Preceded by: Rigadin dans les Balkans (1912) and Pathé journal (newsreels, 1932). -------------------- (Les Croix de Bois). The film on which Howard Hawks' The Road to Glory was based, Raymond Bernard's Les Croix de Bois was produced and acted entirely by veterans of World War I (including Charles Vanel and other French actors). It was the most celebrated antiwar film from between the wars, critics and public alike hailing it as the ultimate artistic statement on the war, surpassing All Quiet on the Western Front in its honest depiction of life at the front. The impact of this rare French film is largely visual. Les Croix de Bois follows the fates of a sensitive, intellectual soldier, Gilbert Demachy, and his regiment of recruited bakers, farmers, laborers and other non-professional soldiers. "Here we have artistic sincerity," noted the original New York Times review, "no frills, no lovely girls, no artifices, no freak photography, no declamation, no exaggeration. Raymond Bernard decided that nothing could be more dramatic or thrilling than the simple truth..."