Drama · War
American
1930 · Directed by Lewis Milestone · 133 min
In 1914 a classroom of German schoolboys is talked into enlisting by a fiercely patriotic teacher. The film follows them from barracks to the Western Front. It is an American studio picture, adapted from a famous novel, told entirely from the German side.
Why it matters in cinema history
A landmark of the first years of sound and a founding text of the modern anti-war film, it proved that a Hollywood studio could make a large-scale, uncompromising picture about war.
Watch with intention
Watch how the film uses the camera and its simplest images to show what young men are taught to believe, and what they find.
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