Episode 1 | July 28, 2014 |
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World War I. It's been a century and the last veteran passed away in 2012. The causes of the conflict are barely common knowledge today and it's mostly remembered as being the world war that came before World War II. July 28, 2014, marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia that began World War I. For the next sixteen weeks, from today until Veterans Day, November 11, I'm going to look at a handful of films that took place during this conflict. My aim with this sixteen-part series is to proceed chronologically, from movies made contemporaneously with the end of the war up to the present. Each will examine the war from a different angle – for example, today will be "the dehumanization of war." I'll look at films from multiple genres, from tragedy to comedy and even a musical. I'll look at films both anti-war and pro-war though, spoilers, World War I has a much greater tendency to produce pessimistic movies than the more gung-ho efforts that surround World War II. I'll also look at films from other countries, with English, French, German, and Australian productions accompanying the American releases. Lastly, narrowing a list to only sixteen films spread over a hundred-year timespan means that, inevitably, something noteworthy is going to be left out. Exclusion doesn't mean dismissal; only that there are more movies about the First World War than I had room for. First, some history. World War I is interesting because its causes tend to be shrouded in a thick fog of oversimplification. One might say that its bloodier sequel, World War II, spoiled our historical appreciation. That second war offered clear-cut motives surrounding a larger-than-life, unfathomably evil dictator with visions of racial purity and thousand-year reichs dancing in his head. The first war had scheming emperors doing ... something or the other and ... look out Franz Ferdinand! The World War I that I was taught in school basically went that the June 28, 1914, assassination of this guy, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a radical in Sarajevo, resulted in war against Serbia as direct retaliation that spread to the rest of Europe, dragging everybody else in with it. It's quick history for easy consumption, ignoring complex internal politics and long-standing imperial ambitions in favor of reducing the casus belli to a single individual in a single instant. This ignores that the impulsive Franz Ferdinand was the last person his uncle, the aged Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, wanted as his successor. Franz Joseph's own son, Archduke Rudolf, had died with his mistress in a suicide pact scandal in 1889 – an incident that was dramatized in the film Mayerling. Rudolf's death shifted the line of succession to the emperor's detested nephew, Franz Ferdinand, whose premature death was likely greeted by the emperor with satisfaction as it allowed his favorite nephew, Charles, to become the new heir presumptive. There was also the little fact that Austria-Hungary had been gradually absorbing the Balkans and had been struggling against radicals in the region while trying to bring Serbia under its flag. Austria wanted to control the Balkans so badly that the Archduke's death on Serbian soil was like Christmas come early. Where an outright invasion would have been frowned upon internationally, courting it as a declaration of war on grounds of revenge gave Austria-Hungary's takeover of Serbia an air of legitimacy. Meanwhile, up in Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II had invasion plans ready to go and had been looking for any excuse to go to war since rising to the throne in 1888. The assassination in Sarajevo opened up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Germany to quickly volunteer itself to Austria-Hungary's aid. Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28 and Germany did the same – and on Russia, for good measure – on August 1. The next day Wilhelm's armies tore west, into Luxemburg and Belgium, forcing England and France into action due a prewar defensive entente, to have one another's back if and when a war finally came. And that is still extremely condensed. Most war movies don't concern themselves much with the origins of the conflicts they're set against. The important end goal might drive the story forward, but the political wrangling that set the war in motion in the first place isn't usually reflected upon. That's why I'm skipping slightly ahead, to 1930's All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone. Based on the best-selling novel by veteran Erich Maria Remarque, this classic anti-war treatise takes the time to wax philosophical, reflecting back on how our heroes found themselves in this mess. The soldiers in this film wonder, quite fairly, what they're even fighting for. The political wrangling that resulted in their death and suffering is over their heads and, not that they have a say in it, but they'd still like to know what offenses they're fighting against. It's less about a fallen archduke than for the glory and riches of emperors, generals, and manufacturers. All Quiet on the Western Front follows German soldier Paul Bäumer, played by Lew Ayres, from starting out a bright-eyed recruit to ending up a weary-eyed veteran. Paul's journey through the war is a dehumanizing experience, stripping him of the normalcy of the real world and replacing it with a twisted new life of falling shells and the constant expectation of death. This is Paul's new normal, with its new sense of priorities and actions, entirely out of step with those he left at home and suited only to his new life in a land of constant death and mutilation. Paul quickly ceases to be capable of functioning with the normalcy of his pre-war self, an idealistic, impressionable lad who might well go on to greater things. It's in the opening scenes where we meet the film's villain. It isn't any enemy that Paul and his companions may encounter in battle, or a politician who drove the world to war for personal gain. It's Kantorek, the boys' professor, an expected source of trust, who fills their heads with misleading jingoism, encouraging them to abandon their studies and the pursuit of knowledge for the worthy goal of fighting, and dying, for the Fatherland. Kantorek is a poor teacher, leading his students to quit school, abandon creative avenues, and enlist immediately under grossly unrealistic expectations. Paul’s loss of human normalcy is driven out of him though repeated shellings, charges across no man’s land into enemy gunfire, and a grisly incident in which he spent a night trapped in a crater with a dying French soldier. Unable to escape, Paul has no choice but to watch his supposed enemy die as his mind cracks under the stress. This is Paul’s breaking point. From here there’s no turning back. Normal human society becomes an alien concept, leaving only bitterness, anger, regret, and death in his future. Two situations arise that plunge Paul back into civilization. The first is a one-night encounter with impoverished French women. After making love, she and Paul have a one-sided conversation, figuring out one another’s name but little else. This honest and sincere human contact causes a Paul a crisis of faith. Chances are that she wouldn’t have a clue what Paul was saying even if they spoke the same language. By this point he’s simply too far gone. The second situation happens when Paul is granted a return home on leave following an injury. What he finds is a world he can no longer fit into. His sister is nearly a stranger, his mother can only think to warn him about the temptations of no good women, and his father surrounds himself with armchair general friends, dismissing the value of trenches, tracing their favored invasion routes on a map, and informing Paul of his lack of understanding when the soldier attempts to offer a suggestion. Coming across Kantorek, still spouting the same misinformation after three years, Paul is called a coward for speaking ill of the war before snapping. He decides to forgo the remainder of his leave and return to the front right away, to the only world he now knows. By the time All Quiet on the Western Front was made, it was becoming apparent that the world was entering a spiral back to war. The Nazi Party was on the rise in Germany, disrupting screenings of the film by shouting and releasing rats in theaters and coercing Universal Pictures to make edits. Hitler came to power two years later, banning and burning this and other works of Erich Maria Remarque, eventually driving the author to escape Germany while he still could. In its home country, All Quiet on the Western Front went on to win Best Picture at the third Academy Awards in 1931 with Best Director going to Lewis Milestone. All Quiet on the Western Front remains as powerful today as it was eighty-four years ago. Perhaps as a result of playing Paul Bäumer, Lew Ayres became a lifelong pacifist, claiming contentious objector status during World War II and volunteering as a medic. Despite going ashore under fire with troops in the Pacific, Ayres’ career suffered on his return home and took some time to recover. All Quiet on the Western Front doesn't explicitly come out with a message promoting peace and diplomacy over conflict so much as it bears the message that, if you're so gung-ho about going to war, here's the human carnage and devastation you can expect. It stands as a warning, that there are Paul Bäumers on both sides in every battle ever fought, being broken and torn apart for sometimes spurious reasons ... and that we'd do well to remember that from time to time.
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