All Quiet on the Western Front premiered in 1930, only a year after "talkies" took over silent films. It is a widely acclaimed historical drama, ranked as the fifth-best war movie of all time by Rotten Tomatoes with a 98% rating. However, a 21st-century audience may find it dated and boring.
Despite its questionable entertainment value, there are positive aspects to the movie. First and foremost, the plot is believable and carefully constructed. It's an anti-war story based on the novel of the same name by the German author Erich Maria Remarque. The protagonist's character is well-developed, and the narrative leads to a memorable conclusion.
Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim from All Quiet on the Western Front
The film begins with a quote from the novel's author: "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…"
The Russian-American director Lewis Milestone presents the anti-war message through compelling dialogue and excellent acting. When released, it achieved both critical and commercial success in the United States and internationally. No one will ever know what role the movie played in influencing the American public's neutrality stance during the beginning of World War II. But the Nazi regime banned the film due to its anti-war and anti-German message. Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany, called it Judenfilm (Jewish film), presumably referring to the director's religion.
Lewis Milestone, winner of 1930 Academy Award for Best Director
There have been countless other anti-war films since All Quiet on the Western Front. So its message is not unique. The film's importance is probably related to when it was released, just 12 years after the end of the "Great War." Still traumatized by the events of World War I, isolationist and pacifist groups were gaining prominence in the U.S. as trouble was brewing in Europe and Asia. The film’s power is diluted today because a similar threat of wide-scale international conflict is not present.
There is hardly anything that opposing political partisans agree on these days. But most Americans support an anti-war stance. Trump Republicans tend to be isolationists, and Democrats are traditionally more anti-military. The mood was different in the 1930s, with Americans actively debating whether to participate in international conflicts. Avoiding war meant abandoning allies in Europe and ignoring atrocities in foreign lands. Today, Americans are less interested in international affairs. There have been numerous genocides throughout the globe since World War II that have been largely ignored, including inhumanities in Rwanda, Myanmar, and Sudan.
Anti-war protestors, Washington, DC, January 4, 2020 (usatoday.com)
Regardless of its irrelevance to the current state of affairs, I didn't find the film enjoyable. I struggled to stay awake during the gaps between the battle sequences. And I think there are several reasons. First, the look of the film is distracting. It's not because it is not in color, because I've enjoyed other black and white war films before, most notably the World War I movie Paths of Glory. But the image resolution seems low, as if it is out of focus. It's like streaming an old TV show made before high definition. I couldn't get used to it.
The low image quality prevented me from forgetting the movie was made more than 90 years ago. But more distracting is the audio. Maybe because it was recorded so early during the sound era, the dialogue seems muffled. It is analogous to bad cellular reception.
But the most glaring problem with a movie so old is not the sound but the silence. I only realized this issue when I started watching the 1979 remake. Unlike the more modern version, there's often complete silence in between dialogue. Excluding exploding bombs, there's little use of sound effects, which results in an unrealistic and somewhat eerie feeling. Furthermore, there is no musical score. And ironically, the lack of music accompanying the narrative leaves the movie strangely unnatural.
As I watched the first few minutes of the 1979 movie, I debated on whether to continue. But my dilemma lasted only seconds. The story is good but not interesting enough for me to watch it again. The original serves as an important marker in cinematic and cultural history. Still, a 21st-century audience may find All Quiet of the Western Front difficult to sit through. Too often, it's all quiet on the cinematic front.
Andrew’s grade: C
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