Wooden Crosses

Wooden Crosses (Les Croix de bois, 1932) — watch online on iFILM, a French war drama directed by Raymond Bernard and adapted from Roland Dorgelès' 1919 novel, written while the mud of Champagne was still fresh on the author's boots. The film follows law student Demachy, who enlists as a volunteer, his laconic mentor Sulphar, and a corporal named Breval who keeps waiting for a letter from his wife.

Bernard shoots the trenches without distance or heroics — just the grinding rhythm of advance, retreat, and new wooden crosses going up. Antonin Artaud, the avant-garde playwright and theorist of the Theatre of Cruelty, plays one of the soldiers, and he brings the same unguarded intensity to the role that marks his writing.

Considered among the finest films about the First World War made anywhere in Europe, this came out in 1932, between the wars, when the wound was still open. Stream Wooden Crosses online on iFILM.