All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

1930 may not have been the best year to live in, but it was a pretty interesting year in regards to film. Roy E. Disney, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, and Steve McQueen were born among others and the 3^rd Academy Awards were presented. Although it did not win any awards, The Love Parade was nominated for six academy awards. The films that went away with the most awards were All Quiet on the Western Front and The Big House with two each.

Directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Louis Wolheim and Lew Ayres, All Quiet on the Western Front not only won Best Picture, but was the first film to simultaneously win Best Director.

The film opens in a German boys school near the beginning of World War I. Their instructor encourages the boys to save the Fatherland and join the army. All the boys enlist in the army and go to basic training, almost eager to fight in the war. Himmelstoss, the training officer, puts them through rigorous training that diminishes some of the enthusiasm, until they are told they are going to the front.

Arriving at the combat zone, one of the new recruits is killed before they reach their post. When they do, they are assigned to a unit of old soldiers. The new recruits find that there is no food available, but one of the older soldiers, Katczinsky, went to find some. He returns with a hog and the young soldiers pay for dinner with cigarettes.

The young soldiers are sent out on night duty with Katczinsky who gives them instructions on how to deal with incoming shells. They string barbed wire and avoid shells while the enemy lights the sky with flares to spot them. Amid machine guns and bombardment, one young recruit is killed, but most of the unit survives by the morning.

In the trenches, the soldiers play cards and fight off rats. The recruits show signs of stress and one loves control, running out of the trench only to get injured. Food comes, and everyone fights for their share. Once the bombing lulls, the men are ordered out of the trench in order to fight the oncoming French.

They return from the battle for a meal, which the cook refuses them since the entire company has not arrived. They argue with the cook that only 80 of the original 150 men came back alive. Soon though, an officer arrives and orders the cook to give the men their food. 

After eating, the men learn they are returning to the front the next day, beginning a discussion about war and its causes. They also decide to see their friend, Memmerich, who was wounded in battle.

They find Kemmerich in bad condition, complaining about his stolen watch and pain in his right foot, not realizing it was amputated. Another soldier asks Kemmerich for his boots. He agrees and loses consciousness. Paul tries to find a doctor, but he can’t do anything and Kemmerich dies. Paul runs back to the unit with the boots, giving them to the other soldier and waxing about life.

The man who was given Kemmerich’s boots is wounded and the boots are passed on to another soldier who dies. While the Germans attack a cemetery, Paul stabs a French soldier and is trapped in a foxhole with him. He tries to help him through the night, but fails and begs for forgiveness.

Once the company gets a day off, some men wash in the river and catch the attention of French women who invite them to their house for the night.

Back at the front, Paul is wounded and taken to the hospital with his friend Albert Kropp. Kropp’s leg is amputated and Paul is taken to the bandaging ward. Paul returns and finds Kropp in pain.

Paul then takes a brief trip home to see his ailing mother. His hometown is blindly patriotic and ignorant about the front. Visiting his old teacher, he finds him lecturing another class about war’s glory. Unable to stand another minute, he returns to the front to find only a few men of his company has survived. An older veteran, Tjaden, says that Katczinsky is still alive and Paul goes looking for him. He finds him unable to scrounge some food and wounded by a bomb. Paul carries him to the field hospital, but shrapnel from a second bomb kills Katczinsky. Paul is unaware until he gets him to the hospital.

The film ends as Paul is on the front lines and sees a butterfly beyond the trench. He reaches for it, but is shot and killed by an enemy sniper.

I must say that I found All Quiet on the Western Front to be a great film in many aspects. It’s a very good story concerned with young, fresh recruits who get conned into signing up for war only to realize it isn’t as glamorous as they were lead to believe. In the end, it seems that only one man from the class survives, albeit with an amputated leg. It’s also an interesting juxtaposition when Paul comes back home on leave. When his former teacher tells him to tell the students about the glory of war, Paul just tells them how terrible it is. Paul doesn’t succeed in turning the young men away from their deaths. Instead they mock him for his cowardice. It’s a good way to show that the only ones who can really talk about war are the ones who lived it.

As mentioned earlier, almost no character survives, but that’s not a problem. Dealing with the stress of war and death makes them believable characters. How they go from wide-eyed idealists to hardened cynical soldiers perfectly shows how human they are. Paul’s night in the foxhole with the dead French soldier further makes him a relatable character. He matches a face to the men he’s killing and starts going insane at what’s happening, but later he’s back with his unit and fine, able to get the face out of his head for the time being. It’s a great representation that war affects everyone.

There’s also hardly any music in this film. In fact, the only music is during the opening credits. And it works, showing how bleak life during war is.

I watched the retouched version of the film and the visuals were great, however it made it very quiet. Even with my volume up to 100, it was still hard to hear.

Unfortunately, no film is perfect. All Quiet on the Western Front is average time for a film, but unfortunately it feels that long. The Empire Strikes Back and The Avengers take nearly the same amount of time to get through, but they don’t feel like it. It seems like All Quiet on the Western Front just drags on. It’s a great film, but the pacing just makes it feel like it plods on. On the other hand, maybe that was intentional. Maybe George Abbot (the screenwriter) and Milestone chose this sort of pacing to show how war drags on with no end. If that’s the case, then it may be a much greater movie than I give it credit.

Final Call: Though All Quiet on the Western Front is audibly quiet and incredibly slow, it’s a great film. The story and characters mesh very well and the lack of music gives it a great punctuation. It won’t make my top 10, but it will replace Wings as #11.