Category: World War I film

Westfront 1918 (1930)

Wonderfully filmed, but grim and slightly too allegorical war film, sitting in All Quiet’s shadow

Director: GW Pabst

Cast: Fritz Kampers (The Bavarian), Gustav Diessl (Karl), Hans-Joachim Moebis (The Student), Claus Clausen (The Lieutenant), Jackie Monnier (Yvette), Hanna Hoessrich (Karl’s wife), Else Helle (Karl’s mother), Carl Ballhaus (Butcher)

If there is one thing you definitely understand when watching Westfront 1918, it’s the impact of the First World War on ordinary Germans. Westfront 1918 is low on plot and is close to an experience film, following four regular soldiers ground down by the military campaign on the trenches, with horrific psychological and physical injuries which will leave most of them dead (or as good as). Our soldiers are Karl (Gustav Diessl), a husband who discovers his wife has found comfort at home in the arms of the local butcher, the young Student (Hans-Joachim Moebis) in love with Yvette (Jackie Monnier), a rotund Bavarian joker (Fritz Kampers) and the tightly-strung Lieutenant (Claus Clausen) under huge pressure.

The inescapable comparison Westfront 1918 lives with is to All Quiet on the Western Front (shot almost at the same-time). Unfortunately, the novel Westfront 1918 is based on is not as strong as Erich Remarque’s and the film goes for such an allegorical universality in its characters (most of whom don’t get names) that it doesn’t carry the same powerful emotional impact. All Quiet also shows its characters going from hope to disillusionment: what Pabst is going for, with unrelenting grimness, is to show disillusioned men stuck in a pointless slaughter, fighting a distant and faceless enemy.

All they is chaotic uncertainty and the suddenness of death. The story is topped and tailed with different types of incompetence and inadequacy. Our heroes, on a brief leave near the front, are forced to hit the basement after their occupied village is shelled by their own artillery (this fuck-up will be repeated again and again, to the exasperation of the Lieutenant as his men duck in the trenches from their own shells). The film climaxes in an over-crowded, shelled-out church acting as field hospital, with over-worked doctors and inadequate medical supplies struggling to save lives. Stressing how much this is a hell on earth, the camera pans past a shattered Christ statue in the rubble. This dance with death isn’t just pointless, it’s ineptly led.

The combat sequences are shot with a strikingly observant camera, soaking up the detail, the soundtrack (and the ground) constantly peppered with exploding shells. Pabst stages our arrival at the trenches in a striking tracking shot, stressing their narrowness and inhospitality and the flimsy protection they provide. The final battle that closes the film – a French tank advance against hopelessly outmatched Germans – includes brilliant stationary shots that hold a fixed view of the battlefield. In front of us march (and run) troops – but also, when troops are hit, their bodies slump and remain there in shot, sprayed with mud when shells explode. Slowly the frame fills with the detritus of war. It’s an extremely well-done capturing of the grimness of war.

Pabst’s film stresses the unfairness and dismissal of the ordinary soldier by the officers. Senior officers are based miles from the front, fighting a very different war: pushing troops around a map and enjoying fine rations, served by batmen. When the Student struggles into their presence with a message after a harrowing journey, they barely register his presence: he’s left slumped on the floor and only fed when the batman sneaks him some food. Everyone is not equal and the soldiers there is no point volunteering for things (the student has only taken on his hazardous mission in the hope he can steal away afterwards to see Yvette).

The homefront is equally troubled, crowds queuing for low rations and those left behind struggling with the loneliness and shame (as millions die a few miles away). Pabst’s film also treats those on the homefront as victims. When Karl’s wife is found in an adulterous twist with a butcher, Westfront 1918 gives as much sympathy to her loneliness and depression as much as it does Karl’s rage. In fact, if anything, Karl’s fury towards a woman he hasn’t seen in 18 months finding some comfort is held up as his character flaw, something he will spend time deeply regretting later. What does a passing moment like this matter when you could be killed at any time? Pabst’s argues we should stick together as Komarades, not turn on each other.

The film’s main weakness is the characters largely act as ciphers and universally representative figures. Westfront 1918 never quite manages to make them people we really care for in themselves, even as they fall. Which isn’t to say the tough moments don’t land: one character’s fate, drowned in a pool of mud, only his hand sticking limply out after death, is especially tough. The impact of death land (literally so in one shot which drains out the light to leave one character’s face literally looking like a skull) but, unlike All Quiet, we never quite feel like we fully know and understand these men.

This is perhaps why Pabst’s film is now most strongly remembered for its technical innovations. His first sound film, Pabst didn’t want his camera to be restricted into a stationary position so that a sound boom could pick up the sounds. He and cameraman Fritz Arno invented a sound-proof casing for the camera to allow them to move. In doing this, Pabst re-introduced much mobility to sound film-making.

Westfront 1918 is a film full of admirable film-making virtues and a strong streak of humanity. It doesn’t carry quite the same emotional impact as All Quiet – and it will always be remembered as that’s companion piece – but it has moments of haunting, virtuoso film-making. It’s view of war as a pointless grindstone inevitably led to it being banned by the Nazis. But it’s also sad to reflect that Pabst spent the next war (reluctantly) filming propaganda films for Joseph Goebbels. As Westfront 1918 tells us, life is cruel.

Sergeant York (1941)

Patriotic flag-waver with a great performance from Cooper and plenty of genuine heart

Director: Howard Hawks

Cast: Gary Cooper (Alvin C. York), Walter Brennan (Pastor Rosier Pile), Joan Leslie (Gracie Williams), George Tobias (“Pusher” Ross), Stanley Ridges (Major Buxton), Margaret Wycherly (Mother York), Ward Bond (Ike Botkin), Noah Beery Jr. (Buck Lipscomb), June Lockhart (Rosie York), Dickie Moore (George York), Clem Bevans (Zeke), Howard Da Silva (Lem), Charles Trowbridge (Cordell Hull)

In 1941, after Japanese bombs landed on Pearl Harbor, America needed patriotic big-screen heroes. Few stood out more than Alvin York. A young man (over ten years younger than Gary Cooper) who had lived a youth of drunken rough-and-tumble before he found the light. When America joined the First World War, the 30-year-old York was called up. A gifted sharp-shooter, York was perfect for soldiering – but had to wrestle with his conviction to stick to the Commandments from the Good Book. Finding a solution to his moral quandary, York fought in France where his sharp-shooting instincts saw him almost single handedly capture a German machine gun embankment and 132 Germans (it’s an achievement that sounds pure Hollywood, but is in fact entirely true).

It’s an inspiring hero story that Warner Brothers bought to the screen at the perfect time, it’s release seeing tales of streams of young men walking from the cinema straight to the enlistment office. Producer Jesse L Lasky spent no less than twenty-two years attempting to persuade the notoriously publicity-shy and modest York (just as in the film, the real York couldn’t wait to leave the glitz and glamour of his triumphant homecoming behind and return to his fiancé, farm and work with the Church) to grant him the film rights to his life. York agreed only with the advance of Hitler, a hefty payment to his Church and a promise that no-less than Gary Cooper would play.

Cooper was reluctant – pointing out he was far too old to play this national hero – but really no other actor could have done it. Cooper won his first Oscar for the role, and it’s his understated sincerity and decency that really sells the film. He turns what could otherwise by a potentially cloyingly perfect man into someone utterly sympathetic and endearing. There is an aw shucks quality to Cooper, as he captures York’s modesty, his shrugging off his accomplishments as no more than his duty, his palpable discomfort with attention (be it from congressmen or his fellow Tennessee farmers commending his shooting) and a deep-rooted genuineness in his love for his beau Gracie (Joan Leslie giving a commendable performance of endearing brightness that helps you overlook she was 24 years younger than Cooper – thankfully she doesn’t look it).

Cooper’s performance powers a sprightly, very enjoyable film by Howard Hawks (who picked up his only Oscar nomination for this) that manages to transcend the danger of being an overbearing flag-waver. (Don’t get me wrong though – this film waves the flag so much, you can practically feel the strain in its arms). Hawks produces a film that in many ways owes as much to The Adventures of Robin Hood as an heroic All Quiet on the Western Front. Despite the patriotic focus being the final few Acts, as York carries out his act of astonishing heroism, the film’s real heart is in the opening half and the conversion of a man who is never-too-naughty into one who casts aside the demon drink, works hard to earn what he has, and puts his faith and the good of others before his own concerns.

Hawks shoots this part of the film with a palpable energy and a rough-and-tumble sense of humour. It’s there from the film’s opening as Walter Brennan (in a role he invests with all his wheezy, twinkly dignity) finds his sermon constantly interrupted by the gunplay of the drunken York and his buddies. There is a light humour when Margaret Wycherly – a little too ethereal for my taste as York’s saintly mum (although her casting does make York and White Heat’s Cody Jarrett siblings) – archly observes that, even when drunk, her son’s accuracy with a shooter is second to none. That’s the skill of Sergeant York there: in it’s end is it’s beginning, York is already deeply skilled and as his slightly embarrassed reaction shows when he sobers up, reformation is not a long journey.

A large part of the success is making York one of us. Striving to save the money he needs to buy the farmland of his dreams, Hawks provides a sweet montage of York undertaking no end of backbreaking, thankless work and returning home to tick off his slowly accumulating dollars under the smiling approval of Ma. When, after all his work, he finds the land has nevertheless been sold (because the owner never believed this previously idle lush could hold on to his hard-earned pennies), his outrage at the breaking of another man’s word is a clarion call to all of us who have played by the rules and been shafted. When his conversion comes, it’s not as out-of-the-blue as it could seem, but a logical conclusion for a journey we’ve watched him go on.

It’s undercut with scenes that drip with Hawksian skill. A marksmanship competition is crammed with a playful Robin Hoodesque skill. A bar-fight that the drunken York gets wrapped up in is so full of comedic tumbles and prat falls it’s hilarious. York’s constantly being fetched for various tasks by his kid brother is expertly played for subtle laughs. Alongside this, the romance between York and Gracie (and the off-screen slapping he hands out to a rival who treats her with disrespect) is beautifully handled.

The only real Hawksian touch missing is that little slice of cynicism, that ability to look under the skin of a legend (like with Wayne in Red River) and see a more flawed person. York basically is perfect, and in a film dripping with patriotism there can’t be any fault with either the army or the moral question of whether gunning down your fellow humans is alright in the service of your country. There is a version of Sergeant York where his commanding officer’s invitation that he take some time and read his way through the history of America (a replacement good book) was an act of naked manipulation of a guileless man. Or where we see the sort of guilt at his taking of life that the real York felt, play out across Cooper’s face. There’s none of that here.

In fact, after the vibrant, playful, heartfelt first few acts, you feel Hawks felt less interested in the war itself. There is a functionality about the final acts of Sergeant York as York aces his shooting tests on the range (although the flabbergasted reaction of his training officer and York’s apologetic manner at his failure to only manage five dead-on bulls-eyes on his first time using an army-issue rifle are funny). Hawks spices it up with York’s turkey-shoot metaphor, and a warm supporting turn from George Tobias (as a New Yorker soldier) and York’s gobble-gobbles to distract his German opponents. But, for all the realism of the trenches, there is an air of duty about this sequence.

But then Sergeant York works not because of the deed, but the man. And the film’s success in investing us in a man who could very easily have been all-too-perfect, in a playful and energetic first half works wonders. With a very fine, perfectly judged performance by Gary Cooper, this may not be Hawks most characterful work – but as the sort of film to showcase a man who inspires you to achieve acts of heroism, it hits the target perfectly.

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)

Pioneering social issues film remains an impressively mounted film, made with real passion

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Cast: Paul Muni (James Allen), Glenda Farrell (Marie), Helen Vinson (Helen), Noel Francis (Linda), Preston Foster (Pete), Allen Jenkins (Barney Sykes), Berton Churchill (Judge), Edward Ellis (Bomber Wells), David Landau (Warden), Hale Hamilton (Reverend Allen), Sally Blane (Alice), Louise Carter (Mrs Allen)

What are prisons for? Just punishment or should they encourage reform and change? To many in the South, its clear prisons were solely about the former and had nothing to do about the latter. That, in fact, you couldn’t reform a criminal – after a prison sentence he would always inevitably come back for more. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, based on a true story, is all about exploring a dehumanising system designed to turn men into working animals, beaten for looking the wrong way. No chance of a pardon, just chain men to each other, shove a pickaxe in their hand and give them a thrashing if they stop swinging it against a rock for more than second.

Based on a memoir by Robert Burns, James Allen (Paul Muni) returns from fighting in World War One with dreams of becoming an architect. Instead, he finds the American workplace is not a welcoming place for a flood of returning soldiers, drifting from state to state for work. Until, in an unnamed Southern State, he accidentally ends up in the middle of a $5 theft and is sentenced to ten years on a chain gang. The prison is a hotbed of inhumanity, with prisoners frequently beaten, dehumanised and all but worked to death. After a year he escapes and finds his way to Chicago where he reinvents himself as a successful surveyor – only, years later, for a bitter wife to expose his secret. Can he trust the Southern State that his sentence will be commuted if he agrees to return and give himself up?

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang was one of the first – and probably one of the best – 1930s social issues films. It’s a surprisingly hard-hitting look at a cruel system, which (although keen to make our hero an unwitting participant in a minor crime, rather than clearly guilty like Burns) passes a sympathetic eye on criminals, asking us to question whether, whatever their crimes, they deserve this system. A system where prisoners can be randomly thrashed near to death by a thick leather belt, where pausing at work will lead to an instant beating. Where a prisoner tied to a post by his neck is such an everyday occurrence, the film is happy to throw it away in a passing shot. It makes a strong case that how we treat prisoners says as much about us as I does them – and that, sadistic wardens quickly become little better than the men they guard.

LeRoy’s film also makes a strong argument that we talk-the-talk but rarely walk-the-walk when it comes to supporting servicemen. James Allen returns a decorated hero – but his family, former employer and patronising reverend brother assume he will happily return to grunt work on the production line. War has expanded his horizons and ambitions, given him the skills to better himself. No one wants to hear it. He’s not alone: many drifters are ex-servicemen and when he tries to pawn his medals a pawnbroker sadly shows him a bucket full of worthless service decorations. It’s an indication that everyone has an assigned role and place and they shouldn’t for one minute expect to step outside this.

It’s no wonder that the prison sentence treats men like animals – a point LeRoy makes by cutting between donkeys and men both being chained up ready for a day’s work. IAAFFACG makes clear in this system all men are equal in their inequality, cutting back and forth from Black to white prisoners as they are prepare for the days work. (The film does make clear there is a higher number of Black prisoners than white). Allen protests at first, but learns to shrug his shoulders and turn away like the rest do. A freed prisoner showcases this indifferent acceptance of suffering, leaving at the same time as a deceased one, hitching a ride on the cart sitting merrily on a fellow worker’s coffin, striking a match for his cigarette on it. LeRoy shoots the prison beds where the men sleep chained together with a forbidding moodiness and the wide-open spaces where they slave in the beating sun with a scale and sense of heat bearing down on us.

Allen won’t be beaten though. His escape is a beautifully filmed and edited sequence, show-casing the film’s triumphant use of sound. LeRoy’s camera tracks both Allen and pursuers as they flee through the undergrowth, adding pace and intensity to the sequence, soundtracked to the bark of the hounds following him. It’s a sound you really notice disappear when Allen hurls himself into a river, using a reed as an air pipe, hiding feet away from his pursuers, in a series of underwater shots that have a haunting power. It’s superbly done, full of tension and fear.

Escaped, first thing James does is buy a suit and have a shave. Instantly he is above suspicion – even while he is perfectly described be a flatfoot cop sitting next to him in the barbers, not a trace of suspicion is placed on to him (thanks for the ‘close shave’ Allen drily says). Now looking like a respectable middle-class sort, James Allen – under his new name of Allen James – suddenly finds opportunities heading his way, moving quickly up the chain at his new job in Chicago. In this world, outward appearances make the man: and a guy in a new suit is always going to get the sort of attention a down-and-out can only dream of.

So much is Allen now an ideal prospect, he is blackmailed into marriage by Glenda Farrell’s hard-faced Marie, a decision that will bite him hard when he makes eyes years later at the sweet Helen (Helen Visnor). He’s pulled back into the world he thought he had left behind, only to find its not changed at all: to the ‘justice’ system his new professional achievements count for not a jot. To them he’s still the same subhuman scum he was before, an even harsher regime swiftly initiated to drive any vestige of humanity from him, even in the face of a national campaign.

At the centre of this film is a superb performance by Paul Muni. Sure, you can see touches of Muni’s love for melodrama, the odd overdone reaction. But this is an emotionally raw, deeply touching performance. Muni gives Allen a superabundance of energy, enthusiasm and hope at the film’s start all of which slowly drains away. The horror builds behind his eyes: it’s no surprise that, re-sentenced to the chain gang, Muni’s face crumbles into genuinely affecting tears of fear and hopelessness. Slowly, despite himself, Allen becomes the toughened, cynical, damaged man the system assumes he was at the start, strangling the hope and optimism that characterised him at the start. It’s a sensitive, deeply humane performance, of humanity being chiselled away.

It results, of course, in the film’s striking (and famous) closing shot, the now fugitive Allen whispering from the shadows, all chance of making an honest life gone. IAAFFACG has already symbolically shown how this system has twisted Allen: having dreamed his whole life of being a bridge builder, one of his final acts in the film is to destroy a bridge as part of a desperate escape. IAAFFACG doesn’t overegg its social commentary, but leaves a strong and lasting impression of how treating men like animals becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leave them no choice and a man must turn to crime: it’s as true for abandoned veterans as it is for chain-gang criminals. In making an appeal for a fairer, kinder world, IAAFFACG doesn’t miss that we are a long way from it right now.

Benediction (2021)

Davies’ final film is a beautifully made, deeply sad, exploration of the long-term impact of trauma

Director: Terence Davies

Cast: Jack Lowden (Siegfried Sassoon), Peter Capaldi (Older Siegfried Sassoon), Simon Russell Beale (Robbie Ross), Jeremy Irvine (Ivor Novello), Kate Phillips (Hester Gatty), Gemma Jones (Older Hester Gatty), Ben Daniels (Dr Rivers), Calam Lynch (Stephen Tennant), Anton Lesser (Older Stephen Tennant), Tom Blyth (Glen Byam Shaw), Matthew Tennyson (Wilfred Owen), Geraldine James (Theresa Thornycroft), Richard Goulding (George Sassoon), Lia Williams (Edith Sitwell), Julian Sands (Chief Medical Officer)

Few generations carried scars as deep as that which saw millions of their fellows mown down in the endless bloody slaughter of World War One. For us, whatever understanding of the horrors of that conflict we have is often filtered through the war poets, who fought in unimaginable conditions. Terence Davies’ final film explores the life of Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden, ageing into Peter Capaldi) whose life never escaped the shadow of those terrible sights and awful losses.

Benediction is a sombre, mellow, deeply sad portrait of a man who spent a lifetime searching for something, anything to fill the void the war had left in him. Following Sassoon’s life in a series of tableaux-style scenes that mix poetry reading, period music, news footage with flash-forwards to the tetchy, weary older man he will become, it’s a sad, reflective work that presents memory as a sort of prison that consigns everyone to a life sentence. Davies catches this beautifully in his stately, melancholic film where survival guilt goes hand in hand with bitter regret at missed opportunities.

It opens with Sassoon’s protest against the war – denouncing its content from his first-hand experience. Saved from the possibility of a firing squad by influential friends (chief among them, Simon Russell Beale’s good-natured Robbie Ross) Sassoon is dispatched to an Edinburgh military hospital to “recuperate”. There he meets and falls in love with the sensitive, shy poet Wilfrid Owen (Matthew Tennyson), a love he is scared to confess. After Owen is killed, Sassoon commits himself to a series of romantic relationships with selfish, bitchy men including Ivor Novello (a marvellously supercilious Jeremy Irvine, whose eyes are stone cold) and the shallow, vain Stephen Tennent (Calam Lynch, full of Bright Young Thing smugness, turning into a lonely, tragic Anton Lesser). As an older man, he converts to Catholicism and struggles to understand his son George (Richard Goulding).

Davies’ film posits a Sassoon who never recovered from grief at the death of Wilfrid Owen and could never truly forgive himself for being too timid to express his feelings. Davies films Sassoon and Owen in scenes that sing of unspoken intimacy, from an overhead shot of a swimming pool dip that feels like a pirouette, to the matching body language they exhibit while sitting watching a variety show at the hospital. They laugh and dance together, but at parting Sassoon cannot move himself beyond a tightly clasped handshake and a whispered urge to stay a few minutes longer.

In discussions with his doctor and friend Rivers (a lovely tender cameo from Ben Daniels), Sassoon tearfully talks of his fear of expressing his own emotions. Perhaps this, coupled with his self-blame, is why Sassoon placed himself in so many relationships with such transparently flamboyant shits? Davies certainly seems to suggest so: Sassoon had less fear of “being himself” when he was with arrogantly confident men like Novello and Tennant. Did he also, the film suggests, feel so crippled with regret and survivor guilt, that he couldn’t believe himself worthy of the love of gentle, decent men, such as the Owen-like Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth).

Sassoon becomes a man who can never fully escape the never-ending hurt of memories. Even as an older man, Davies shows Capaldi’s Sassoon sitting in his garden, the background replaced by news footage of slaughter in the trenches. It’s mixed in with the shame Sassoon felt at his “stand” against the war being, in the end, a moment that changed nothing. Davies further paints his poetry as declining post-war, as if parts of his creative life never survived the shocks he experienced.

And always he hopes something might make him whole again. Sassoon races through these false dawns during the film: relationships with men, marriage to Hetty (Kate Phillips as the younger Hetty is nearly as oppressed with unspoken sadness as Sassoon), the birth of his son – all fail to deliver. So as an older man – in a neat CGI transition during a 360 camera move – Davies transforms Lowden to Capaldi as he tries Catholicism (there is another wonderful cut that takes us from young Sassoon’s silver military cross being dropped into a river, that transitions into the grey-suited older Sassoon lying in a crucifix position on the floor of a church).

But the tragedy of Benediction – and there is no denying it’s a deeply sad and even slightly depressing film – is none of these attempts fill his soul. The older Sassoon – sharp, prickly and with a stare that goes on and on from Capaldi – snaps at things he doesn’t understand, cruelly dismisses the older Tennant and bitterly complains at the lack of recognition his later work received. He’s a man desperate for companionship, but comfortable only on his own.

It’s particularly sad having seen the brighter, passionate and warm man he was. Much of Benediction succeeds due to an exceptional performance by Jack Lowden. Lowden brilliantly conveys Sassoon’s lingering depression and loss under the surface of every interaction. The cheery wit that covers the self-loathing that leads him into destructive relationships and painful situations is as well captured as the self-deceiving optimism he had that everything could be different. Lowden ends the film with an extraordinary emotional moment – filmed in tight one-shot by Davies – where we see, one the last day of the war, his impossible burdens lead him to a single, quiet, emotional outburst of the vast reams of pain that then continued to burn inside him for the rest of his life.

Benediction is about guilt, loss, regret and denying yourself opportunities at happiness and joy through an internal determination that it is not for you. There is something profoundly personal in this – Sassoon’s life in this film, mirroring many of the regrets Davies spoke of in his own life – a fact increased by the heartfelt, gentle construction of the film with its melancholic air and rich sense of empathy for its subject. As a final work, it’s a fitting tribute to both the poet and its director.

The Last Command (1928)

Hollywood and the revolution meet in von Sternberg’s sympathetic look at White Russians

Director: Josef von Sternberg

Cast: Emil Jannings (Grand Duke Sergius Alexander), Evelyn Brent (Natalie Dabrova), William Powell (Lev Andreyev), Jack Raymond (Assistant director), Nicholas Soussanin (Adjutant), Michael Visaroff (Serge)

Hollywood director Lev Andreyev (William Powell) flicks through photos of extras, searching for someone to play the Russian General in his WW1 epic. His eyes light up – the perfect face! Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings) is summoned. But Andreyev has ulterior motives: Sergius Alexander is a former Grand Duke who clashed with the revolutionary Andreyev in Russia ten years ago and this is the chance for revenge Andreyev has longed for. A cousin of the Tsar, Sergius Alexander was commander of the Western Front. Imperious but noble, deeply patriotic, he gave everything for Russia, despite falling in love with revolutionary Natalie Dabrov (Evelyn Brent). The revolution turned Sergius into a traumatised shell and kitting him out in uniform again impacts his sanity.

Von Sternberg’s The Last Command is two films mixed into one. It’s partly a satire on Hollywood, a machine specialising in creating artificiality that chews extras up and spits them out with little regard for their well-being (rather like the trench system the film is set in). The other – and more dominant – part is a classic melodrama of a noble Russian lost and powerless as his world collapses around him. It’s this second part that dominates the film, almost an hour of its ninety-minute run-time being taken up with its Russian flashback sequence. Like many von Sternberg films it’s charged with a mix of sex and sadomasochism, while also being a sympathetic, white-Russian look at the revolution.

Emil Jannings received the first ever Best Actor Oscar for this (and the now lost The Way of all Flesh). At the time Jannings was seen as one-of (if not the) greatest actor in the world, based on his mastery of the expressive arts of silent cinema. Janning’s physicality, his emotion-filled piercing gaze is duly showcased. Jannings effectively plays two parts: the Sergius Alexander of the Russian era, the Russian aristocrat who emerges as a man of honour, dignity and patriotism; and the Sergius Alexander of the present day, a timid, broken man, forever twitching, scared to look people in the eye. In both cases, von Sternberg’s camera constantly pulls back to Jannings whose ability to transform and twist his body – from ram-rod officer to broken husk – is executed perfectly.

Von Sternberg’s gives the bulk of the film’s run-time over to the build-up of the Russian revolution. While The Last Command gives some criticism to the ancién regime – our first shot is of a poverty-stricken mother and baby sitting in the snow, while the Tsar is a paper king more interested in parades than reality – von Sternberg’s affection is clearly for the decent nobles trying to make the system work. The revolutionaries are largely violent or shadowy manipulators (we get a brief scene with obvious Lenin and Trotsky stand-ins, presented as hypocritical middle-class looking schemers focused on power). On the contrary Sergius Alexander is interested only in the good of Russia.

It’s that which wins him the unexpected respect of feared revolutionary Natalie Dabrova, well played by Evelyn Brent. Dabrova is a power-keg whose fire and passion seizes the fascination of Sergius. Their initial meeting is the only time von Sternberg presents him as a tyrannical figure, sitting in an office questioning potential revolutionaries for his own amusement (including a whip across the face for Andreyev). But from there Sergius’ essential decency emerges – his politeness, his old-school chivalry. He treats her like a lady and (eventually) courts her with a Victorian gentility.

That contributes to Natalie’s shift towards seeing Sergius as a man trying his best in difficult circumstances rather than the ogre she assumed. Von Sternberg masterfully shoots the pomp and pageantry of the old Russia, full of military parades, fine dining and smart uniforms using this pageantry to show how it disguised the real threat facing the country. There are also elements of the sado-masochistic in the relationship between Natalie and Sergius. This bastion of the system is attracted to this woman who wants to burn the whole thing down. Visiting her in her bedroom, spotting a hidden pistol, is there an air of debased excitement when he turns his back on her and all but invites her to shoot him? In turn, Brent is almost a prototype of the classic Dietrich character, a strong, imperious woman, who dominates men, torn between conflicting desires.

There is a neat series of contrasts and contradictions in all the characters in The Last Command. Sergius is both a Tsarist bully, a decent man interested only in his country and a shattered husk in Hollywood. Lev is a firebrand revolutionary and an aristocratic Hollywood director. Natalie is a fascinating mix: a banner-waving anarchist who fits neatly into Sergius’ cocktail parties, who despises and loves the General. Duality and hidden identities hints at hidden desires within all the characters in a world tearing itself apart.

That collapse of order is the stunning heart of von Sternberg’s film. The seizure of Sergius’ train by revolutionaries, the final act before his exile, is superb in its vibrant tracking shots and Eisenstein-inspired energy. Jannings is placed at the heart of the crowd in a series of tracking-shot marches through baying crowds all pulling, spitting, pushing and abusing him that is part walk to calvary, part fantasy of humiliation. There are moments of understanding for the masses – a scene shows Tsarist soldiers machine-gun down a mob – though it’s balanced by the ruthless shooting they carry out on wounded soldiers. Sergius is reduced to the lowest-of-the-low, a humiliated figure shovelling coal for his revolutionary masters while they conduct (what looks like) an orgy in his state compartment.

Humiliation is also the name of the game in Hollywood. While The Last Command is more about its sympathetic look at good White Russians let down by the system (fitting von Sternberg’s imperialist sympathies), it throws in to its first and final act an uncomfortable look at Hollywood. Extras crowd at the studio door as another sea of desperate humanity (Sergius’ buffeting here in this crowd, must remind him of that humiliating walk through the mob in Russia). Costumes are flung at people identified only by tickets. Assistant directors treat people like dirt and extras are seen only as props.

But the satire is blunted by the fact that the treatment on set is motived by personal animosity. After all this is Lev – William Powell, rather good and clearly channelling von Sternberg – living out his own revenge fantasy. A sharper satire would have had no link between director and extra, merely seen the heartless system exploit a past trauma for its own benefit – with terrible consequences.

The Last Command is less a satire on Hollywood and more a rose-tinted look at the decent figures in the Tsarist system, with touches of satire on revolutionaries who are either power-mad middle-classes or working-class simpletons seduced by the temptations of drink and sex. It’s also a subtle smuggling in of the director’s own sexual fascinations, with Jannings a superb vehicle for this fantasy of humiliation with Brent shot with the sultry imperiousness of a potential dominatrix. For all this it’s a fine film, a visual marvel and a fascinating character study.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

War is Hell in this impressively made but strangely unoriginal film, that looks the same and carries the same message as countless others

Director: Edward Berger

Cast: Felix Kammerer (Paul Bäumer), Albrecht Schuch (Stanislas “Kat” Katczinsky), Aaron Hilmer (Albert Kropp), Moritz Klaus (Franz Müller), Adrian Grünewald (Ludwig Behm), Edin Hasanovic (Tjaden Stackfleet), Daniel Brühl (Matthias Erzberger), Thibault de Montalambert (General Ferdinand Foch), David Striesow (General Friedrichs)

Perhaps no front-line fighting in history was more hellish than the mud-splattered sludge of death that were the First World War Trenches. Millions of men were fed through an industrial mincer of death, all for remarkably little gain. It was a tragedy born of ambition and pride. It’s cost on the young was beautifully captured by Erich Maria Remarque’s novel (an adaptation of which was one of the first Oscar winners) and it is bought to the screens again in this visceral German adaptation.

Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) and his friends are naïve young men excited to serve in Spring 1917. Little do they know the blood-soaked, brutal reality of war. It’s soon thrust upon them when their first night in the trenches coincides with a catastrophic artillery attack. Skip forward a year and its November 1918. While Germany’s lead negotiator Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl) tries to end the war, Paul and his mentor “Kat” (Albrecht Schuch) just hope to survive. But is there any hope?

All Quiet on the Western Front is raw, bloody and unflinching in its glance at the horrific realities of war. Shot with a cinematic beauty by Edward Berger that turns the mist filled world of no-man’s land into a sort of dreamscape that tips into a nightmare, it leaves no doubt about the brutal cost of war. Bodies are torn apart by explosions, shredded by bullets (even dead ones). Hand-to-hand combat is ruthless and there is not a jot of quarter given on any side. Everything is coated in a sheen of mud and blood, with dying men desperately gulping filthy water or left slumped where they fall.

The after-effects of war are horrifically shown. On their first night one of Paul’s friend is literally shredded by mortar fire. Bodies left on no-man’s land are peppered with bullets. The remains of a soldier is blasted out of his uniform, left hanging several feet up a tree. Paul and Kat discover a missing regiment of young recruits dead in an old factory, having removed their gas masks too soon. Tanks emerge from the mist, setting the ground shaking, rats fleeing before them, spewing death from their machine gun turrets, crushing screaming men under their tracks.

This is actually a fairly loose adaptation of the novel. The original prided itself on its lack of specifics: it’s never quite sure when or where it happens other than in the trenches. The soldiers fight in brutal battles in unnamed locations and simply live a day-to-day existence. This version make everything very specific: November 1918. Sub-plots around the armistice negotiations and the unwillingness of a die-hard Prussian General (a vilely arrogant David Striesow) to accept defeat expand the film beyond the novel’s original scope. However, this expansion never feels fully explored and at times detracts from the film’s richer, more intimate focus on the soldiers.

Berger’s film perfectly captures the sense of these boys being fed into a huge industrial meatgrinder in a cycle of death. The opening sequence follows a young soldier. He trembles with fear before going over the top, aimlessly fires his bullets and then grabs his spade to continue the charge and bludgeon a soldier. Cut to black before we follow the progress of Heinrich’s uniform. It is removed from his dead body, carted back to Germany, washed, repaired and then handed over to Paul as he signs up. Paul questions the name-tag inside: “Must have been too small. Happens all the time” the recruiting officer says, ripping it out. It’s all a production line.

Paul soon learns the truth. Felix Kammerer is excellent as this sensitive, enthusiastic young man (forging his father’s signature so he can join up) who sheds his innocence to become a battle-hardened warrior, succumbing to a mechanical, merciless violence in combat. He kills without hesitation and when guilt arrives – such as his killing of a French soldier in a fox hole – it leaves little long-term impact, so deadened has he become. Equally good is Albrecht Schuch, humane and worldly-wise figure as Kat. The bond – part brotherly, part father-son – is the film’s most affecting personal beat, and its most effecting scene involves Paul reading the illiterate Kat his mail.

There is much to admire here. But yet, while a technical triumph and immersive experience (even its score plays out with the organ-led heaviness of an artillery attack), I was less impressed with it than I expected. Perhaps that’s because it does or says nothing new. The original film was made by many people who were actually in the trenches. This film was made by people who grew up watching movies about wars. It’s frames of reference are subtly different, although its intentions are the same. Maybe that’s why I find it less affecting and less shocking than a film made 100 years ago.

For all its technical skill, the film is a continuation of visual grammar and thematic ideas established in countless films before. The blood-spattered immediacy of Saving Private Ryan. Tracking shots that remind you of 1917 and Paths of Glory. The on-the-streets fury of Black Hawk Down. The rumbling soundtrack of Dunkirk. It tells us War is Hell: but nothing else. Maybe that message is enough and it deserves repeating. But when the film expands the original like this, you want more.

The inclusion of the armistice works against it. The time jump means we lose any sense of the slow disillusionment of these men. Several key moments from the book – most notably Paul’s brief return to a home he can no longer relate to – have been stripped out. Setting the film in the last week of the war leads to a predictable ending that feels like its straining for even more pathos – of course there will be key deaths in the final minutes of the war. A more daring film might have looked more at how a harsh armistice and dark mutterings of betrayal led so many of these young men to hurl Germany back into war only twenty years later.

All Quiet on the Western Front is powerful, but its power is one of reiterating a familiar message. Berger’s film is wonderfully made but only follows confidently in the footprints of other (better) films. It avoids developing its message or context further and it’s expansion of the book’s plotline waters down the personal stories that made it so affecting. It’s grand, cinematic and powerful – but could have been more.

Amsterdam (2022)

Lots of quirk, whimsy and smugness, not a lot of interest or dynamism in this satirical mis-fire

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Christian Bale (Burt Berendsen), Margot Robbie (Valerie Voze), John David Washington (Harold Woodsman), Robert De Niro (General Gil Dillenbeck), Chris Rock (Milton King), Rami Malek (Tom Voze), Anya Taylor-Joy (Libby Voze), Zoe Saldana (Irma St Clair), Mike Myers (Paul Canterbury), Michael Shannon (Henry Norcross), Timothy Olyphant (Tarim Milfax), Andrea Riseborough (Beatrice Vandenheuvel), Taylor Swift (Elizabeth Meekins), Matthias Schoenaerts (Detective Lem Getwiller), Alessandro Nivola (Detective Hiltz), Ed Begley Jnr (General Bill Meekins)

David O Russell’s has made a niche for himself with his ensemble awards-bait films, filled with touches of quirk and offering rich opportunities for eccentric, showy performances from actors. Some of these have walked a fine line between charm and smugness: Amsterdam tips too far over that line. Like American Hustle it’s a twist on a real-life event (opening with a pleased with itself “A lot of this really happened” caption) but, unlike that film, it fails to insert any compelling storyline, settling for a whimsical shaggy-dog story that frequently grinds to a halt for infodumps or lectures.

Set in 1933, just as Roosevelt has taken office, it follows three friends who formed a friendship for life in post-war Amsterdam. They are: wounded veterans doctor Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) and lawyer Harold Woodsman (John David Washington) and socialite-artist-turned-nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie). Berendsen and Woodsman lost touch with Valerie in the 1920s, but now they are all bought together after the murder of their respected former commander as part of a plot from various nefarious types to overthrow the government in a fascist-inspired coup.

Sounds gripping right? Well, Amsterdam fails to find any urgency in this. In fact, details of this plot and the political context it’s happening in are sprinkled around the film as if Russell kept forgetting what the film was supposed to be about. It’s almost as if he stumbled on an unknown piece of American history – a rumoured coup attempt, thwarted by being denounced by the ex-Marine General approached to lead it (here represented by De Niro’s ramrod straight General Dillenbeck) – but got more and more bored with it the longer he spent on it.

Instead, his real interest is in the faint overtones of Jules et Jim style thruple between Berendsen, Woodsman and Voze (though this is American not French, so any trace of homoeroticism is dispatched, despite the obvious bond between the two men). The most engaging part of the film is the Act two flashback to these three healing, dancing and bonding in post-war Amsterdam, in a “our troubles are behind us” bliss. Even if it’s self-satisfied in its bohemianism.

To be honest, even then, they have an air of smugness behind them. They pass the time singing improvised nonsense songs based on words pulled out of a hat and playfully posing in Valerie’s modernist artwork. Valerie is played with almost enough charm by Robbie for you to overlook she is a standard Manic Pixie Dreamgirl, the sort of babe who pulls shrapnel from bodies to turn it into artistic tea-sets as a commentary on the madness of war. She and Woodsman form a relationship (with the married Berendsen as a sort of – well I’m not sure what, but definitely not a sexual third wheel) and these blissful Amsterdam days are the times of their life. Russell is so keen for us to know it, that all three pop up in short cutaways at key moments to whisper “Amsterdam” direct to the camera, an affectation that fails to deliver the spiritual impact its straining for.

It’s better than the shaggy dog story around the conspiracy that fills the 1930s part of the storyline. This remains so poorly defined, that Bale has to narrate a concluding slideshow of clips and fake newsreel and newspaper coverage to explain what on earth has just happened. The lack of clarity about the stakes – and the general lack of seriousness or urgency anyone treats them with –fails to provide any narrative oomph. Instead, it drifts along from casual meeting to casual meeting, every scene populated with a big-name actor showboating.

There is a lot of showboating in this film. Bale, an actor with an increasingly worrying tendency for funny voices and tics, fully embraces the facially scarred, glass-eye wearing Berendsen, perpetually stooped with a war wound and prone to fainting from pain-killer overuse. It’s a showy, actorly performance with a licence to go OTT. Bale does manage to invest it with an emotional depth and vulnerability, but there’s more than an air of indulgence here.

Most of the rest follow his lead. Malek and Taylor-Joy sink their teeth into a snobby socialite married couple. Rock essentially turns his role as a veteran into a less sweary extension of his stand-up act. Myers and Shannon seize with relish roles as ornithologist spies (is this meant to be a joke about the origins of the James Bond name from the author of a bird-spotting guidebook?) Poor John David Washington ends up feeling flat with his decision to underplay (like he’s in a different movie) and only De Niro really manages to feel like anything other than an actor on holiday.

Russell wants to make a point about the continual corruption of the rich and how their hunger for more power will never be sated. There are some half-hearted attempts at attacking racism, with the ill treatment of black veterans, but it lacks bite or edge. His attempts to draw parallels with Trump are all too clear, but the film largely fails to integrate these ideas into the film. In fact, it ends up relying on voiceover lectures from Bale about dangers to democracy. It ends up like being hectored by an angry socialist after a student revue night.

The film is shot with a series of low angle shots and medium and close ups that eventually made me feel like I was watching it from the bottom of a well. A vague sepia-ish tone is given by Emmanuel Lubezki, but the film looks flat and visually uninteresting (so much so I was stunned to see $80million had somehow been blown on it, despite most of the cast working for scale). It drifts towards a conclusion, without giving us anything human to invest in (as Russell managed so well in Silver Linings Playbook or The Fighter) or providing the sort of caper enjoyment he delivered in American Hustle. Instead, it’s oscillates between smug and dull.

Mothering Sunday (2021)

Arthouse flourishes and trickery drown this try-hard literary adaptation

Director: Eva Husson

Cast: Odessa Young (Jane Fairchild), Josh O’Connor (Paul Sheringham), Sope Dirisu (Donald), Olivia Colman (Mrs Niven), Colin Firth (Mr Niven), Glenda Jackson (Older Jane Fairchild), Patsy Ferran (Milly), Emma D’Arcy (Emma Hobday)

Based on an award-winning novel by Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday is mostly set on a single day: March 30^th 1924. Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) is the maid of the Nivens (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), both of whose sons died in the Great War. The only surviving son of their close social circle is Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), who has been conducting a secret sexual affair with Jane for several years. On this fateful day, Paul sneaks away from his fiancée (who was originally to marry the Nivens’ deceased son, James) for a tryst with Jane. The tragic after-effects will shape Jane’s future life. This is intercut throughout the film as she deals with the illness years later of her lover, philosopher Donald (Sope Dirisu).

Mothering Sunday is a proud, in fact a little too proud, art-house film. It takes an intricate, well structured and delicate novel by Swift and piles on the technique to try and wring as much meaning from the piece as possible. In doing so, Husson drowns a simple story in cinematic tools. Skilful cutting, intriguing shots, rich layered music, artful compositions, juddering intercutting between timelines, repeated shots and symbolic compositions eventually give an impression of a film trying too hard to impress.

It’s a story that would have carried a world more impact if it had been told with simple directness, where stylistic flourishes felt natural rather than exploited at every conceivable opportunity. Instead of moving though, the film eventually becomes tiring and the pointed dynamism of the film’s making gets in the way of the emotion. As we are cut away from moments of emotion, or the dialogue tries too hard to capture the complexity of Swift’s writing (as my wife put it, “there is a lot of talk about jizz”), we are constantly prevented from encountering the quiet emotion and unspoken devastation that should be at the heart of this simple-but-shattering story.

Even when Olivia Colman’s character – in her only real scene – is heart-rendingly confessing her pain at the loss of her children and her envy of Jane for her orphan status (she has no one to lose), Husson’s camera seems at least as interested in making you admire the fiddily mirror-based tracking shot she is using to shoot it. It is far more impactful and graceful when it sits still: for example moments like Colin Firth’s well judged performance of deeply repressed grief and pain, which expresses itself in very British banalities about the weather and doing-the-decent-thing.

Which isn’t to say that Mothering Sunday is a bad film, or that there aren’t moments of deeply impressive film-making. A dashboard-mounted camera that follows Jane’s disguised torment as she is driven to the scene of disaster is memorable, and there are beautiful shots like an aerial shot lingering over a fire in a forest that haunt the imagination. The film has a haunting quality to it, like a half-memory that flits from clear picture to clear picture via hazy recollection. But all this style swamps the impact. The film never has the patience to sit down and let us get involved in its story properly. Or really tackle how lasting the impact of loss – particularly the generational loss of the 1910s – had on families and, by extension, the whole country.

Mothering Sunday’s main successful feature is the hugely impressive performance from Australian actress Odessa Young. Not only is her accent faultless, but Young has a poetic romanticism in here that sits equally alongside an old soul within a young body. Much of the film is dependent on her micro-reactions to moments of life-changing sorrow and joy. She spends a large chunk of the film naked (as required by the source material – although this is also another tiresome sign of the film’s overly proud ‘arthouse’ badge) – but imbues this with a bohemian freeness that suggests it’s the only time, released from the shackles of her work clothes, that she feels truly free. She carries almost the whole film and does so with a consummate, compelling ease.

There are fine performances as well from Josh O’Connor – channelling Prince Charles somewhat – as a conflicted man, crushed by the burden of carrying the expectations for a whole generation, and Sope Dirisu (in a rather thankless role) as Jane’s later philosopher lover. Glenda Jackson contributes a neat cameo as a Doris Lessing-like older Jane, now a hugely successful novelist, reacting just like she did to the winning of the “major international prize” for literature.

But the overall film never quite manages to carry the impact it should. It should leave you consumed with the sadness and waste of early death and the destruction that comes from war. Instead, you will remember more the pyrotechnical invention of its making – and the wonderful score by Morgan Kibby – rather than any heart or sense of tragedy.

La Grande Illusion (1937)

Friendship, class, warfare and change are explored superbly in Jean Renoir’s masterful war film

Director: Jean Renoir

Cast: Jean Gabin (Lt Maréchal), Marcel Dalio (Lt Rosenthal), Pierre Fresnay (Captain de Boëldieu), Erich von Stroheim (Major von Rauffenstein), Dita Parlo (Elsa), Julie Carette (Cartier), Gaston Modot (Engineer), Georges Péclet (Officer), Werner Florian (Sgt Arthur), Jean Dasté (Teacher)

“Cinematic Public Enemy Number 1”. That’s what Joseph Goebbels called Renoir’s La Grande Illusion on its release in 1937. It’s easy to think it’s because of its pacifist stance – the idea that war itself is the Grande Illusion – but perhaps it’s because Renoir’s masterpiece isn’t easy to dismiss as polemic. It’s intelligent enough to present soldiers who believe in fighting a war on different levels, but don’t see that as a reason to hate the enemy. La Grande Illusion is as much about the passing of an era and the important links that bring us closer together rather than tear us apart. And that of course was anathema to a Nazi regime, intent on crushing freedom of any sort in Europe.

Renoir’s film is one of the foundational war films, the first great POW drama. Two French officers are shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over enemy lines. One is working class pilot Lt Maréchal (Jean Gabin), the other aristocratic Captain de Boëldieu (Pierre Fresnay). Moving from camp to camp, the two finally find themselves in a camp run by the German officer who shot them down, aristocratic Major von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim). Von Rauffenstein and de Boëldieu have more in common with each other than the soldiers on their own side – though von Rauffenstein’s Victorian, romantic view of the world differs from de Boëldieu pragmatic awareness of the advance of change. When Maréchal and fellow prisoner, Jewish officer Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) plan an escape, will de Boëldieu help them?

La Grande Illusion is a beautifully thought-provoking and gorgeous piece of film-making, a wonderful and hugely influential film. (It inspired, among others, The Great Escape with its tunnel digging escape exploits and Casablanca’s famous La Marseillaise scene). It’s a pacifist film, masquerading as a war film – but one where we never see any fighting. A polemic would have shown us the horrors and slaughter of the trenches. La Grande Illusion shows us men proud to be soldiers, praises their bravery, centres the cavalry-style dignity of the air-force and features just one death. What makes it more pacifist is the lack of anger or rage of its characters, their lack of rancid nationalism.

This is partly because the film explores a war at the cusp of societal change. The nineteenth century era of ‘gentleman’s war’ is passing away, as are the old societal hierarchies. Maréchal and de Boëldieu are on the same side, but when they are shot down it’s striking that they have more in common with their supposed enemies. Invited to a commiseration dinner by the victorious German pilots, the aristocratic de Boëldieu bonds with flying ace von Rauffenstein (they speak in English together, something that immediately separates them from the others, about horse racing) while Maréchal is delighted to find a German working-class pilot was, just like him, a car mechanic in Marseilles. There is no hatred here, just mutual respect.

On arrival in the camp these class differences are magnified. Maréchal (the magnificently charismatic Jean Gabin) fits in far easier with the other French prisoners, all of them either professionals (engineers, teachers and the like) or outsiders, like Jewish officer Rosenthal (a heartfelt Marcel Dalio). Maréchal is inducted, enthusiastically, into their escape attempts (including the tunnel digging) as well as the social events, like the cabaret shows. de Boëldieu is a different case: there is a faint air of distrust (one prisoner even questions whether he should be told about the tunnel), and he gently refuses to take part in any cabaret and indulges the escape attempt through a sense of fair play.

But de Boëldieu is aware his world is moving on. Superbly played by Pierre Fresnay, with a wry, breezy upper-class distance that masks an acute insight, de Boëldieu knows the future belongs to commoners like Maréchal. His world – and his counterpart von Rauffenstein – is one of horse-racing, society dinners and grand houses, where a gentleman never lets a person’s nation affect his perception of them. He takes part in the war as a final grand gentleman’s sport, but also knowing that a glorious death is “a way out” of the difficult social changes that will follow.

It’s an understanding not shared by von Rauffenstein, played by an iconic preciseness by Erich von Stroheim. Von Rauffenstein respects the word of a gentleman (during a search, he tears apart the beds of every prisoner but de Boëldieu, taking his word for it that he has no contraband), sees war as a glorious expression of masculinity but never something that should come between friends. Locked within a neck brace, his posture stiff and his hands forever in trapped in tight white gloves, there is more than a hint of the closet to von Rauffenstein – and his faintly homoerotic attraction to de Boëldieu, who he sees as a natural brother-in-arms is both sad and slightly touching.

Where do de Boëldieu’s loyalties lie though? To his social equal and contemporary with whom he shares a lifetime of upperclass pursuits, or his fellow countrymen with whom he shares nothing? It’s the core of the second act of the film, as Maréchal and Rosenthal plan their escape and ask for de Boëldieu’s help. Goebbels was no doubt also unhappy with the presentation of Rosenthal. Sure, he fits many of the Jewish stereotypes: he’s a rich foreigner whose family has bought up French land. But he’s also decent, kind, shares his food and sheds a tear when Maréchal is released from solitary confinement. Maréchal and the others aren’t above befriending him despite his Jewishness, but here Rosenthal is a hero.

He’s also part of the melting pot of characters who, though they have moments of prejudice, are fundamentally all in it together. A black French prisoner goes more or less uncommented on. In solitary confinement, a distraught Maréchal is bought a harmonica by a friendly German guard, which he then delightedly plays. The French officers join in a mutually teasing relationship with an officious German guard. The various nationalities in the prison camp all muck in on their cabaret show (and escapes – a blackly comic language barrier prevents a departing Maréchal from informing a newly arrived British officer there is an escape tunnel finished and ready to go in the camp). Despite the world is tearing itself apart, but that’s not a reason for people to hate each other.

Indeed, on the run from the prison camp, Rosenthal and Maréchal find refuge on the farm of a German mother, Elsa, and her daughter, her husband having been killed in the war. (War victories get remarkably little airtime in La Grande Illusion – the famous singing of Les Marseillaise after Maréchal announces a French victory is followed in the next scene by the Germans winning it back. In the camp the soldiers grow increasingly cynical about the shortage of promised easy victories). Maréchal and this woman form a romantic bond – with Rosenthal as translator – that again transcends national boundaries. Can you imagine Goebbels being thrilled at that paragon of Aryan maidenhood, falling in love with a lunking Frenchman whose fellows killed her husband?

Neither would he be thrilled by von Rauffenstein’s desperation to save the life of de Boëldieu, the man abetting an escape. Dancing through the POW castle, pipe in hand, literally leading the guards a merry dance, de Boëldieu stage-manages his own death to leave a legacy and avoid facing the future he knows he has no place in. There is a fatalism about de Boëldieu not present in any other character: and certainly not von Rauffenstein who can’t imagine his world is ending.

But life will go on for others. Every character has a longing for life outside of the demands of war. During the cabaret, a French officer dresses (convincingly) in drag: there is something touching about the stunned, longing silence that falls across these men as they stare upon the closest thing to a woman any of them have seen in years. Maréchal plans for a future with Elsa, Rosenthal one of acceptance in his French home. War is an encumbrance, but one people understand is a burden on all regular people.

The film is beautifully made by Renoir, who uses a series of striking long-takes and intricate camera moves to create a feeling of time and place that is completely convincing, but also hugely engaging and immersive. Characters constantly stare out of windows, stressing their isolation, or are framed seemingly encased by their surroundings. Leaving aside the technical achievements and artistry, La Grande Illusion is a heartfelt, complex and moving film that challenges and questions as much as it feels regret for a time being left behind. By avoiding polemic, and stressing simple humanity and the madness of hate, it’s one of the most powerful anti-war films ever made.

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Julie Christie and Omar Sharif are star cross’d lovers in Lean’s epic but flawed Doctor Zhivago

Director: David Lean

Cast: Omar Sharif (Dr Yuri Zhivago), Julie Christie (Lara Antipova), Geraldine Chaplin (Tonya Gromeko), Rod Steiger (Victor Komarovsky), Alec Guinness (Lt General Yevgraf Zhivago), Tom Courtenay (Pasha Antipov/Strelnikov), Siobhan McKenna (Anna Gromeko), Ralph Richardson (Alexander Gromeko), Rita Tushingham (The Girl), Bernard Kay (Bolshevik), Klaus Kinski (Amoursky), Noel Willman (Razin), Geoffrey Keen (Professor Kurt), Jack MacGowan (Petya)

Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is one of the seminal 20^th century novels. Smuggled out of the USSR after being refused publication, it became an international sensation and led directly to Pasternak winning the Nobel Prize (although the USSR insisted he turn it down). A film was only a matter of time – and who else would you call but David Lean, master of the pictorial epic, to bring the novel about the Russian Revolution to the screen. Lean – with his masterful Dickensian adaptations – was perfect in many ways but Doctor Zhivago, for me, is the least satisfying of his ‘Great Films’. It’s strangely empty and sentimental, lacking some of the novel’s strengths zeroing in on its weaknesses.

Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) is training to be a Doctor in the years before the outbreak of the First World War. Married to Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin), the daughter of his father’s old friend Gromeko (Ralph Richardson), Yuri is part scientist, part poetic free-thinker. Events throw him together with Lara (Julie Christie), a young woman whose fiancé Pasha (Tom Courtenay) has ties to the revolutionaries, while she is trapped in an abusive relationship with the amoral Komarovsky (Rod Steiger). But are all these troubles worth a hill of beans in a country about to tear itself apart?

There are many things you can’t argue with in Lean’s film. It is of course unfailingly beautiful. Ironically filmed in Fascist Spain, it’s gorgeously lensed with a luscious romanticism by Frederick Young (who won his second Oscar for a Lean film). It’s not just pictorial beauty either: Young frequently makes wonderful uses of splashes of Monet red to dapple the frame. From poppies in a field to the ubiquitous communist imagery on uniforms and walls. There are some wonderfully cool blues employed for the snow, while slashes of light pass across eyes with a gorgeous lyricism.

Romance is the name of the game, with everything working overtime to stress the star cross’d lovers plot. Maurice Jarre’s score – in particular its balalaika inspired Lara’s Theme – mixes Russian folk inspirations with an immortal sense of longing. It plays over a film that, while very long, often feels well-paced, even if (just as the novel) its episodic and at times rambling. Lean’s direction of epic events revolving around personal loves and tragedies is still exquisite in its balance between the grand and intimate. The film is wonderfully edited and a fabulous example of long-form storytelling.

So, what’s wrong with Doctor Zhivago? In a film with so much to admire, is it possible Lean and co spent years working on something only to bring the word but not the spirit to the screen? The key problems come round to Zhivago himself. This is man defined by his poetic soul. His poetry becomes a sensation after his death. His balalaika is a constant companion, and his playing of it an inherited gift (which even has major plot implications). Inexplicably, the film has not a single word of poetry in it (when it had Pasternak’s entire back catalogue to work with) and Zhivago never so much as strums the strings of his balalaika. It’s like filming Hamlet and then making him a mute.

The problem is, removing the character’s hinterland makes him a rather empty character. Zhivago is a liberal reformer, in sympathy with the revolution but not it’s methods. This should be at the heart of understanding his character, but like his poetry the film has no time for it. Instead, Zhivago is boiled down into a romantic figure, nothing more. He has no inner life at all, a blank canvas rather than an enigma.

Suddenly those long lingering shots of Sharif’s puppy-dog eyes end up carrying no real meaning. They aren’t the windows to his soul, only a big watery hole with not much at the bottom. Sharif is awkwardly miscast – and lacks the dramatic chops O’Toole bought to Lawrence – but it’s not completely his fault. His character has had his depth removed. When we see him struggling at the front, trapped on a long train ride to Siberia or forced to work with partisans, he’s not a man who seems to be considering anything, but just buffeted by fortune, neither deep or thoughtful enough to reflect on the world around him. That’s not really Pasternak’s intention.

Instead, the film boils the novel down to his plot-basics and, in doing so, removes the heart of what got the book banned in the first place. Lean misunderstood the future of Soviet Russia so much, he even chose to end the film with a romantic rainbow at the foot of a waterfall. The horrors of the civil war and the revolution are largely there briefly: a gang of deserting soldiers unceremoniously frag their officers and Zhivago frequently stares sadly at villages burned out by Whites or Reds (or both). But the film is more of a romance where events (rather than politically and social inevitability) gets in the way of the lovers – like Gone with the Revolution.

By removing the more complex elements – and the poetic language of Pasternak – you instead have the rather soapy plotline (with its contrivances and coincidences) left over. Again, it’s Hamlet taking only the events and none of the intellect or language. (And Pasternak’s novel didn’t compare with Hamlet in the first place.) Both Zhivago and Lara are shot as soft-focus lovers, with Julie Christie styled like a perfectly made-up slice of 60s glamour. It’s a grand scale, but strangely empty romance, because both characters remain unexplored and unknowable – in the end it’s hard to care for them as much as we are meant to do. For all the epic scale, small moments – such as an aging couple sharing a cuddle late at night on a train floor – carry more impact. How did the director of Brief Encounter – a romance that speaks to the ages for its empathy – produce such an epic, but empty, posture filled romance as this?

Julie Christie does fare better than Sharif – she’s a better actor, and her character has a bit more fire and depth to her. But she’s not in the picture enough, and Lean quietly undersells the terrible trauma of her eventual fate. Ironically, the smaller roles are on surer ground. Geraldine Chaplin is rather affecting as Zhivago’s wife, a dutiful and caring woman who her husband loves but is not besotted with. Ralph Richardson is witty and moving in a tailor-made role as her eccentric father. Tom Courtenay landed the films only acting Oscar nomination as the reserved and conflicted Pasha. Rod Steiger is very good as the mass of greed, selfishness and barely acknowledged shame as Komarovsky. Alec Guinness is bizarrely miscast as Sharif’s younger brother (!) but handles some of the film’s duller scenes well (Lean’s decision to have him never speak on screen except in the film’s framing device works very well).

There is a lot of good stuff in Zhivago, but this is a neutered and even slightly shallow film, that’s far more about selling a romance than it is telling a true adaptation of the themes of the novel. In Lawrence, Lean showed us multiple aspects of a conflicted personality to leave us in doubt about who he really was. In Zhivago, he just presents a rather empty person and seems unsure if he wants to use to ask who he is. The film concentrates on making the romance sweeping and easily digestible. What it doesn’t make us do is really care for them as people.