Hell on Earth

Promptly banned by the Nazis in 1933, 'Niemandsland' was for many years a lost film, and largely a forgotten one by the time Siegfried Kracauer dismissed it fifteen years later in 'From Caligari to Hitler' as an "aesthetically interesting film" which was however "thoroughly abortive" which "with its emphasis on international fraternisation is thoroughly evasive", and that "German militarists did not have to fear the German pacifists". Seen today the Soviet-inspired first half bears a marked resemblance to sixties agit-prop like Santiago Alvarez's 'Now' (1965) and the work of Godard's Groupe Dziga-Vertov, while the second half strongly anticipates John Boorman's 'Hell in the Pacific' (1968).

Of the five principal cast members each representing a different nation the two I recognised were Ernst Busch (who eventually settled in the GDR) and Vladimir Sokoloff, who in 1937 settled in Hollywood where one of his last film roles was in 'The Magnificent Seven'.