Endless Quest For Journey's End

The Great War Drama We Forgot

Atlanta Gets The Live Journey's End Experience

What a downer to know a thing is good, but you can't see it. Journey's End is owned by who-I-don't-know, produced by a company that folded before Prohibition quit. Anyone interested in The Great War should see it, but most won't, and likely never will based on phantom status. There's also issue of length, a long version intended, plus cut ones that misrepresent Journey's End where it has too seldom resurfaced. I was slipped a bootleg that was thankfully intact, but search me as to whether anyone could care enough to fix Journey's End and put it on Blu-ray. Bigger gorilla that was All Quiet On The Western Front took bulk of 1930 laurels, few of even harder core buffs having seen both. I needed two looks at Journey's End to get full into trench-set eyeball of a Lost Generation in the making, and admit to wanting to watch firstly because James Whale directed and Colin Clive starred. That's two endorsements, and frankly enough to justify the sit even if Journey's End weren't special otherwise, but here's the save, it is.

James Whale Directs The Stage Cast

Journey's End had been a play in England, its writer (R.C. Sherriff) having waded war's mud and blood for real. Viewers felt the authenticity, those who had served saying Journey's End was just what they suffered. Word-of-mouth made attendance an almost religious experience. There had been WWI plays, but none so far to capture the hell so vividly. We know men of the second war were reluctant to discuss what they'd seen, and may assume their elders from the first round were even more reticent. Many saw Journey's End through tears. It either resolved a lot of PTSD, or awakened it. England took Journey's End most of all to heart because that country felt more of Allied loss. No man of sufficient age was untouched, ones who saw Journey's Endbalanced by those who'd stay away for fear they couldn't relive the experience w/o hazard. This, then, was something beyond casual theatre-going. Had James Whale not been taken up by children who'd love his later horror films, he would be best remembered for Journey's End, a property JW saw through live staging in both the UKand US, then for this first feature he would direct.

The story is of men living in a hole. They can only go out to face Germans, or have the Germans pour in. Journey's End as a play is ideal for such confinement, for how many of trenches offered more space than a stage? Advantage served by live performance might be lost in translation to screens, where movement was a must, even in earliest talkies for which a single set was anathema. Here was where James Whale could prove himself equal to the challenge that filming posed, keeping values of a successful play from fate suffered by nascent tries at adaptation by others. James Whale had an instinct for stage-screen translation right from his start. Waterloo Bridgeand Frankenstein were a next two after Journey's End, and look at assurance of both. We're lately reminded of his skills by 2017's reemergence of The Old Dark House, so there are Blu-Rays now of all Whale chillers. A director's status can rest on preservation/availability of work, and for James Whale at least, there has been much progress. TCM runs Showboat now in HD, and their lease of One More River continues. A Kiss Before The Mirror languishes on substandard DVD, a Universal "On-Demand" that demands more their willingness to re-master it, so far not done. A fix and revival for Journey's End would be a welcome step closer to exalted place this director deserves.