All Quiet on the Western Front

To watch 1930's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT today is quite an eye opener.  Many films from this era and earlier surprise latter day viewers with their candor and technical skill, as if all "old" films are supposed to appear primitive.   Technology aside, timeless is timeless, and director Lewis Milestone's relentless take on "War is Hell" reinforces this theme, one that was certainly not new at the time of its filming and continues today.  And it will go on and on, as long as man feels the need to wage combat against his brothers of another origin, or even within the same country.  At the time of this writing, the idea of another American Civil War is not entirely fantastic.

The soldiers here are Germans, fighting the French in World War I.  We first see them in a classroom, fires in their bellies, egged on by their professor.  They are young and highly impressionable.  The idea of not serving is unthinkable.  Serving the fatherland is everything.  What sort of romantic notions these boys have, of shooting large arsenals and being held above shoulders in victory parades?  Certain that they are "right", perhaps doing God's work.

Reality beckons immediately.  That kindly mail carrier the boys know from back home is their boot camp instructor, and in this environment is a tyrant, determined to break every soul down to their primal selves - soldiers.  The training is brief and the exposure to warfare is imminent.  Our troop of fresh faces are so green that the sound of shells makes them cry.  Death comes quickly to some of them.  The older grunts try to instill some mettle.  Food is scarce.

As the film progresses, the focus is increasingly on Paul (Lew Ayres), who watches his band of brothers dwindle.  Comrades end up in hospitals, legs amputated.  Shells break too close.  Paul is one of those ineffectual, clean cut types, struggling with his killing of a French soldier.  He even stays up all night with the slowly dying man, apologizing for his actions, trying to keep him alive.  How long can such a sensitive individual survive the horror?

The men sit and philosophize.  They wonder how wars start.  As time goes on, they realize it is, distilled to its essence, merely a death march.  Certain doom.  They are mere cannon fodder for the brass, the decision makers.  When Paul returns home on furlough, he is alarmed at how ignorant everyone is to the realities of the trenches.  They all still believe in unchecked valor, the sort never to be questioned.  When the young man, already disillusioned, dares to speak his true feelings, he's branded a coward, even as cuts his vacation short to get back the front lines.  The only place where life has any meaning, anymore.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT covers the themes we've seen in countless subsequent war films.  It is the progenitor of anti-war pictures like PATHS OF GLORY.  Milestone's film is stunningly vivid.  There are rattling scenes of warfare, and the horrible screams of bombs and artillery.  And of men.  David Broekman's scoring is very minimal; music would've cheapened this astounding experience.  There are disturbing, terrible sounds, but also moments of quiet.  The final images are just perfect.