer (played by Felix Kammerer). Our protagonist is an impressionable young man who forges his mother’s signature to enlist in the army and fight alongside his friends. Dreams of adventure and glory await. Emboldened by patriotic speeches, morale is high as the new recruits head off to war.

But it doesn’t take long until the realities of trench warfare hit Bäumer. As soon as he arrives, he is surrounded by death and destruction. The cinematography perfectly captures this. The in-the-trenches tracking shots bring to mind Stanley Kubrick’s splendid Cesty slávy.

Eighteen months later, the German Army is running low on new recruits. After four years of fighting, defeat seems inevitable. A delegation is dispatched to negotiate an armistice. Meanwhile, the top German general pushes for a final, futile offensive to regain lost ground — a meaningless gesture of defiance, sacrificing thousands of lives in the name of pride. Paul goes back to fight a war that is already lost.

When it comes to illustrating the sheer horror and futility of war, there are few conflicts better suited to the job than World War I. The powerful anti-war message is one that is regularly conveyed in modern cinema. Famous examples include Dřevěné kříže, Král a země, a 1917. Images of brave young men charging across a shell-blasted wasteland, dying in droves to gain a few metres of land only to lose it the next day, are among the most moving and tragic things to come out of the twentieth century.

The violence is unapologetic. Soldiers are often blown up and gunned down before they even manage to leave their trenches. Flamethrowers and tanks are shown in graphic detail. Fighting is animalistic, done with everything from knives to shovels and fists.

While the film shows the truly horrifying reality of trench warfare, some of the most memorable scenes occur when the fighting subsides. Life in the trenches was often a mix of danger, boredom, and hard work. Soldiers were cold, wet, hungry, and caked in mud. Snipers were a regular threat, and at any point, incoming artillery fire could lead to your dugout collapsing. With no one expecting to make it home alive, they bond over a shared sense of bleak fatalism.

After seeing his enlisted friends die, he befriends an older soldier named Kat (Albrecht Schuch) as his mentor.When away from immediate danger, Bäumer finds a brief moment of happiness in their shared camaraderie when they raid a farm to steal a goose for food. Yet privately, Kat is tormented by past regrets and future fears. Can he live with the things he has both seen and done?

The standout performances come from Kammerer and Schuch. The chemistry between them helps convey the friendship they share. As Kat, Schuch is outstanding: strong and passive yet able to show glimpses of vulnerability when we learn he’s a husband and father, terrified of the future.

Credit must go to Netflix. While I often criticise their creative output, their decision to invest $45 million in European cinema has given British audiences a chance to view continental work we would not normally see. The Danish film Bombardování je dobrým příkladem.

As I’ve mentioned, this version is not faithful to the original. One storyline, where real-life German Vice Chancellor Matthias Erzberger attempts to broker a peace deal with the French, is not in Remarque’s novel. I can only assume it’s there to add emotional depth and context. It may not be historically accurate, but I can live with that.

One minor criticism rests with the soundtrack. What’s with the modern obsession with using new music in historical productions? It is so incongruous in tone with the rest of the movie. The jarring techno beat sounds out of place, especially when juxtaposed with a beautiful and moving Bach prelude. Perhaps it conveys the conflicting emotions of war? This is something I first picked up from watching Peaky Blinders.

Celý klid na západní frontě is a remarkable movie. A terrifying experience that will haunt you for a long time — but well worth seeing.

A Message from TheArticle

We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation.

We collect Movies about Trench warfare rating based on ratings and reviews on popular services. To collect Movies about Trench warfare we analyze rendition, popular services, comments, people reviews, forum comments and make our own rating. If you think there is a movie missing in the selection, you can leave a comment with the name of the movie that should be included in the selection. Let’s make a rating Movies about Trench warfare together!