Comradeship

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Audience Member A year after directing the enlightening World War I drama Westfront 1918 (1930) Georg Wilhelm Pabst directed this foreign language (with subtitles) drama about â??comradeshipâ?? between French and German miners who work the same coal mine on opposite sites of the border. Like director John Fordâ??s subsequent Oscar winner How Green Was My Valley (1941) the film gives one a very real sense of (the family) life in a mining town and the dangerous (and claustrophobic) nature of the work. Based on a real incident some twenty-five years earlier Pabst and his writers Peter Martin Lampel Karl Otten & Ladislaus Vajda begin their story by illustrating the tensions between the citizens of two mining communities one in France and one in Germany. Unemployed Germans are refused work in the French-side Tribault mine and some others find that theyâ??re really not welcome to mingle (e.g. with the women) in Franceâ??s social settings. Prejudice and mistrust between the neighboring countries are still fresh more than 10 years after the Great War had ended. But an un-extinguishable fire burning in the core of the Tribault mine which requires that a new wall be built to contain its heat regularly eventually finds gas and causes a large scale disaster cave-in that traps or kills more than six hundred French miners. The special effects are terrific especially for the time. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member Pabst effortlessly combines realism and strong emotions through his command of craft. It's idealistic in the best way. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Audience Member One of G.W. Pabst's most important films, an early sound classic that utilizes realistic, fluid photography, and on site sound design to convey the immediacy and danger of a mine collapse. Also important: the Germany/France co-production, smack between two World Wars, melodramatically stressing unity and (per the title) comradeship. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review eric b G.W. Pabst directed this inspiring tale of a French coal-mine accident and the German miners who cross the border to help rescue the buried men. The film's realism is remarkable, such that it's hard to even imagine the sets' construction or how all the cave-ins and underground fires were staged. On the other hand, the procedural intrigue usually found in this sort of story is missing -- the action merely shows rescuers going down and dragging survivors back to the surface. Not much else. The accident's scope doesn't quite register either -- we're told that 600 miners are stranded (most of them killed, presumably), but the depiction gives no sense of such a huge disaster. Scattered people are pulled out, and the people gaily celebrate. Happy ending? Perhaps not. Make sure to see the German cut! I researched the film afterwards, and found that the German version is seven minutes longer than the American cut I saw on TCM. The longer version is on YouTube, and has an opening prologue and cynical closing scene that markedly improve the film. Minus the crucial final scene, "Kameradschaft" has more of a "hooray for Germany!" tone that's mighty tough to swallow considering what happened in Germany just a few years after the film's release. Rating: three stars for the US version, and three and a half for the German version. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Deserves to be mentioned alongside Grand Illusion as great anti-nationalistic movie, only this one's also layin' down some disaster movie framework, complete with impressive mine explosion effects. A smart ending plays it just a tad cynical, making its bilingually-shot French and German ally message all the more depressing given that World War II was only 8 years away, but without tainting the film's positive message. A Pabst Blue Ribbon for this one! Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Idealistic German-French co-production from GW Pabst. Kameradschaft features a highly progressive soundtrack and preempts Italian neo-realism in its realistic depiction of mining families in the Ruhr in the aftermath of the First World War. Its socialist politics are over-simplified, but it has a certain charm nonetheless. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Comradeship

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