One of the most influential anti-war films ever made, this drama follows a group of idealistic young men as they join the German Army during World War I and are sent to the Western Front.
All Quiet on the Western Front, adapted from the Erich Maria Remarque novel, crowned the 1920s cycle of WWI movies (What Price Glory?, Wings), stating its antiwar message so powerfully that it won the Oscar for Best Picture and was eventually banned in Germany by the Nazis. Lew Ayres epitomizes the naive, patriotic German youth transformed into a battle-weary survivor -- a performance that anticipates Charlie Sheen's similar turn in Platoon. In this early sound film, director Lewis Milestone utilized late silent-era techniques -- quick-cutting "Russian Montage," rapid camera movements -- to emphasize the chaos and savagery of the massive infantry assaults that characterized the Great War. By showing combat experiences from the enemy's perspective, the picture humanizes and universalizes the suffering of soldiers on the front line. The ending of the film is a deceptively simple, yet powerful, coda that expresses the movie's theme with such intensity that All Quiet on the Western Front remains the quintessential war movie, 70 years after its release.
STORY
The film follows a group of German schoolboys, talked into enlisting at the beginning of World War 1 by their jingoistic teacher. The story is told entirely through the experiences of the young German recruits and highlights the tragedy of war through the eyes of individuals. As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceptions about "the enemy" and the "rights and wrongs" of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and bewildered. This is highlighted in the scene where Paul mortally wounds a French soldier and then weeps bitterly as he fights to save his life while trapped in a shell crater with the body. The film is not about heroism but about drudgery and futility and the gulf between the concept of war and the actuality.
One of the most powerful anti-war statements ever put on film, this gut-wrenching story concerns a group of friends who join the Army during World War I and are assigned to the Western Front, where their fiery patriotism is quickly turned to horror and misery by the harsh realities of combat. Director Lewis Milestone pioneered the use of the sweeping crane shot to capture a ghastly battlefield panorama of death and mud, and the cast, led by Lew Ayres, is terrific. It's hard to pick a favorite scene, but the finale, as Ayres stretches from his trench to catch a butterfly, is one of the most devastating sequences of the decade. The film won Oscars for Best Picture and for Milestone's direction -- and trivia buffs should note that the actors were coached by future luminary George Cukor, while Ayres became a conscientious objector in World War II. The Road Back (1937) followed, and the film was remade for television in 1979
CAST
Lewis Milestone, WWI) (Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim
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