Standschütze Bruggler

When the Great War rolls around, the old-line militia of a small Tyrolean village is mustered, young and old alike. Ludwig Kerscher was planning on being a priest. First, though he must survive the war.

Earlier in the decade, directors like Pabst made war films that were anti-war. This one assumes the necessity, since the militia is assigned to a post in the high mountains which guards access to their own village. It also has elements of the Mountain picture, founded by Fanck. Shot in Tyrolia and the Dolemites, the images of the mountains lack the beauty that Fanck's movies offered, but they reveal the harshness of the scenery.

A peculiarity of the DVD I looked at is that the packaging proclaims this "The Finest World War 1 Mountain Film of the Nazi era." Were there many such? My favorite online site for discussing old movies had people claiming that only Hollywood produced genre films in this era. True enough, this claim might simply be bombast; even the existence of two other "World War 1 Mountain Films of the Nazi era" would not render it a genre like the Singing Cowboy films. It does, however, suggest that our lack of examples of non-Hollywood movie genres in the era are due to not being able to look at them, rather than their non-existence.