Expressive movement unit 3

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Through the interplay of camera and sound design, the struggle of battle is staged as an increasing and decreasing dynamic.

This movement takes the form of a sinus wave. Calm staged moments of rest alternate strictly with moving, loud moments of unrest. The starting point of this movement is a phase of winding up. This time, a long pan of the soldiers lying still in a row, again accompanied by a break in the music and soldiers staring off screen, act as a panorama of standstill. The onset of the music marks the starting point of the sinus wave.

The four attacks on the machine gun nest are staged as increased dynamis—by means of the moving camera on the one hand and by mixing the sounds of gunshots with high, shrill string melodies on the other hand. Three variations of pauses are developed in static shots, each following a decline in this dynamic. After the first one-man advance fails, the half brothers have a conversation that goes back to the love triangle (> "Separation from civilian life and the girl").

The reference to the love story within the film is expressed through the music, which for a short time changes to harmonic strings, determining the melodramatic undertone of the death of one of the brothers that follows. The second pause transports melodramatic mourning into an image of soldierly sacrifice that again takes place to a great extent on the level of sound design. The preparation for the next one-man advance is accompanied by a string melody supplemented by military brass passages. The last pause brings the two previous ones together. The melodramatic motif of mourning and the heroic motif of soldierly sacrifice merge. The soldier’s leave-taking from his dead brother is staged in static close-ups accompanied by on the one hand muffled, on the other hand heroic/military brass melodies.

This melodramatically tinged image of soldierly sacrifice is followed by the final increase in dynamic. The quality of the storming of the machine gun nest, again visualized through camera pans, is now further intensified by the group of solders running in unison and continuous heroic brass melodies. Amidst the sounds of battle, a thank you to the protagonist of the last, failed one-man advance is embedded, accompanied first by high-pitched, heroic and then low, heavy brass melodies. This ends the sinus wave and connects the two poles of its movement in an emphatic image of soldierly sacrifice.