SOURCE: Geisler, Michael. “The Battleground of Modernity: Westfront 1918 (1930).” In The Films of G. W. Pabst: An Extraterritorial Cinema, edited by Eric Rentschler, pp. 91-102. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Geisler examines the ways in which Pabst's film Westfront 1918 reflects Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic rather than the events of World War I depicted in the film.

A number of major texts in film history have never been accorded their due because more popular contemporary releases have pre-empted the audience's as well as the critics' attention and interest. Pabst was twice unlucky in this respect. The Joyless Street (1925) had had to compete with D. W. Griffith's 1924 release, Isn't Life Wonderful?, which dealt with inflation-ridden post-World War I Germany. Likewise, when Westfront 1918 premiered on May 23, 1930 at the Berlin Capitol Theater, it was soon superseded by Lewis Milestone's slicker and technically more sophisticated All...