All Quiet on the Western Front

Rating

Director

Lewis Milestone

Screenplay

George Abbott, Del Andrews, Maxwell Anderson (Novel: by Erich Maria Remarque)

Length

131 min.

Starring

Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy, Ben Alexander, Scott Kolk, Owen Davis Jr., Walter Browne Rogers, William Bakewell, Russell Gleason, Richard Alexander, Harold Goodwin, ‘Slim’ Summerville, Pat Collins, Beryl Mercer, Edmund Breese

MPAA Rating

Unrated

Review

What could have become another weak-kneed war film championing patriotism becomes a stirring and somber rebuke of war. All Quiet on the Western Front is an honest and sympathetic demonstration of the horrors of war.

As a mass of troops march by their schoolhouse windows, a classroom full of impressionable youths sits transfixed by their lecturer’s exuberant enlistment speech. Like many films that came before and would follow, All Quiet follows the boys to boot camp. Instead of the excited anticipation of what their future holds, these youths soon find out that training for the military isn’t as pleasant as they had thought. They are faced with a drill instructor far removed from his civilian profession of a mailman. Many of them know this formerly friendly chap but soon realize that he’s not the same man when in uniform.

Paul (Lewis Ayres), Franz (Ben Alexander), Albert (William Bakewell) and a number of their other classmates soon arrive at their first assigned post. There, they meet a grim group of soldiers glumly huddled in a small stable. It is here where the realities of their situation begin to sink in. Over time, as they are exposed to new atrocities, they soon understand why their comrades in arms were so melancholy.

The first surprising thing about All Quiet on the Western Front isn’t that it’s an anti-war film. Anti-war sentiment was to be expected after a long armed conflict. The unusual thing about the film was that it wasn’t the story of Americans, the French or the English as would have been typical. It was actually a sympathetic look at German youths thrust into combat. In another decade when World War II would start up, this kind of film would never have been made.

The film is fearlessly honest. It easily could have delivered the expected happy ending but it didn’t. There are a scant few joyous scenes, including one in a military hospital when lead character Paul emerges from a “death” room from which it is said no one has ever returned. Through Ayres subtle performance, we become significantly invested in his survival. As his friends die around him, Paul continues to serve faithfully despite odds that might have sent others screaming from the fields.

It’s only when Paul returns home to face a world un changed by his actions. To see his father and his friends carp over war strategies on a crumpled map on the barroom table. To witness his old teacher preaching the same rhetoric to his students as had gotten him into the conflict. To realize that the only ones who could truly understand his feelings and perceptions of war were the men who sat beside him in ramshackle buildings and muddy trenches. And so he returns to the front a changed man once again.

Director Lewis Milestone is to be commended for his effort with All Quiet. What makes it to the screen is seldom unnecessary and always intriguing. The sound and the visuals help place the audience on the battlefield alongside these brave soldiers and despite initial shock that we’re following German soldiers, it’s impossible not to feel remorse at the loss of these young lives.

It was the first Best Picture winner the Academy honored(only its fourth such selection) that truly deserved the award. All Quiet on the Western Front, despite having been made more than 70 years ago, is as exemplary a piece of film making as has ever been committed to celluloid. It’s a passionate, daring and unflinching look at the barbarousness of war. One could only hope that every person in the world could see this film and realize what a horrid and unnecessary thing war is and work to achieve an enduring peace that would put an end to the need for such violence.

Review Written

October 3, 2006