THE 100 BEST WAR MOVIES: 9. (tie) All Quiet… (1930)

 

The first great anti-war film was based on the greatest anti-war novel ever written.  Lewis Milestone took on the task of bringing Erich Remarque’s book to the screen and even considered casting Remarque as Paul Baumer.  Lew Ayres won the role and was so affected by it that he became a pacifist and jeopardized his career by claiming conscientious objector status in WWII.  His brave service as a medic helped regain much good will from the public.  Milestone had learned filmmaking in the Signal Corps during WWI.  He knew what war looked like from editing war footage.  He recreated no man’s land on a ranch in California.  Shell holes were blasted with dynamite and then filled with muddy rain water.  A French village was built on a back lot and included a canal that was dug for the swimming scene.  Twenty tons of black powder and ten tons of dynamite were used for the battle scenes.  One explosion resulted in Milestone being hit by debris and knocked unconscious.  2,000 extras were found in California by requesting help from American Legion posts.  The US Army could not provide soldiers because American doughboys could not appear in foreign uniforms on film.  The 99-day shoot was double the planned 48.  The $.9 million budget boomed to $1.4 million.  It paid off as the movie was a smashing success and won the Best Picture Oscar.  Milestone won Best Director and the film was nominated for Writing and Cinematography.  It was ranked #54 on AFIs original list of the 100 greatest movies, but did not make the revised list issued in 2007!  It was not a smashing success in Nazi Germany, a country Remarque had been forced to flee for his life from.  At its premiere, Goebbels had the Brown Shirts release mice, stink bombs, and sneezing powder to clear the theater.  The movie was pulled after a week and not shown again in Germany until 1952 ( the year Remarque returned to his homeland ).

The movie begins with a title card:  “This story is neither an accusation nor a confession and least of all not an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.  It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war…”  (This is the opening to the book and previews the fact that the movie follows the book closely.)  It seems to be an adventure as the opening scene has enthusiastic soldiers march through a German town to cheers from the populace.  In a high school classroom, Kantorek (Arnold Lucy) harangues his charges about their duty to the Fatherland.  They are “the iron men of Germany, the gay heroes who will repulse the enemy…”  The camera pans to the boys’ faces as each imagines what enlistment will mean.  Peer pressure and the band wagon effect have the boys enlisting en masse. 

The movie takes the young men through boot camp where they are terrorized by a civilian turned drill sergeant named Himmelstoss. After graduating, it’s a trip to the front line where they make friends with some veterans including the scrounger Kat. The core group represent various types of soldiers (not specifically German soldiers). Paul is the intellectual. He and his classmates will become disillusioned as they learn what war is really like.

The movie covers several of the most memorable passages in the book. These include the stuck in the bunker during a long bombardment, the tryst with the French mademoiselles, Paul’s stay in the hospital, Paul with the wounded French soldier in the shell crater. There are charming scenes where the men discuss the war. There is a battle that is one of the best in any war movie and it still holds up today. To contrast that, Milestone includes a sequence where Paul returns home to find civilians are clueless about the war. Through all this the group of friends gets whittled down. The movie does not pull any punches. War is hell.

ACTING:   C                

ACTION:   A (8/10)

ACCURACY: N/A      

PLOT:  A+                

REALISM:   A 

CINEMATOGRAPHY:   A+

SCORE:   none

SCENE:  the big battle

QUOTE:  Paul [to a class of high schoolers] You still think it's beautiful to die for your country. The first bombardment taught us better. When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  Obviously “All Quiet” is not a true story.  However, Remarque was a German infantryman during the Great War and all of the incidents in the film are realistic and most were probably based on incidents in Remarque’s experiences.  The film has a great deal of verisimilitude. 

               The opening public enthusiasm is appropriate for people who had not had a dose of Hell since the Franco-Prussian War thirty years earlier.  The way young men were manipulated by the authorities to go to war is a major theme.  (It is important to note that if the script had been reversed and the boys were Americans, the movie never would have been made.) But the plot would fit British or French troops. The training scenes are realistic, if softened.  The Himmelstoss of the book is harsher and closer to the Prussian style. The dynamic between the new replacements and the hardened veterans is appropriate and could be from any war and any country (and any war movie).

               You can learn a lot about soldier life in WWI from this movie.  The movie is especially strong in its depiction of soldier camaraderie.  The bonds are forged in the furnace of the trenches.  The film throws in numerous details of the hardships the soldiers endured.  It hits many of the “lacks”:  food, female companionship,  sleep, hygiene  

               The wiring detail is a nice touch and reenacts a common WWI duty that is seldom depicted.  The dugout bombardment scene is well done and gets the claustrophobia and stress right.  The movie only implies that this situation could last for up to a week and it is not surprising that some of the new soldiers cracked.  As far as the rat assault, this is an effective cameo from a creature that was a major nuisance in the trenches.  Speaking of critters, there is an appearance by the ubiquitous lice.

               One could carp a bit about the rather too pristine hospital scene with the amputee Kimmerich, but the reality of wound mortality is accurate.  The combat set pieces are the highlights of the film.  Although understandably truncated, you can not ask for a more accurate depiction of the insanity of trench warfare.  Where “Paths of Glory” showed the suicidal nature of many attacks, “All Quiet” concentrates on the attack/counterattack nature of the tactics.  The audience is left to wonder what was the purpose of attacks that did not change the situation and yet resulted in terrible casualties. 

               Just as important is how Paul’s return home reflects the detachment of the populace from the realities of the war.  Paul is your typical soldier who finds his home to be a surrealistic reflection of a bygone life that he has trouble remembering ever existed.  It seems he is more comfortable in the dugout with his new family.   The mattress in Paul’s bedroom is too soft.  The butterfly collection seems childish.  The old men, representing the powers that shipped the “iron youth” off to war, are clueless about the actual status of the war.  Just like in every war before and since.

CRITIQUE:  “All Quiet” is a technical marvel and Milestone belongs on the Mount Rushmore of war movie directors just for this movie alone.  (He also made “A Walk in the Sun” and “Pork Chop Hill”.)  It is the kind of film where you notice the cinematographic flourishes in a positive way. Milestone has a penchant for framing scenes through doorways and windows.  This tends to detach the audience or the main characters from the exterior events.  This is apparent from the opening scene where we see the parade through a doorway and then we transition to Kantorek’s class as the parade passes by.  Milestone then has the fired-up boys marching out to join the war.  The battle scenes include a variety of shots.  There is a magnificent panning shot over the trench intercut with views of no man’s land.  We even get some POV which was rare for films from that era.  The interplay of the machine gun mowing down the wave of French does a chilling job of depicting modern mechanized warfare. The most commendable aspect of the combat scenes is the sound effects.  For a movie in the transitional stage from silent to sound, it is amazing how they got the sound of the explosions so indelibly real.  The sets also bear lauding.  No man’s land looks appropriately hellish.  The village built for the movie is perfect.  The dugout shows a real attention to mise en scene.  The enormous $1.4 million budget was well spent.  By the way, none of the budget was spent on a soundtrack as Milestone felt it would trivialize the plot.  The lack of the usual sappy, prod-your-emotions score of most black and white movies is a big plus.

               The main flaw in the movie and the main reason why I had disappointing results from showing it to students is the elements that reflect the carryover from the silent era.  This is mainly reflected in the acting which tends to be hammy.  Some of the actors’ facial contortions and scenery chewing are distracting.  This is particularly apparent in highly charged scenes like the one where Paul is stuck in the shell crater with the Frenchman he stabbed.  Speaking of which, Lew Ayres is a weak link in the cast.  He is not up to the role and is either too passive or is too histrionic.  Most of the rest of the cast also behave as though they were told they were making a silent movie.  Only a few seem comfortable with the new “talkie” style of restrained acting.  Wolheim (Kat) and Summerville (Tjaden) take the acting honors.  The dialogue is not part of the acting problem.  It is actually not bad and has an appropriate dose of cynicism and soldier humor.  This is undoubtedly due to the fact that much of the dialogue comes from the book and Remarque knew how soldiers talked.

               The acting keeps the film from being great entertainment.  On the other hand, the themes make it an important war movie.  The movie is a good retelling of the most significant war novel ever written.  You do not have to read Remarque’s novel to get his messages.  The movie does that for the audience.  Remarque clearly intended to write an anti-war testament and the movie passes this on admirably.  It has been said that all war movies are anti-war.  I disagree with this, but “All Quiet” has got to be one of the most unambiguous examples of this theory.  The movie is much deeper than “war sucks”.  It also posits that the soldier age generation was betrayed by the establishment (teachers, fathers, generals).  A third theme is that the soldiers were the same no matter the side.  This was hammered at in the shell crater scene.  The scene with the French women expands this theme.   A corollary to this is the soldier discussions that emphasize that soldiers don’t have a clue about what war is all about and why they are fighting.  The cynicism and disillusionment that effect soldiers because of the incompetence and pomposity of leadership are effectively depicted.

 

CONCLUSION “All Quiet” is the king of war movies.  In many ways it created the genre as we know it, although it is not the first war movie.  You could argue it was the first anti-war movie.  Hollywood took a while to evolve to clearly anti-war movies.  Before U.S. entered the war, most war films advocated neutrality.  Then they supported preparedness (The Battle Cry of Peace).  Once we entered, the movies favored intervention.  In the Twenties, Hollywood depicted the war as an adventure (What Price Glory?, Wings, The Big Parade).  By the end of the decade, books like “All Quiet” steered the industry toward cynicism and thus it is the granddaddy of movies like “Platoon”.  More important, the movie established many of the tropes that define war movies.  The comradeship and bonding of soldiers at the front.  The detachment from the home front.  The clueless leaders.  The crusty veterans.  The officer who lets power go to his head.  The friends who go to war together and evolve into experienced soldiers until they die.  Specifically, it created the subgenre of “who will survive?”  It’s a testament to the greatness of the book/movie that the deaths are not predictable and are so memorable.