Endless Quest For Journey's End
The Great War Drama We Forgot
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| Atlanta Gets The Live Journey's End Experience |
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| James Whale Directs The Stage Cast |
posted by John McElwee at 9:00 AM
Monday, September 03, 2018
The Great War Drama We Forgot
6 Comments:
This movie really does need to be restored. Ideally, there should be a box set of Whale's Great War Trilogy; Hells Angels, Journey's End and Waterloo Bridge.
Appearing in the cast besides David Manners and Clive is Anthony Bushell as the frightened officer. This actor would later play a similar role in the TV version of Quartermass and the Pit.
Another interesting point comes at the very end of the movie, as the camera holds for a very long time before the credits on the collapsed bunker, with the dust hanging in the air. I've wondered if this is a recall of how the stage play ended? Did they collapse the set and pour tons of dirt on the stage? So much that it would fly out coating the audience? Would they even close the curtain? Just leave the caved in set for the dust covered audience to just get up and leave on their own? A curtain call would undercut the dramatic impact of the fate of the characters and the point of the play?
I haven't watched my bootleg copy in at least a decade, and now feel like digging it out. I remember feeling a little letdown, perhaps its reputation being impossible to live up to.
The stage version of "Journey's End" was revived here in New York some years ago, but as I recall the reviews tended to be mixed at best, so I wound up skipping it. Some plays just don't age well. I caught the revivals of "Machinal" (Clark Gable's first Broadway appearance in 1928) and "The Big Knife". I could tell why they were considered groundbreaking at the time, but it didn't prevent them from being disappointing today. The latter was even laughable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DceQRpKxWdw
I'm sorry to hear that this film is so MIA. I would really like to see a good copy.
Dan Mercer considers the toll of trench warfare:
The 1931 film of Eric Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” suggests the privations that German troops endured. At that, the Germans had retreated to higher ground of their own choosing after the Battle of the Marne. Their trenches and dugouts were well-constructed, often reinforced, and dry. Some had electric lighting.
In contrast, the British occupied the lower ground of the Marne River Valley. Their trenches and dugouts were less well-constructed or systematic than those of the Germans, often wet even when it was not raining constantly, as in the spring and winter, and infested with vermin to a greater extent. In particular, the rats were well fed for the abundance of food available to them.
As to latter, one must consider the casualties sustained during the Battle of the Somme. On July 1, 1916, after a five-day artillery bombardment in which 1.5 million shells were fired, the British attacked the German lines across a wide front. The bombardment had torn up the open ground across which the British troops would move, making it difficult to sustain more than a walking pace, but had done little to lessen German resistance. On that first day, there were 57,470 British and 2,000 French casualties, against 10,000 German casualties. The British had gained three square miles of territory.
By the middle of November, when the Germans retreated to the prepared emplacements known as the “Hindenburg Line,” the British and French had advanced seven miles across a 30-mile front, at a cost of 419,654 British and 204,253 French casualties. The Germans suffered 445,322 to 465,000 casualties.Deaths accounted for around 23 percent of the casualties.
Several truces were called to allow the bodies of the dead to be recovered, but many and perhaps most remained on the battlefield. Subsequent bombardments would churn up the ground and the rotting bodies that had become part of it.
Thus, the health of the rats and the conditions R. C. Sherriff wrote of.
There's a decent copy of Journey's End available from The Movie Detective.
https://www.moviedetective.net/SearchResults.asp?Search=journey%27s+end
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