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by Joseph Davis, Contributing Writer

“This book is to be 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.”

~Opening lines to All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque

One of my favorite quotes from any media depicting those serving in wartime is from the show M*A*S*H, where Hawkeye Pierce states the following in response to the comment that war is hell: “War isn’t hell. War is war, and hell is hell, and of the two war is a lot worse.” This succinct phrase, and the following discussion between Pierce and Father Mulcahy, really hits home the awfulness that at the time was the Vietnam war, of people being sent to fight in what to many was a truly senseless conflict. It shattered the perception of war for the average American and led to a cultural revolution in the United States that can in many ways still be felt today. However, barely a half century before U.S. involvement in Vietnam, another global conflict was very much doing the same things: shattering the perception of warfare, and causing cultural and geopolitical shifts that reverberate even to this day on a global scale. For better or worse, this also made its way into the early days of film, with the likes of the silent movie Wings showing air warfare. Movies like this, in many ways, showed the First World War in a more rambunctious, patriotic, and adventurous way, almost lightheartedly to the death and destruction surrounding the majority of the conflict. However, only a handful of years after Wings became the first film to win Best Picture, the film All Quiet on the Western Front was released, based on the book of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. Winning best picture at the third Academy Awards, it was the first movie adapted from a novel, and the first war film with full sound to win the award, and it possibly is one of the most famous and influential war films to come out of the early days of cinema. With the release of a remake on Netflix coming out this year, 111 years after the end of The Great War, and some 82 years after the original film’s release, I wanted to take the time to look back at the original film in retrospect. To examine its telling of the war, the way it and the soldiers are depicted, and how well it holds up after all these years.

“The bullets chirped, […] Machine-guns chuckled, […] And the big guns guffawed.”

~Excerpt from “The Last Laugh”, by Wilfred Owen

First off, I want to discuss the way it depicted the war and really compare it to the movie Wings, which just two years prior had also won what would become the Academy Award for Best Picture. For starters, Wings was about U.S. airmen going against the evil Germans, who are mostly depicted through arias battles, while showing it to be a jovial adventure from what I took away with it. All Quiet on the Western Front, however, is far different than just depicting the war from the German perspective. From when Paul (Lew Ayres), Mueller (Russell Gleason), and their fellow classmates arrive at the front to the very end, it is anything but an adventure. While our lead, Paul, and all his classmates decide to join up as it is their patriotic duty, it then turns into the monotony of the First World War. Rather than showing the war as a grand adventure, the filmmakers, even back in 1930, strove to ensure that the physical and mental toll that was placed upon what were basically boys sent on near suicide missions was front and center. Days upon days of staying in the trenches, only rarely being able eat anything beyond stale rations, while waiting for a reprieve in shelling only for the enemy to attack, or for your unit to be ordered over the top and into the meat grinder that was no man’s land itself. And finally when going to the rear, only then can the characters take stock at their losses.

This is in all honesty a truly stunning sight to see in a movie released barely a decade after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Not long ago I, wrote about films based on the Titanic disaster and mentioned that the 1929 film Atlantic was originally titled after the doomed liner, and how there were threats of lawsuits and concerns over the potential trauma of seeing a disaster still fresh on the public memory being shown on the big screen, yet here when the war was still just as fresh, if not more so than the sinking of the Titanic, we have a movie that is not subtle at all in its depiction on the First World War. In all honesty, I have to commend All Quiet on the Western Front for making that choice, because it would have been far easier to make a movie that would show a much lighter side of the conflict. There are shots that I won’t describe here, despite them being nowhere near as gory or bloody as they can be shown as in today’s cinema, that surprised me in both what they chose to depict and what they were able to actually accomplish, even when I watched this movie a few years ago for the first time. It’s a sobering sight to see, and for a world that was still recovering from the loss of nearly an entire generation at the time this first came out, it served as a strong and sobering reminder of the hell that occurred during the war. However, it’s also something I’m more than happy to commend this movie for. Only those who are willing to truly look back and remember the horrors of our past, at the worst decisions and the events that darken history, can truly learn and know the importance of changing the world for the better. It reminds the audience who lived through the First World War of its horrors, and aimed that war is not glorious or an adventure, but suffering and pain.

“‘Strange friend,’ I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.’ 

‘None,’ said that other, ‘save the undone years.’”

Excerpt from “Strange Meeting”, by Wilfred Owen

I’ve touched on the toll the war took on an entire generation, but I do want to dive a bit more into it here, as the film focuses largely on one group of classmates who decide to join the war together. These boys clearly already have a rapport, as they’re filled with their patriotic duty to enlist and to join the war alongside one another. This choice by the author of this story, and in its depiction in the film, helps the film’s message hit home. Their classmates slowly get killed off one by one, and the toll it takes on the friends who carry on becomes more and more clear as simple joys slowly get taken away. While they start filled with pride and gusto, as the toll of trench warfare continues, they slowly grow more and more callous, where even once simple joys can’t bring happiness the way they once did. If the war didn’t outright take you, it took your youth and joy.

This movie and how it depicts the physical and mental toll on our central characters strikes me very much of the later Soviet movie, Come and See, where the young are eager to fight, but once the true reality hits them, their youth dies. While it takes on a physical appearance with the lead character in Come and See, for All Quiet on the Western Front, it’s how they speak and carry themselves that conveys the message on the loss of youth so many felt after the war. You can feel it in how the body language of the characters change over the timeframe of the film that the characters in front of you change more than just physically. They start as proud to serve their country, and over time they become more and more lost to the world, only concerned about survival. There is a reason we’ve all heard how it was considered the war to end all wars, and this movie does a brutally excellent job of conveying to the audience exactly why that was the case. When their lives aren’t being lost, their very youths and worldview are. Their pride in fighting for their homeland is slowly replaced by only the urge to survive, and the filmmakers make that abundantly clear, which makes this film all the better for it.

“The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds…”

~Excerpt from “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, by Wilfred Owen

With any war there are always multiple fronts, and even if there is only a western front, there is always a home front. In many ways, there can even be a disconnect between the two. Of course, when we see the moments of the home front in this movie, we see a sharp disconnect between the reality Paul has seen and the belief of those at home that victory was merely a breakthrough away. In all honesty, I can even see why that disconnect is there from a sheer historical standpoint. He’s found himself unable to return to a sense of normalcy, as he finds himself surrounded by people who can only see a point on the map, whose solutions seem so simple from home, yet fail to understand the true scope that the war had become. This festers into him rejecting the hardline national idea of how the war will be won if they just push a little harder, just like they did decades before, not realizing the war and the tactics have changed.

One poem I stumbled upon about the First World War, written by Siegfried Sassoon, who served with the British army in the trenches, I find hits this point home for me. Titled “Suicide in the Trenches,” it’s a short poem where the last stanza states the following:

“You smug faced crowds with gleaming eyes / Who cheer as soldier lads march by / Go home and pray you’ll never know / The hell where youth and laughter go.”

The scenes where Paul returns home for a brief reprieve from the war absolutely lays this point bare for all to see. From my own personal research into the First World War, there are themes of how generals and those who aren’t at the front feel that just one move will break the enemy and win the war, when no matter what, it was purely a war of attrition, one where the longer it went on, the more brutal it would become, both at home and on the front. It’s a sharp contrast from the national pride to enlist to the fact Paul vehemently is against the message being told back home and of the lies he sees. It does a stunning job at showing just how disconnected he is when he is home, like he doesn’t belong there anymore, and it keeps the theme of how even if you would survive the horrors of trench warfare, the version of you that once was will never be the same.

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie….”

~Excerpt from “Dulce et Decorum est”, by Wilfred Owen

Movies are meant to convey a message, on top of how well the actors perform and how cohesive the story is. For a movie such as All Quiet on the Western Front, that message is one of brutal honesty. It aims to remind the audience of the horrors of war and the dangers of fervent nationalism at the expense of all else. For the latter, all I have to do is look at how it was banned in Germany leading up to the Second World War to know that it was effective. The former, how it depicted the war, is a different question. 

Ultimately, I feel that to adequately answer that question it must be compared to what those who served on the front themselves endured and how it shaped their own works. For that, I’d suggest you look at the excerpts I included in this piece. Each person who wrote those pieces, the author of the original book Erich Maria Remarque, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, served in the war. While Owen would not survive the war, being killed in action a week before the armistice, their works and the works of many other war poets and authors paints a picture of the First World War. It is just as grim as presented in this film. That, in my opinion, is why this movie won Best Picture at the time of its release, and why it stands to the test of time to this day. The acting and camerawork are phenomenal for the time, sure, but its message and the way it conveys the message on a truly emotional level is what makes this one an all time great for me. It may not be the most enjoyable movie to watch, but much like war, it is not meant to be an adventure or an accusation. The 2022 release of the Netflix remake has a high bar to clear, and I’m more than curious to see if it can have the same punch and same message as the original.

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