Wooden Crosses

Terrific dark anti-war WWI film, light years ahead of it's time stylistically, with battle scenes that rival (and clearly inspired) Kubrick's great 'Paths of Glory'.

More cynical, cutting, and real than 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. The film focuses on the various members of a battalion who are basically canon fodder. There's no real lead, just an observation of these slowly hardening men, as a group, and no real plot, just a series of episodes.

Not every episode is as strong as the other, but enough are so powerful they make this a special and important film, amazingly directed for its time.

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.

One reviewer accuses "Les Croix de Bois" of not giving any reason/explanation/philosophical whatever for the Great War.

He terribly missed the point.

"Les Croix de Bois" is adapted from one of the most famous French novel written about WWI. Roland Dorgeles was a veteran and his main purpose was to talk about his own experience and not "to make a point" against war.

The movie is just about that. Recrating an experience. A terrible one.

Raymond Bernard was himself a veteran and it shows. The depiction of the life in the trenches is vivid. We feel under our skin the misery of the soldiers, their small moment of joy and their fear in front of something to big to be comprehended. You do not think of philosophy when machine guns are screaming at you.

Raymond Bernard employed a lot of actors and crew members who actually were in the trenches and he managed to show war on a daily basis from the smallest event to the major assaults. The 10 minutes battle in the middle of the film is so realistic that it looks like a war documentary. In the early thirties the former battle sites were not just memories. The scars were still there. Waiting for the next ones.

The acting is a bit dated, particularly Pierre Blanchar who has a tendency to overplay and is far too old for the role. But he fought too during the war and his fixed eyes are the result of a gas attack.

This movie is to be put alongside "Battleground" or "A Walk in the Sun". The Zero Level of War. Just Men alone and scarred. No reasons, no explanations, and certainly no Philisophy.

1930 saw two great anti-war films about WWI--"All Quiet On the Western Front" and the German-made "Westfront 1918". Both were unrelentingly grim and accurate in their portrayal of war as a never-ending hellish existence. These were certainly NOT the glorious depictions of war you usually see for WWII. This is for several reasons. First, WWI was unusual in its brutality and pointlessness for the average soldier--far,far worse than wars before or since. Second, the 1930s was an era when the reality of the past war had finally sunk in--that many millions had essentially died for nothing. As a result, the anti-war movement was exceptionally strong. Third, unlike the films made during WWII which were made to bolster the war effort, this WWI type of film was made to show how war sucks and should not be fought--or perhaps how not to fight it.

While "Wooden Crosses" is one of the great anti-war films of this era, it's not one of the very, very best (such as the two mentioned above). The biggest reason is that the characters are more ill-defined--and so one person looks pretty much like another. This makes for a less satisfying film--but also perhaps reiterates the anonymity of war. And, I must point out, it does a terrific job of showing what war is like--with gobs of explosions and death. But, because other films had come out before it that were just a bit better, this film somehow got lost in the process. A truly exceptional film--but try the other two first. And, if you'd like, also try "The Eagle and the Hawk" as well as "Ace of Aces"--two excellent American anti-war films that truly personalize the awfulness of war.

What makes this film so impressive is its sinister direction, always kept at a calm distance but firm control by Raymond Bernard in visualizing a hell on earth worse than any hell imaginable, as it gives an all too convincing impression of never ending. The central battle scene in the middle of the film gives its definite stamp of a relentlessly realistic documentary in which category it outshines almost all the other first world war films including "All Quiet on the Western Front" (more personal), Rex Ingram's "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (more sentimental), Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" (more theatrical) Renoir's "The Grand Illusion" (more romantic) and "Oh What a Lovely War!" (musical). Not just the long great battle scene, but many scenes give the impression of going on forever, as they are so implacably sustained resulting in an overwhelming impact, like the dying corporal scene with Charles Vanel, who continued a long distinguished career in films with above Henri-Georges Clouzot in the 50s, and his death scene here is only a prelude to what follows - one can understand the veteran from that war who in 1962. when seeing the film on TV, committed suicide afterwards. It's all about ordinary men, good faithful soldiers, who keep on cheering and making the best of it as if the reality of the timeless horror was just something to accept as the ordinary, their natural cheerful moods and the irony of the absurd military self-deceit accentuating the superior quality of this film as the most realistic of first world war films.