The story concentrates on four German soldiers, stationed in France in the final months of World War I. The film illustrates the harrowing ordeals of battle and of life in the trenches, as the men are worn away in body and spirit by firefights, shelling, and the disillusion on the home front.

G.W. Pabst’s first foray into the “talkies” was this ruthlessly naturalistic anti-war film, which remains one of the classics of the genre. The great Austrian director paints a series of unforgettable images of life in the trenches and ambitiously stages the brutal and epic choreography of warfare.