Kameradschaft

The absolute high-point of German socialist film-making of its period. Pabst imagines a coal-mine on the French-German border, where the aftermath of World War I is still being played out: French prosperity and chauvinism hard up against German inflation and unemployment. There's a disaster in the French wing of the mine...and the German miners go to the rescue. Both the visual style and the 'message' of solidarity owe a lot to Soviet Socialist Realism, but Pabst was a more sophisticated social critic than any of the Russian film-makers. Only a bruised and cynical Berlin pessimist could produce a film as moving, sincere and committed as this.