Blu-ray, DVD Release: Westfront 1918

By
Laurence
– January 19, 2018Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Jan. 30, 2018
Price: DVD $27.66, Blu-ray $22.09
Studio: Criterion

G.W. Pabst brought the war movie into a new era with his first sound film, 1930’s Westfront 1918, a mercilessly realistic depiction of the nightmare that scarred a generation, in the director’s native Germany and beyond.

Digging into the trenches with four infantrymen stationed in France in the final months of World War I, Pabst illustrates the harrowing ordeals of battle with unprecedented naturalism, as the men are worn away in body and spirit by firefights, shelling, and the disillusion that greets them on the home front.

Long unavailable, the newly restored Westfront 1918 is a visceral, sobering antiwar statement that is as urgent today as when it was made.

Presented in German with English subtitles, Criterion’s new editions of the film contain the following:

* New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* Hour-long French television broadcast of World War I veterans reacting to the film in 1969
* 2016 interview with film scholar Jan-Christopher Horak
* New restoration demonstration featuring Martin Koerber and Julia Wallmüller of the Deutsche Kinemathek
* New English subtitle translation
* An essay by author and critic Luc Sante

Buy or Rent Westfront 1918

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.