Wooden Crosses (Les croix de bois)

Film Review by Chris Buckle | 31 Mar 2015
Film title: Wooden Crosses
Director: Raymond Bernard
Starring: Pierre Blanchar, Gabriel Gabrio, Charles Vanel
Release date: 30 Mar
Certificate: PG

Countless films declare ‘war is hell’, but few do so with as much bitter veracity as Wooden Crosses. Adapted from Roland Dorgelès’ autobiographical novel, it follows a group of soldiers through the trenches and battlefields of WW1 France, their ranks ever-dwindling and their outlook increasingly disillusioned.

Though it now lives in near-contemporary All Quiet on the Western Front’s shadow, Wooden Crosses is arguably the more affecting work. Its horrors feel grimly authentic, lent weight by an excellent cast comprised entirely of veterans, as well as director Raymond Bernard’s decision to shoot on actual battle sites (which, the DVD extras reveal, led to the discovery of several unrecovered bodies). The film's standout scenes eschew both softness and sentimentality, with infantry piling endlessly onwards, soldiers dying alone in no-man’s land, and ghostly battalions marching with head markers in hand. Appropriately enough considering its ‘in memoriam’ epigraph, Wooden Crosses proves hard to forget. [Chris Buckle]