Les croix de bois

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.

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.

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.

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.