All Quiet on the Western Front

Before watching this epic masterpiece, I never quite understood what it is that makes people want to fight a war that was started by some politician, and after watching this film; I'm even more baffled. With it's ambiguous portrait of war, All Quiet on the Western Front never actually condemns (nor condones) the act of war, but through it's portrait; the anti-war message more than shine through. Multiple scenes show the hideousness of war, and through watching this film it becomes apparent that war is futile and a disgraceful waste of human life. We follow the (mis)fortune of a group of young adults who, due to the patriotic words of their teacher, decide to join the war effort. The rest of the film pans out as a sort of coming of age story in the middle of a great feud. We watch the protagonists as they stare death in the face and learn what is and isn't important when you risk your life at every passing moment.

This was one of the first films to announce America as a major film-making nation as with it's epic battle sequences and first class acting, All Quiet on the Western Front impresses on a technical level, as well as impressing with it's detailed and thought-provoking account of war. The film features numerous excellent scenarios, all of which are thought provoking in the context of the film, but also in life on the whole. Consider the part where one young man is told that maths problems are a waste of time as he could stop a bullet at any time, or the sequence that sees a soldier try to save the life of his fellow man that he has stabbed in the stomach (a French soldier, but still a fellow man). Not to mention the classy finish. Whichever way you look at it; this film is a masterpiece. It succeeds on a technical level and also does what films were created to do; entertain and inspire thought from their audiences. There are some films that every film buff must see regardless of their genre preferences. This is one of them.

Still one of the most worthwhile films about the hard realities of war, "All Quiet On The Western Front" has numerous memorable images and thoughtful moments. Too many war dramas, regardless of their perspective, resort to distortions of history and overblown characters that make them convincing only to those who watch uncritically. This one works nicely by keeping the characters low-key and by, for the most part, allowing the events and situations to speak for themselves. It's not perfect in this respect, and it is perhaps a movie more to be respected than enjoyed, but it has many notable strengths.

The characters, most of them young soldiers, are played very simply, even plainly, but this is by no means a weakness - rather, it allows the movie to show what war is like for real soldiers rather than for idealized or stereotyped characters. The two most important characters are developed more fully, and are played well. Louis Wolheim's resourceful 'Kat' is the liveliest of the soldiers, and as Paul, Lew Ayres is quite understated but very believable. His character is well-chosen as the focal point of most of the movie.

The close-fighting nature of World War I particularly lends itself to this kind of movie, and the atmosphere is convincing and detailed. The contrast with the civilian scenes is also set up well, although the civilian scenes sometimes seem slightly less convincing. The overall effect is a movie that, while you probably wouldn't call it exciting or fun, is one you won't forget.

Erich Maria Remarque's novel and the film made from it may possibly be the greatest anti-war statement ever created. All Quiet on the Western Front won a deserved Best Picture Academy Award in the year it came out and brought great prestige to Universal Pictures as the first Oscar in that category won by that studio.

Lew Ayres is the student leader of a bunch of German school boys in 1914 who listen to the voice of their school master and enlist in the war that's just been declared. The whole class enlists and that's not hyperbole because in Germany at the time it was the boys who got the education and the girls if they got it, got it separately from the boys.

I'm sure that viewers of All Quiet on the Western Front today probably are asking why that school master and so many of his generation were urging their youth on to such folly. Very simply that their generation had a quick victory in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War. Every generation since wars were recorded figures their war experience will be the same for their children.

Only it wasn't. On the western front the Allied and Central Powers armies were locked in a bitter stalemate that ran diagonally across France and Belgium from the English Channel to the Swiss border. This went on for a little over four years. In fact had it not been for the fact that America joined the Allied side and the French and British held out until they did, I'm sure an honest armistice would have been declared long before November 11, 1918.

You lived, fought and died in those trenches. Either you were defending or you were attacking the other guy's trenches against murderous automatic weapon fire and long distance artillery batteries. All Quiet on the Western Front was the first great war film of the American sound era and graphically shows that.

And it shows that from the enemy perspective. That's something today's audience can't appreciate, the fact that the film was from the Wilhelmine German perspective. Remember these were the enemy a dozen years before. But the experience in the trenches was universal.

Lew Ayres became a star with this film and it effected him so deeply that he became a committed pacifist which caused later problems in his career. He's the voice of reason and civilization and the voice of a lost generation of Germans who would never have listened to the demagogic appeals of the Nazis.

Louis Wolheim plays the veteran soldier who befriends Ayres and his school boy chums and teaches them how to survive in the trenches. It turned out to be his greatest role. He was a brutish looking man and played mostly those types in silent films. All Quiet on the Western Front would have been the start of a whole new career opening. But Wolheim died the following year just as he was to start filming The Front Page. Adolphe Menjou took the part of Walter Burns in that film which Wolheim was to have.

The third really stand out performance is that of John Wray who some might remember as the brutal prison guard in Each Dawn I Die. Wray plays an officious mail man who is in the German Army Reserve. He gets called up and this little nobody gets rather impressed with himself and his new found authority as a training sergeant to Ayres and his friends. Later on at the front, he gets a view of combat he wasn't quite ready for.

All Quiet on the Western Front with its eternal message of peace and life will be one eternal film, it will be shown and appreciated for many generations to come.

To say that this movie is one of the greatest war films of all time would be an understatement. Naturally, since the picture is based on Erich Maria Remarque's marvelous novel, the screenwriter was given quite a powerful story to begin with. The three main reasons why I consider this movie so forceful are the acting, the cinematography, and simply the sincerity.

Lew Ayres, the man who plays Paul Baumer, convincingly portrays the main character in many ways. First of all, the sheer innocence of his facial appearance adds a poignant touch to the film, because the overwhelming theme of the story is how the war effects all young people of each nation, whether that person dies in the trenches or survives only to lament his days in the war. Ironically, when the film was initially being put together, Remarque, the novelist who won critical acclaim for writing the book, was asked to play the role of Paul. Having seen time in the war the producers must have thought him aptly prepared to play the role. But he declined because he had other commitments and because he felt he was not such a great actor. Lucky for us, because Ayres gives a powerful performance. Other characters with relatively minor roles have major importance in the film because they portray touching, heart wrenching scene s of death. These peripheral characters all help add to the general tone of the film (and the book) because they show how dark and terrible the war can be; and they in turn show how propaganda can be so harmful, because most of the soldiers in Paul's regiment are volunteers who receive a very rude awakening when they discover what the war is really all about. The acting is simply superb, and perhaps this is due to the fact that the famous director George Cukor was an assistant who, although uncredited, came onto the set to help supervise the actors (possibly because director Lewis Milestone's English was not too good).

The cinematography of this film is absolutely magnificent. The film rarely has gory sequences because the director finds other ways to imply death and still have the same emotional effect. One way in which he does this is by showing single body parts (such as a hand or a leg) and allowing these appendages to show the death of the soldier as a whole. Also, the cameraman uses overhead angles at times with great skill and also focuses on the trenches at times as the soldiers fall back into them after being shot (which implies that the trenches are a symbol of hell, because soldiers fall into them to die). In short, the cinematographer Arthur Edeson allows the camera to do the talking and to drive the film, rather than the dialogue (speaking of which, there is relatively little; the actors' facial expressions do the bulk of the talking in the film).

When I say this film is sincere I really can't give you any tangible evidence to prove the point; all I can tell you is to see the film. The film at times overwhelmed me with emotion to the extent that I got goose bumps from watching some of the more agonizing scenes. In a way, this movie is much like a silent film. This stands to reason because it came at the very beginning of the 'talkie' age, only three years after The Jazz Singer (1927). Also, Milestone directed silent films before this one, and he seemed to know that less focus on dialogue and more focus on acting would bring about an overwhelmingly emotional and well, sincere, film. The film obviously had an effect on its star, Mr. Ayres, because once World War II began and he was drafted into the war, he conscientiously protested serving in the army because of his opinions towards war. I believe he admits that his opinions stem from his work in this movie. Certainly this is a powerful admission, because his protest caused him and his films to be blacklisted in Hollywood, and his career suffered greatly because of his ideals. So if you don't believe my words about the power of this film, believe his.

The film begins in a classroom. Outside, martial music is blaring and the professor inside the room is lecturing the boys about their duty to the Fatherland and encouraging them all to as a group in the German army at the outbreak of WWI. The film is exceptional in how it captures the enthusiasm and naiveté of the boys--as they imagine glory awaiting them after they enlist! Even in boot camp, the mood is light and the new recruits are excited about seeing their first action. This perfectly sets the stage for the actual war--not the sanitized or "fun" war of many films but the hellish and pointless mess that was WWI. The rest of the film is brutally honest and harsh and shows how the students die off one-by-one and the remaining students become more and more jaded and emotionally dead due to the fighting.

I love this film and strongly recommend it to anyone who considers themselves to be a film buff. Part of my love of the film is because it was made relatively shortly after the war and the uniforms, trucks, etc. all appear correct for the period. Many years later, a made for TV version of this film appeared with Ernest Borgnine and Richard Thomas. It, too, was excellent but also was perhaps a bit too polished and pretty--lacking some of the grit of the original. Great acting, direction and production all made this original THE best of the anti-war films of the 1920s and 30s.

Other similar great movies I strongly recommend are J'ACCUSE (French), WESTFRONT 1918 (German), THE BIG PARADE (USA--silent) and THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK (USA). All excel at portraying war in a truthful and non-glamorized manner--it's just a shame that their impact of the world as a whole was negligible--particularly in Germany--where Fascism would soon replace the anti-war sentiment of the book ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. In fact, his books and this film were banned once the Nazis came to power just a few years later.