It was directed in 1930 by G. W. Pabst, from a screenplay by Ladislaus Vajda based on the novel Vier von der Infanterie by Ernst Johannsen.

The film shows the effect of the war on a group of infantrymen portrayed by an ensemble cast led by screen veterans Fritz Kampers and Gustav Diessl.

The film bears a very strong resemblance to its close contemporary All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), an American production, although it has a much bleaker tone, consistent with Pabst's New Objectivity work through the late 1920s.

In 1918 in France during the last months of the First World War, four infantrymen – the Bavarian, a young man known as 'the Student', Karl, and the Lieutenant – spend a few rest-days behind the front.

An offensive by the Allies begins, supported by tanks, and a mass of French Army Poilus breaks through the thin German trenches.

Contemporaneous reviews for Westfront 1918 were generally positive, according to film scholar Jan-Christopher Horak in a video interview accompanying the Criterion Collection release package.

[3] Alfred Kerr writing in the Berliner Tageblatt in 1930 said of it: "Apart from anything, everything I saw in the winter, a sound film these days was my most deeply felt: because he exposes the face of war for non-participants in the rudest.

What are plays " [4] In the Frankfurter Zeitung in the same year, Siegfried Kracauer wrote: "The urge to truthful reproduction of horror that prevails here outgrown two scenes, already almost exceed the limit of the expressible.

"[7] J. Hoberman reviewed the film positively in The Village Voice on 10 May 2005, writing "The always protean Pabst made a brilliant adjustment to sound.