All Quiet on the Western Front

Rating:
Summary: most important anti-war film ever
Review: this film is amazing. granted nothing is ever as good as the book, but this film is pretty close. All Quite on the Western Front is defintly the forerunner of Platoon. but i dont know how people compare saving private ryan to it. i dont even consider SPR an anti war movie. yes the begining is horrifing, but after the first thirty minutes it turns into a typical war movie with a few americans destroying a much larger german force. AQOTWF is truely the antiwar film at its best, and really it created the genre. yes the acting is somewhat stiff but the message is still powerful today. and frankly i think its good that americans see a movie from a diffiernt point of view, showing the german soldiers to be nothing more then men serving their country the same as the allied troops did, because americans still have problems with viewing are enimies as evil especially germans even years later.

Rating:
Summary: Very dated
Review: I'll have to go against the trend and give this movie only 3 stars. I am sure that when the movie came out in 1930 that it was well received and deserved several awards. Seeing this film for the first time last week was a dissapointment for me. The acting is very ordinary and the battle scenes are dissapointing. The film has dated. For a good WW1 DVD get "Paths of Glory" by Stanley Kubrik. This film was also set in WW1 and was in black and white. In my opinion a far better movie. For it's time "All quiet on the western front" was a landmark film. Today it seems almost corny.

Rating:
Summary: A generation of men destroyed by war
Review: For a movie in the 1930's, Lewis Milestone's adaptation of All Quiet On The Western Front, based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel, follows the book reasonably well. However, rather than starting with the soldiers lining up to get the cook Ginger's stew per the novel (that part comes later), it starts with Paul Baumer's school teacher telling him and his fellow students that they are the light of the Fatherland, the iron men of Germany, the brave heroes who will repulse the enemies when called to do so. In other words, he's exhorting them to enlist, which they do, pressed into patriotism in what was initially thought to have been a quick war with small losses.

From the start, the recruits are eager to get into uniform and to the front, and are puzzled by the behaviour of burned-out experienced soldiers like Tjaden and Kat. This latter, a large, pleasantly ugly man has a knack for scrounging for food and finding enough for the group, and soon, all the recruits stick with and respect this man, especially after their first bombardment. When one of the recruits realizes he has wet his trousers, Kat tells him not to worry about it, as it's happened to better men.

The stages of attacking, the bombardment, attack, counterattack, and repulse, is presented in graphic detail for that period, with the shots of men dying by artillery shells, being bayoneted, or machine-gunned. Some recruits go crazy waiting in the bunker during the bombardment, and one of them rushes outside, only to get cut down by bullets. And the aftermath isn't pretty for some. Franz Kemmerich ends up in the infirmary and has his leg amputated. From the grueling experience of phantom limb pain to the realization that one has lost his limb, the greed of some like Muller who wants Franz's nice boots, to the unconcern of the doctors who see Franz's death as another free bed, war is hell.

War changes people's perspectives. Paul fights and stabs a French soldier at close quarters in a foxhole, and he pleads and apologizes to the dying man, telling him that without these uniforms, they could be friends, and promising to write to his wife. And on leave, Paul is clearly alienated from the older civilians who have no clue that war has burned out his soul, and just keep telling him to give those Frenchies a licking and push on to Paris. I'd go for Tjaden's solution to war: get the politicians and generals wearing just their underpants into a big field and fight it out with clubs. But the discussion of the soldiers yields something still relevant: manufacturers want a war to sell more arms.

The subplot involving the butterflies is new, but the shot of the soldier reaching for the butterfly before being shot by a sniper symbolizes a soldier's whose burned out soul is suddenly heartened as seeing something beautiful, and suddenly thus illuminated within, reaches toward it.

All Quiet On The Western Front deservedly went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in the US. However, Joseph Goebbels' antics in Berlin demonstrates how Germany was in a state of war denial. The incident at a theatre of the second night showing of the movie involved Goebbels' men starting disturbances and yelling anti-Semitic epithets that resulted in the film's termination after ten minutes. Goebbels hadn't even seen the film; he merely wanted to demonstrate Nazi power in Berlin and discredit Albert Grzesinski, Prussia's Interior Minister who was a Social Democrat. When the film was banned by the Board of Censors because it "endangered Germany's image abroad", the headlines of Goebbels' newspaper Der Angriff (German for The Attack) read "Grzesinski Defeated."

One of the few war films I'll watch due to its pacifist message, denouncing the glorification of war. The prologue at the movie's beginning, taken from Remarque's book, says it all: this story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all, 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.

Rating:
Summary: Cinema at its best
Review: I can only re-iterate the comments passed by most of your other reviewers, a real master piece. Dated? maybe, the acting is of another age. but for all that the story and cine-matic quality reigns amongst the greatest of all time. The 1st world war is seen through a young, ordinary lad at first enthusiastic to serve his nation after a barrage of lecturing led by his school master on how glorious to wear a uniform with the girls flocking at your feet, the pride of the nation,ect,ect. He and most of his school mates join up only to be confronted with the reality of trench warfare.The story is quite straight forward but interwoven are really great episodes eg: we digress from the characters to follow a pair of boots as they are worn by various soldiers each one loosing them through death.
There are no glorious deaths no famous last words just the passing of a few young men out of the 9,000,000 who's lives ended between 1914 and 1918.
The final scene is a classic in film history.
The anti war message is as strong now 73 years after its release as it was then.
For those who have not seen this film and are real art lovers
this is a must buy for any film collection.
For me i just think it,s in the top 5 best films of all time and definately the best war movie ever made.

Rating:
Summary: Should have been 5...
Review: ...but for the flaws of the DVD (although I've seen much worse, and the price is fair), and the missing part ending the book (which was giving the full meaning of the title, and I found this omission unforgivable), the 'communiqué', announcing both the armistice and "All quiet on the Western Front": the death of the soldier who was at the center of the story did not have any meaning neither importance for the cannon fodder accountants (especially since the war was over). Lew Ayres, although doing a fine job as the central character, is way beyond Louis Wolheim who is perfect as the veteran who knows better, especially that the first worry for a soldier is not about glory but plain survival.

Boris Vian wrote(about 45 years ago):"War is made by people who don't know each other and fight, for the benefit of people who know each other very well but don't want to fight together"...But they give you some choice, either you die as a hero if listening to them, either as a 'coward desertor' if you refuse to comply to 'military law'; the worst (and it's very well exposed in this movie) being the one who are not fighting but know perfectly what should do those who are.I hope some day we'll see no more of military court-martialing civilians who refuse to go, but civil courts treating military as criminals.

What is most interesting is, the best 2 movies (in my opinion) depicting war as it is AND as it should be seen are this one from a book by a german writer (but an american movie), the 2nd, "Die Brucke, aka The Bridge" in 1959, having been made in Germany by a german director, Bernard Wicki; the main difference being the teacher who's trying (unsuccessfully) to calm down the young ones who want to fight for the "Vaterland": 1914 (when nothing done yet), they had to con them in; 1944 (when it was already lost), you couldn't reason them out.