Summary
Archival fragments convulse into a visceral symphony of mechanized carnage in Crashing Through to Berlin. The screen becomes a time machine, disgorging grainy apparitions: Archduke Ferdinand's motorcade snaking through Sarajevo streets minutes before pistol shots fracture history; newspaper presses vomiting declarations of war in jagged typography; ghostly battalions knee-deep in Verdun's primordial mudscapes, their bayonets catching slivers of apocalyptic light. Directorially anonymous yet profoundly authored by the war itself, the footage oscillates between haunting tableaux—soldiers sharing cigarettes in flooded trenches resembling Goya etchings come alive—and kinetic chaos as biplanes duel above no man's land, their fragile frames disintegrating mid-air like shattered dragonflies. The climactic push toward Berlin manifests not as triumphal procession but as exhausted infantry advancing through spectral forests where skeletal trees claw at chemical-orange skies, each frame scratched by the claws of collective trauma.
Synopsis
A short history of World War I, with clips showing events leading up to the start of the war and footage of troops in battle on the road to Berlin.
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