I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

The film "Wooden Crosses" 1932 was a pretty good film. It was about a handful of soldiers who fought in the second world war. The conversation did not go deep into the psyche of the individuals instead the images and the silence seemed to tell the story. The banging of machine gun fire, the tension between the two countries (Germany and France) and the friendships being made in the trenches where lasting communications prevailed.The sequencing of images was amazing. I remember sitting watching the movie and experiencing the absolute continuity of the camera frames. The sound of the pull-back on the mechanical canon was like a metal thug rejecting and re-surging. It was a very unique sound that seemed to bring me into the battlefields.The pain and agony in the eyes of the actors was something that I found to be very real. There was no senseless blood pouring out - instead there was raw emotion and pain present.The despair was stealth with bravery, courage and hope.At the end of the film the lead character has a hallucination - one of wealth and success versus one of white wooden tombstone crosses. The final hallucination was what makes this film last the test of time. The hallucination captured the patriotism and ends with the disillusionment of one individuals life. It captures the attempt at happiness and ends with the realization of death and nothingness.A great movie to watch on an Autumn evening in Canada. A time when the leaves are falling off the trees and when the nature from the summer seems to fade away like apples on a tree.Annuska. Canada.

This is a film about the human cost of war. It opens with a beautifully crafted scene: a shot of soldiers standing in rank and file on parade dissolves to rows of crosses in a military cemetery in identical alignment. After a close-up of a marble cross engraved "In Memoriam" there is a dissolve to rows of fresh grave mounds, each headed by a rough wooden cross. There follows a scene of crowds of walking men and crowds of marching soldiers who have responded to notices of general conscription. We have been taken back in time.From this point, the film follows the experiences of a particular squad in the French army during World War I, as a young law student joins their ranks. This is a familiar way to depict war. We know we will get to know this small group of soldiers. We expect some will die, because that is what happens in war. We also might expect to see their efforts and sacrifice in some kind of context.What is striking about this film is its especially narrow focus. We might expect that, since it is so easy to do in film, our perspective would widen at some points to show us "the bigger picture." This film never does. There are no wide sweeping shots of a battlefield. As it would be for the ordinary soldier, our view is low and limited. In the most open field in broad daylight we never see more than a few dozen men. Many scenes occur at night. (The effect of light from falling flares is very effectively captured in the photography.) Artillery shells come unexpectedly, seemingly at random, from nowhere. Orders arrive, and, like the soldiers, we do not know what led to them being given or what larger purpose the action will serve. At one point the soldiers shout "We saved the town!" But we have no idea what town it is— only that they are referring to a complete ruin.What we do see are the occasional breaks from the stress of the battlefield. Even those are filled with uncomprehended occurrences: distribution of new helmets and knives, calls to parade when what is needed is rest, expected leave suddenly cancelled.We are aware individual deaths. They die beside their comrades. They fail to return. Two men realize they can use their dead comrade as a parapet. One effective scene has a soldier go outside the bunker as lookout. A nearby shell explodes, and the soldiers call their comrade's name. A soldier goes out to look, returns. "Well?" "We need another lookout." The soldier who goes out takes his post next to the dead comrade. He listens for a moment to the groans and appeals of the wounded on the other side of the parapet, and has to cover his ears.We are reminded of the dead in an effective shot used twice in a scene of the soldiers marching on parade during one of their breaks. In the background is a church. Superimposed in the sky above is the silhouette of a similar line of soldiers climbing uphill, as if to heaven.The film ends with the death of the young law student. Wounded during the day, he must keep awake until dark, when medics might be able to reach him. As he becomes delirious, we again see soldiers climbing uphill in the sky. This time, they are all carrying wooden crosses, and this time, there is more than one file. Some of those passing close to us are German soldiers.So, in a sense, this film does include a wider perspective. It just isn't the wider view we are used to seeing in films about war.

1930 saw two great anti-war films about WWI--"All Quiet On the Western Front" and the German-made "Westfront 1918". Both were unrelentingly grim and accurate in their portrayal of war as a never-ending hellish existence. These were certainly NOT the glorious depictions of war you usually see for WWII. This is for several reasons. First, WWI was unusual in its brutality and pointlessness for the average soldier--far,far worse than wars before or since. Second, the 1930s was an era when the reality of the past war had finally sunk in--that many millions had essentially died for nothing. As a result, the anti-war movement was exceptionally strong. Third, unlike the films made during WWII which were made to bolster the war effort, this WWI type of film was made to show how war sucks and should not be fought--or perhaps how not to fight it.While "Wooden Crosses" is one of the great anti-war films of this era, it's not one of the very, very best (such as the two mentioned above). The biggest reason is that the characters are more ill-defined--and so one person looks pretty much like another. This makes for a less satisfying film--but also perhaps reiterates the anonymity of war. And, I must point out, it does a terrific job of showing what war is like--with gobs of explosions and death. But, because other films had come out before it that were just a bit better, this film somehow got lost in the process. A truly exceptional film--but try the other two first. And, if you'd like, also try "The Eagle and the Hawk" as well as "Ace of Aces"--two excellent American anti-war films that truly personalize the awfulness of war.

My summary seems to imply I found this film tedious. No, that's not the case. If anything it's very close to a masterpiece. There's not enough space to recount its memorable sequences. In fact everything about it is memorable. What stands out is the way war reduces individuals to cogs in a machine of death and destruction. A person's background, education, social standing, his worth as a person, counts for nothing. All that matters is his ability to run headlong into a volley of bullets in what is surely diametrically opposed to his instinct for survival. The politics of war are useless, nobody really cares why they're fighting. They only want to stay alive. This is best portrayed in the scenes of the tunnel dug by the Germans to place explosives under the French positions. The French soldiers know full well what is about to happen but their superiors do nothing to protect them and in scene after scene they wait for the sound of the digging to stop. When they're relieved they rush to shoulder their packs and hurry out of their now compromised safe-place seemingly unconcerned for their replacements. They're safely away when the explosion takes place. All we see is the plume of smoke and are left to imagine the horror above, like the soldiers, who continue on their way, only too glad to be alive. And this is only one vignette of the many that make up this film. But if there's one thing it brings out most vividly is how tedious war is. As a civilian I have a distorted view of war as ceaseless combat. Intellectually I know this to be false but our arts concentrate on the action in war and ignore the endless hours in-between, when nothing happens and soldiers just wait and wait and wait. "Wooden Crosses" portrays this tedium better than any other I know of. We, the viewers, get caught up in it, are oppressed by it and want to turn away but can't because we have become involved in the nearly anonymous soldiers and want to see them come out alive even though we have come to expect the worst. This is not an easy film to watch. But it should be required viewing.