Les croix de bois

Comments on this film are bound to centre around comparisons to All Quiet On the Western Front - reasonably enough, since Wooden Crosses was specifically made as a rival to that film. It isn't as engrossing as Milestone's classic, perhaps because it never really characterises the soldiers strongly enough, and also because it lacks the variety of incident which makes All Quiet so entertaining despite its grim subject matter and episodic structure.

But both these flaws are also strengths: Bernard's skill in conveying the de-humanising effects of war, as well as the sheer repetitious tedium of the ordinary soldier's experience, lend to his film a bitterness and realism which its - occasionally naive - American predecessor lacked. There are one or two scenes in this film so bitter and horrifying that no war film matched them until at least the 1950s.

For this reason, the film may find more sympathy with today's audiences, who - after Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, The Thin Red Line, Jarhead etc - expect a war film to immerse them in sheer violent futility for two hours, and are likely to regard lack of incident as a mark of authenticity.

This film is nothing if not authentic (the cast was made up entirely of war veterans), and the documentary realism of the battle scenes was a real shock to me. Complaints that, unlike most war films, it makes no reference to the wider context of the war, are understandable...but I think they miss the point. The film is indeed a violent mess: what else must it have felt like for the men in the trenches? Wooden Crosses faithfully plays out Lew Ayres' famous speech from All Quiet (maybe paraphrasing here): 'We live in the trenches and we fight. We try not to get killed. That's all.'

I thought I already knew how inventive and daring early '30s film-makers were, but just on the strength of this film (haven't watched Les Miserables yet...) Bernard deserves to stand with the best of them - Lang, Milestone, Vidor, Eisenstein. The lyrical beauty of so many of the images in Wooden Crosses, and the intense horror of some others, left me gaping in disbelief at the screen, and will always stay with me. Perhaps because it's 76 years old, and because it's such an unsung pioneer, this film makes me revert to clichés and superlatives. But it really is one of the very best war films ever made.

Based on a biographical novel concerning life during WW1 this is included in the Raymond Bernard Box set from Eclipse (ie. Criterion). Made in 1932 the film seems to have been made years later. The technical aspects of the film are astounding. a blending of silent and sound techniques with images that foreshadow the Hollywood films of the 1940's, the war documentaries of the second world war not to mention modern films such as Saving Private Ryan and the Thin Red Line this film for the most part doesn't feel 75 years old.

The plot follows a company of men from enlistment to the end. After a slow start where the film introduces everyone and we get a feel for the characters the movie moves to the trenches and battle where we are placed into harms way with the men we have been introduced to. What follows are essentially a series of set pieces that move the men further and further in to war's nightmare. There is a sequence where the men wait in the trenches and in one bunker in particular, where they can hear the German tunneling below them to place charges which will, when detonated blow them to kingdom come. Its an unnerving sequence since the men know whats coming but are unable to do anything about it- except hope that their rotation comes before the bombs go off. The centerpiece of the film is an never ending attack, on ward and onward and onward. How could anyone do such a thing? As a title card say the attack lasted for ten days. I was exhausted by the sequence and it lasted only for twenty or so minutes. Its an amazing piece of film making.

If there is a flaw in the film its that the dialog sequences seem more Hollywood convention (if you'll allow me to say about a film made in France). The group of men are your standard bunch and they all seem to get lost. Not that it ruins the film, it doesn't, it just keeps the film from having that complete emotional connection.

Rightly considered a classic film, this is must viewing for anyone who loves the cinema.

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.

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.

My summary seems to imply I found this film tedious. No, that's not the case. If anything it's very close to a masterpiece. There's not enough space to recount its memorable sequences. In fact everything about it is memorable. What stands out is the way war reduces individuals to cogs in a machine of death and destruction. A person's background, education, social standing, his worth as a person, counts for nothing. All that matters is his ability to run headlong into a volley of bullets in what is surely diametrically opposed to his instinct for survival. The politics of war are useless, nobody really cares why they're fighting. They only want to stay alive. This is best portrayed in the scenes of the tunnel dug by the Germans to place explosives under the French positions. The French soldiers know full well what is about to happen but their superiors do nothing to protect them and in scene after scene they wait for the sound of the digging to stop. When they're relieved they rush to shoulder their packs and hurry out of their now compromised safe-place seemingly unconcerned for their replacements. They're safely away when the explosion takes place. All we see is the plume of smoke and are left to imagine the horror above, like the soldiers, who continue on their way, only too glad to be alive. And this is only one vignette of the many that make up this film. But if there's one thing it brings out most vividly is how tedious war is. As a civilian I have a distorted view of war as ceaseless combat. Intellectually I know this to be false but our arts concentrate on the action in war and ignore the endless hours in-between, when nothing happens and soldiers just wait and wait and wait. "Wooden Crosses" portrays this tedium better than any other I know of. We, the viewers, get caught up in it, are oppressed by it and want to turn away but can't because we have become involved in the nearly anonymous soldiers and want to see them come out alive even though we have come to expect the worst. This is not an easy film to watch. But it should be required viewing.