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.

The Worst Version of “All Quiet…”

 

Today marks the anniversary of the publishing of the greatest anti-war novel in 1929.  A new movie brings the book to the silver screen for the third time.  Does the movie deserve all the applause?

                I had every reason to enjoy the new “All Quiet on the Western Front”.  I had been waiting for it for about a decade.  When I first read it was going to be made, it was to star Daniel Ratcliffe.  Granted, that was casting that caused some concern, but if John Boy Walton could do a good job as Paul Baumer, then so could Harry Potter.  As the years passed by, Daniel Bruhl (an outstanding German actor) was attached to the project.  That was certainly an upgrade.  Now, if they could just make the damn movie!  Finally, Netflix stepped in and we got a German version of the German novel.

  Erich Marie Remarque wrote the most famous anti-war novel and published it on Jan. 31, 1929.  It has sold more than 20 million copies.  It was made into the most famous anti-war movie which was released in 1930.  A version was made for TV in 1979.  The 2022 has been lauded as the best version.  And several critics (and many viewers) have praised it as the most realistic war movie ever made.  It currently has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  It has been nominated for 14 BAFTAs and 9 Oscars, including both Best Picture and Best International Feature.

If you have read my review, you know I find the movie greatly overrated.  The claims of the movie’s greatness has caused me to rewatch the film and while it is a decent war movie, it certainly does not deserve the accolades.  There are two big problems with the film.  First, the fighting may be realistic (although I would suggest what people are praising as realistic is actually simply more graphic deaths than viewers are used to seeing in a war movie) in its combat scenes, but the plot has some very unrealistic developments.  Second, it is laughable that the movie carrries the title of the novel, because there is very little from Remarque’s book in the movie.  It is infuriating to read reviews that say that the director and screenwriter “decided to stay as faithful to the original source as possible.”  That is pure bullshit and had to come from someone who never read the book or saw the 1930 version. In fact, I would be surprised if the director and screenwriter read the book.    Here are some observations I have about the movie.  (Spoiler alert)

Here are the scenes that were inspired by the novel:

1.  A teacher gives a speech to a group of students, urging them to go to war.  C  In the book and both earlier movies, the speech is delivered in a classroom session and is less of a demand that the boys enlist.  It highlights a core group of friends that the book will follow.

2.  The soldiers are in a bunker during a bombardment.  They quickly start to panic and one runs out and is killed by a shell.  The roof caves in, Paul is covered up.  F  In the book, the men are under bombardment for days.  The veterans take it in stride, but a couple of the newly arrived soldiers crack.  Nothing happens to the bunker and the soldiers exit when the bombardment lifts because they know the French will be coming.

3.  Paul and Kat go foraging. (They are returning from the rear, so they should not be starving.)  Paul talks Kat into it.  Kat climbs over the wall of a farmstead to steal a goose.  He barely escapes and is fired on.  D  In the book, Kat is an ace scrounger.  He doesn’t need to be talked into it.  The goose is running around in a yard when Kat grabs it.  There is no encounter with a farmer.

4.  Kropp looks at a poster of a man and a woman.  He takes the woman half of the poster and hangs it in the trench.  D  In the book, Kropp and Baumer view the poster and banter about it.  Kropp tears the half with the man off and leaves the girl on the wall.

5.  Franz approaches three French girls and they invite him home.  End of scene.  He returns with a scarf.  F-  In the book, it is Paul, Kropp, and Lear who visit the girls.  The book covers the encounter with the girls while the boys are swimming and then covers them visiting the girls with food.  

6.  Paul is caught in a shell crater.  He stabs a French soldier several times and then is stuck with the dying man.  He tries stuffing his mouth with dirt, but the Frenchman lingers.  When Paul tries to deal with the wounds, the soldier dies.  He opens his billfold and learns he is a “typographer”.  F  In the book, the incident occurs at night when Paul is on patrol.  The scene has Paul apologizing to the corpse and promising to write his wife.  He thinks of the nature of war that made them enemies.

7.  The men demand twice the rations because they have half the men.  The cook gives it to them with hardly an argument.  D  In the movie, there is a much longer argument and an officer steps in to side with the hungry men

8.  After the war has been declared over, Paul and Kat go foraging to the same farm that they barely escaped from earlier in the movie.  Paul gets away with some eggs (instead of grabbing a duck) and runs with the farmer firing at them again.  When Kat goes into some woods to urinate, he encounters the farmer’s son, who shoots him in the chest.  Paul carries Kat to the hospital, but when he gets there Kat is proclaimed dead from loss of blood.  F  The war is nearing an end when Kat is hit in the leg with shrapnel.  Paul carries him to the hospital and is shocked to learn Kat is dead from a minor wound.  It turns out that Kat took another piece of shrapnel, this time in the head, while being carried.  This highlights the randomness of death and how you could survive all manner of dangers and yet die from bad luck

9.  The 2022 movie goes bombastic and it makes the title a joke.  Paul is killed in hand-to-hand combat in the last attack.  He dies right before the armistice.   C   In the book, Paul dies an undisclosed death near the end of the war.  The title of the book refers to his death.  Remarque is pointing out individual deaths were meaningless.  The 1930 version has him reaching for a butterfly and being killed by a sniper.  The 1979 has him sketching a bird when the sniper fires.   

 

As you can see, the few times the movie tries to replicate the book, it does so poorly.  Several of these scenes are not even crucial scenes from the book.  So, the decision to go with them instead of more iconic scenes is puzzling.  A third version of the book should have brought the novel to a new generation that is not familiar with the book or the two previous movies.  The film utterly fails in this respect.  Here are some crucial elements of the book that this version does not cover, but the other two movies did.

1.  There is not training camp sequence.  There is no Himmelstoss, who is a great villain.  Paul and his classmates are shown signing up and the next scene has them going to the front

2.  Paul does not go home on leave.  This sequence establishes the disconnect between the civilian world and the front.  Paul does not have his heart-tugging moments with his dying mother or his frustrating interaction with his father and his friends who argue about how to win the war.  He does not confront his teacher.  And we don’t get Paul feeling he is more at home at the front than in his hometown

3.  Paul and Albert do not spend time in a hospital where the plight of the wounded is highlighted.

4.  Kimmerich does not have his leg amputated in a ghastly hospital setting.  Mueller does not get his boots.  (In the 1930 version, the boots are passed on as each wearer is killed.  This version used a woman’s scarf for that.)

5. There is no battle where Paul takes refuge in a grave.

6.  There is no wounded horses scene.

7.  There is very little of the guys sitting around talking.

8.  There are no wounded crying out from no man’s land.

9.  Paul does not visit Kemmerich’s mother and lie to her about her son’s death.

10.  There is little character development.  The movie is totally dominated by Paul and Kat.  It is a buddy film.  Paul does not go from an enthusiastic fool to a wizened veteran.  He stays the same through the film.  In the book, Kat is mentor to all the men.  He is like their sergeant although he doesn’t have the rank.  In this movie, he is basically just an older soldier. 

 

But besides leaving out key scenes from the book, the movie replaces them with inferior scenes.  Of the 147 minute running time, about 20 minutes is devoted to either the diplomat Erzberger or Gen. Friedrichs.  Those 20 minutes would have been much better used to cover more of the book. 

Those who have read my reviews know that I am most upset when a war movie is unrealistic.  I don’t really care about bad accents and I don’t count rivets.  But I care deeply whether a movie makes sense.  This version had me shaking my head numerous times.  Obviously, most critics and viewers did not realize when the  movie was laughable or they don’t care.  So, if you don’t care, don’t read on.

1.  The movie opens with the Germans under fire in their trench.  It becomes clear that the French are attacking them, and yet, the Germans are ordered out of the trench to meet the French in no man’s land.  This does lead to a visceral melee that helps convince some that the movie is showing a realistic battle.  However, if the Germans were being attacked, they would not have left the trench.  Trenches were difficult to take, so why give up that advantage by leaving it? 

2.  The German bunkers were very well constructed.  The chances that the roof would collapse are very slim.  Paul is found in a hole with planks nicely arranged on top of him.  Hilarious

3.  After Paul is rescued, the scene shows Germans working outside the trench in daylight.  There would not have a been a truce to bury the dead in 1917.

4.  Bombardments would last up to a week. The movie shows them lasting minutes.  Veterans like Paul would not have panicked so easily.

5.  Franz would not have been the only one to go talk to the French women.

6.  There are long stretches where the unit is far away from the front.

7.  A whole company of new recruits died from poison gas.  Poison gas usually disabled, rather than killed.  Plus, no one was wounded?  They ALL died?

8.  They go over the top without a preparatory bombardment.  This would have been unlikely

9.  Tanks are shown counterattacking.  They were not usually used for this because it took a lot of time and effort to get them in position for an attack.  It would have been very bad luck for Paul and his comrades to attack an area that just so happened to be where a tank attack was planned.

10.  The tanks shown are the French Saint-Chamond, obviously chosen because they look bad-ass.  I won’t quibble about the fact that they were not being used in November, 1918.  They are rendered accurately.  A tank round hits in the trench from about 30 yards.  That trajectory would have been impossible.  A tank rolls into a communications trench. It would most likely have gotten stuck.  One reason for discontinuing the Saint-Chamond was its trouble crossing trenches.

11.  Paul and Kat bring food to the wounded Tjaden.  They don’t offer to feed him although he is lying on his back.  They take their eyes off him and he stabs himself with a fork.

12.  Paul and Kat go foraging even though they had just had a double ration.  They talk of going home and yet they risk that by targeting a French farm where they had barely survived before.  Suddenly there is snow covering the ground.

13.  The German soldiers celebrate the end of the fighting.  Suddenly, the general gives a speech from a balcony (thus reminding the soldiers of how out of touch all the generals were).  He starts by telling them soon they will be returning home, thus reinforcing their belief the war is over.  And then he incredibly makes a case for one more attack.  In fact, he orders it.  There is no way in hell all those men would have meekly gone to their deaths. Who wants to be the last to die in a lost war.  (Apparently Paul.)  The movie tries to get around this by having a few men shot for refusing, but the vast majority would have refused.  This was a classic mutiny scenario

14.  The general is a caricature of a WWI general.  Bald.  With a mean dog.  He lives in a chateau eating great food.  He loves war.  I think the general was a way for the director and screenwriter to emphasize the callous leadership in the war and the gulf between the soldiers and their generals.  However, this trope has appeared in many WWI movies, like “Paths of Glory”. 

15.  For the third time, we get an almost identical tracking shot of Paul running across no man’s land with men falling around him.  Once again, he takes shelter behind an object.  This time it’s a dead horse.  Once again, Paul has his face covered with mud.  He spends most of the combat scenes with mud on his face.  The movie has Paul and his mates in the same trench through the war.  By 1918 there would have been a lot more movement with the German offensive and then the Allied counteroffensive pushing them back.  The combat in the movie is more appropriate for 1916.

 

I know this is a lot of carping, but I had to get it off my chest.  If you like the movie, that is fine.  But don’t tell me it is a great war movie and don’t think you don’t need to read the book now.  I pity the high school students who use this movie to write a book report about “All Quiet on the Western Front.”