All Quiet on the Western Front

Genre: war drama (in black and white)

With: Lew Ayres (Paul Baumer, the young writer), Louis Wolheim (Stanislaus Katczinsky, the veteran), John Wray (Himmelstoss, the postman), Slim Summerville (Tjaden, the beanpole), Russell Gleason (Mueller, the boot-wearing friend), William Bakewell (Albert, Paul’s closest friend), Scott Kolk (Leer), Walter Rogers (Behn, the student who didn’t want to enlist)

Director: Lewis Milestone

Screenplay: George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews et al. (based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel)

Release: 1930

Studio: Universal Pictures

Rating: -

MBiS score: 8.7/10 

 

‟When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all.” 

 

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Story-line: in a German town at the outset of World War I, parading soldiers are greeted like heroes by an admiring crowd. Expecting the conflict to be short and sweet, working men quit their jobs to enlist and teachers urge students to do their patriotic duty. Glory, it seems, is within every soldier’s reach.

Pluses: superb acting by Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray and a good cast, masterful and modern direction (especially eloquent during the military parade, the classroom scene and on the battlefield), a striking, realistic and brutal screenplay based on a classic novel (that was later banned by the Nazis), vivid cinematography and great production values true to the mood and essence of the times.

Minuses: none I can think of.

Comments: in 1930, two years after WINGS had garnered the first-ever Oscar for Best Picture, this other war movie – and Lewis Milestone’s first work – was also rewarded by the Academy. And the honour was entirely deserved. In some ways, it was a gutsy picture: an American production showing the war from another point of view and demonstrating that all soldiers, whatever side they fight for, lose a part of themselves in the hellish process of war. Paul Baumer will learn what he wasn’t taught in school: that war is complete pandemonium and that wearing a uniform is an experience in anxiety, fear and remorse that sets you apart and makes you see the civilian world as another kind of hell. As I write this, I am reminded of an Iraqi soldier who had commented, at the end of the Gulf War, that ‟you had no time to rest… it was bomb, bomb, bomb…” ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is a masterpiece, a film still important and praiseworthy more than 90 years after its release.   

 

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