Adoplphe is studying to be a pilot, and while training at the aviation school, stays in the neighboring country with fellow flier Sigismond where he lives. When their two countries start a war with each other, these two friends find themselves on opposite sides for no good reason.
This is the first of a quite a few anti-war films. It appears to be unique in that it actually predates WWI. The tensions were rising when it was made. And it would appear that this was made in the hope that it would convince those with the power and influence to prevent it from happening to do so. As we all know it failed, meanwhile, the ambition is immensely admirable. This has flying bombers, even though flight was in its early days, and in fact this predicted that the military would use them. In addition to being made in the early days of film as a medium. There are even images clearly captured by placing the camera on one of the planes. It visualizes concepts that would get boring to read about(keeping in mind this has no spoken dialog, as it predates it. There is a little singing), including heart-ache from missing a loved one. The battles are big, with dozens(at one point, possibly a hundred or so) of extras, which lead one to ponder the cost in human lives, many explosions, and a lot of destruction. Thus, in what is ultimately not a lot of screen-time, this conveys the vast and meaningless devastation of war.
I have found two versions of this, both available for free, online, with subtitles in English and Dutch. One is on YouTube with the original music. The other is on Wikipedia with hand colouring. If you simultaneously play both and look at the image of the second one, you get the effect of both. The latter was where my father and I found it. We had just finished yet another of our countless viewings of both versions of All Quiet On The Western Front, and decided to look up just how old the sub-genre is. It is a real shame we didn't already know of it. When I write this, there is only one other review here on IMDb, and links to two external ones, one of which appears to no longer be up(the site is, though). Nothing on Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic, both of which have ones for, say, early adaptations of Robin Hood, one of the sites including the one from 1922, so, other "old" pictures.
I recommend this to everyone. 8/10
