Victor Trivas' No Man's Land (released in the U.S. as Hell on Earth) has been placed alongside Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front and Pabst's Westfront 1918 as a great classic of anti-war and humanist cinema. Film historian Georges Sadoul calls it “one of the most progressive films of pre-Hitler Germany, powerful, true and original....” In 1918, with the war raging all around them, five soldiers--a Frenchman, an American black, a German, an Englishman and a Russian Jew--become lost and seek shelter in an abandoned trench. They begin to cast off national and ethnic antagonisms and share stories, photographs and songs, turning their hell-hole into a utopian refuge until the war comes too close for camaraderie. Made with collaboration of two former Brecht associates, actor Ernst Busch and composer Hanns Eisler, No Man's Land, intensely pacifist, never resorts to sermonizing. “Out of the simplest elements Victor Trivas has achieved in the film's ultimate statement an epic grandeur.” (Herman G. Weinberg)
Dialogue is in several languages, but the lack of English titles and poor sound quality of this rare print are not a problem; a highly visual film, No Man's Land is as perfectly understandable to the audience as the five men speaking different languages are to each other.