{"id":2140,"date":"2018-11-06T12:10:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T17:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/?p=2140"},"modified":"2018-11-06T12:10:56","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T17:10:56","slug":"does-we-really-need-to-say-it-westfront-1918","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2018\/11\/06\/does-we-really-need-to-say-it-westfront-1918\/","title":{"rendered":"Do We Really Need to Say It: Westfront 1918"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tWestfront 1918<\/em>\u00a0(DVD 16017)is one of Media Services\u2019 newest acquisitions, but it\u2019s one of the oldest films we\u2019re reviewing for this series. A contemporary of All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>, Westfront<\/em> explores many of the same themes, like the camaraderie between soldiers and alienation from the home front. Like All Quiet<\/em>, Westfront <\/em>is based on a memoir\/novel by a German veteran. Unlike the American-produced All Quiet<\/em>, however, Westfront <\/em>is a purely German production. The movie was actually G.W. Pabsts\u2019 first \u2018talkie,\u2019 but Westfront <\/em>is remarkable for its relative lack of dialogue. Instead, Pabst relies on vocal silence, and the environmental noises of war.<\/p>\n

The film follows four German soldiers on the Western Front in the final days of the war. We get a sense that a lot has happened before the movie begins. The men in the company joke and \"\"make fun of each other like old friends, they all look haggard, and their uniforms are worn, dirty, and messy. Because we know the context, we can guess about what these men have seen together, but we can only <\/em>guess. This allows the audience to do two things. First, it lets us fill in the gaps for ourselves. We can imagine something infinitely worse than what they\u2019ve actually experienced, or something easier. Either way, we\u2019ll probably never guess the truth. This, in turn, serves to isolate the men from the audience. Pabst is effectively putting us in the shoes of the men\u2019s families back home, a theme which is explored later in the film.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re further isolated from the men because only one of them, Karl, is ever named. The others are simply \u201cthe Lieutenant,\u201d \u201cthe Bavarian,\u201d and \u201cthe Student.\u201d We really only know Karl\u2019s name because he gets home leave halfway through the movie, and that\u2019s how his mother and wife refer to him. Again, the viewer can guess about the men\u2019s lives before the war, but in the end, it doesn\u2019t really matter. They are there on the front, and that\u2019s all that matters.<\/p>\n

This reticence in details extends to the film\u2019s dialogue. The men don\u2019t need words to communicate. Silence or significant looks work just as well, and they often convey more than mere words could. Again, this binds the men together and excludes the audience, but it also allows their situation to speak for itself. The most common sound in Westfront<\/em> is not the human voice, but explosions from incoming shells. Nearly every shot features an explosion, or at least the sounds of explosions if the men are in a dugout or behind the lines. The men take precautions, and do what they can to avoid the fire, but they have by and large ceased to be afraid. Sure, they drop to the ground when they hear a shell coming towards them, but you get the feeling that it\u2019s more a matter of procedure than out of terror or fear.<\/p>\n

Westfront 1918<\/em> reflects the realities of the Western front, and average soldiers\u2019 experiences, without fanfare and without moralizing overtones. While the film definitely has an anti-war agenda, it isn\u2019t overt. Instead, it creeps up on you, and leaves you thinking about war\u2019s implications long after the movie ends.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Westfront 1918\u00a0(DVD 16017)is one of Media Services\u2019 newest acquisitions, but it\u2019s one of the oldest films we\u2019re reviewing for this series. A contemporary of All Quiet on the Western Front, Westfront explores many of the same themes, like the camaraderie between soldiers and alienation from the home front. Like All Quiet, Westfront is based on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwi-on-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}