What to expect
Vidor moves from communal humour and romance to combat without treating either mode as disposable. The marching rhythm and patient approach to battle make anticipation as important as spectacle.
How to ease in
Allow the long first half to establish friendship and ordinary routine. Its warmth is not delay; it creates the human scale against which the later movement into battle is measured.
Heads-up
An idle young American enlists for the First World War, forms friendships in France, and discovers how quickly adventure becomes loss.
The film lets friendship become habitual before war interrupts it. I feel the loss in the rhythm: the same group that once moved together can no longer arrive together.
Open the note ↓
The film lets friendship become habitual before war interrupts it. I feel the loss in the rhythm: the same group that once moved together can no longer arrive together.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Version map
Where to go next
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