The precedent user wrote that he saw old men crying while watching this film.Such is the strength of these pictures.Raymond Bernard's movie compares favorably with "All quiet on the western front" (Lewis Milestone)"Westfront 1918" (Pabst) or even more recent works such as "paths of glory" .
Bernard 's approach (transferring a best-seller for the screen) was almost documentary.We know almost nothing about the three leads.The intermixing of the social classes (there is a baker,a worker and a law student)was not,as it has often been mooted,the main subject -as it was in Renoir's "la grande illusion" - of "les croix de bois" .Its purpose is,as the precedent user wrote,to show that horror is timeless.
"If you do not get the military Cross ,you'll get the wooden cross " the soldiers sing.The prologue tells it all: ranks of soldiers become ranks of crosses.In "J'accuse"(Abel gance,1938),a soldier says that pretty soon there will not be enough wood to make crosses for the graveyards.
Admirable sequences:
-A soldier is singing a peaceful "Ave Maria" in a church but a terrifying camera movement reveals an improvised hospital with disabled soldiers .
-A dead soldier has received a letter.One of his mates lays it down on his grave with a rose.
-The central battle scene which lasts about 15 minutes.On the screen ,a line appears "it lasted ten days" ,then another one "ten days" ,then in large characters "TEN DAYS".
-The soldiers taking refuge in a graveyard (!) where one of them (Charles Vanel) is dying, cursing again and again his unfaithful wife,then breathing his forgiveness.
-The student's death ,with death rattles and cries of terror all around him (I want my mum!I do not wanna die!).The ending does not use any music,which was rare at the time, and it increases tenfold strength and emotion.
After watching this movie on TV,in 1962, a WW1 old campaigner committed suicide.It speaks volumes about the strength of these pictures.
