All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Directed by Lewis Milestone

Film Review

When Erich Maria Remarque's novel Im Westen nichts Neues was published in 1929 it became an immediate international best seller. With its horrifically detailed description of life and death on the battlefields of World War I, the novel obliterates the notion that war is a glorious thing and stands as the greatest anti-war statement in literature.  The American film production company Universal Pictures was quick to capitalise on the success of Remarque's novel and with a staggering budget of one and a quarter million dollars succeeded in creating the greatest anti-war film in the history of cinema.  The film was a commercial and critical success and won two Oscars in 1930 - in the coveted Best Motion Picture and Best Director categories.  Not surprisingly, the film was banned by nations preparing for war, most notably by the Nazis.

All Quiet on the Western Front was directed by Russian émigré Lewis Milestone whose flair for innovation and ambitious cinematography is noted in many of his films, but seldom more so than in this, his greatest work.  Milestone's imaginative camera technique draws the spectator right into the heat of battle in what are some of the most remarkable and horrific battle scenes of any action film. Watching this film can never be a passive experience, for this is a film that overwhelms the spectator and conveys not just the brutality of war, but also the monotony, the disillusionment, and the inescapable sense of its total meaninglessness. How ironic that, during the Second World War, Milestone should apparently come out just as forcefully in defence of war with his propaganda film, Edge of Darkness (1943).

Despite the strict censorship of the day, the film shows enough of the horror of war for us to have some sense of what life in the trenches must have been like.  (For a more graphic depiction of trench warfare, complete with some truly horrific descriptions of mutilations, see Remarque's novel.)  What is perhaps most striking about this film is its relentless lack of sentimentality - every emotion is downplayed, and sometimes the lack of visible emotion seems almost surreal.  This makes a marked contrast with the vast majority of war films, which either portray war as a noble, heroic endeavour or as a pretext for a rather trite piece of melodrama.  Milestone's film shows war as it really is - a brutal, messy business in which beautiful young lives are extinguished at random, the folly that always results whenever heads of state fail to resolve their differences in a civilised manner. The haunting poetry in some of the film's most memorable sequences, bolstered by Lew Ayres' perfectly understated portrayal of the "hero" Paul Bäumer, can only emphasise the anti-war sentiment of Remarque's original novel, leaving an impression that will last a life time. The film is the perfect companion-piece to an identically themed French film directed by Raymond Bernard, Les Croix de bois (1932), which has a similar impact.

In 1979, All Quiet on the Western Front was remade as a bog standard television film, directed by Delbert Mann and starring Richard Thomas.  Whilst it may be an engaging piece of drama, this adaptation of Erich Remarque's novel has neither the searing emotional impact nor the stylistic genius of Lewis Milestone's timeless 1930 film.

Film Synopsis

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, a German schoolmaster is urging his class of idealistic youths to enlist and do their bit to save the Fatherland.  Unable to resist the call that beckons, Paul Bäumer and his fellow classmates sign up and find themselves in a training camp where their former postmaster, Himmelstoss, is determined to knock them into shape.  A short while later, the young soldiers experience their first taste of battle.  Nothing can have prepared them for this Hell - Paul can only watch as his best friend is blinded and then shot to pieces.  The daily horror that is constant gunfire, bombardment and death on an industrial scale quickly melts away the last vestiges of idealism and patriotism.  Disillusioned, battle weary and unable to make any sense of what is happening, Paul accepts his insignificant role in the insane drama that is war.  As the days pass, he becomes accustomed to watching his friends die.  Soon he will die.