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 3rd
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.
