The new movie
All Quiet on the Western Front is the second major film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel of the same name, which tells the story of a German foot soldier’s experiences during the First World War. It is a German production, that has – somewhat to my surprise – received much critical acclaim. It is nominated for 9 Oscars, including Best Picture, as well as best international film, cinematography, and score. It recently swept most of the top BAFTA awards, including best film, director, cinematography and sound.
Remarque’s novel was a huge worldwide success – and the best-selling work of fiction in the US that year. It is a fabulous book, making the case that the war amounted to a senseless slaughter, which jibes with the view of many historians. The novel is a highly realistic and evocative description of how the “great war” was experienced by the men actually fighting it, and the profound disillusionment that it engendered in those who somehow survived. Remarque’s own experiences of trench warfare while fighting on the German side are certainly reflected in those of the young protagonist, Paul Bäumer, and his cohort. The great popularity of the book suggests that its viewpoint was not uniquely that of the soldiers on the losing side, it was universal.
The first film based on Remarque's novel was an American production released in 1930. Like the book, it received considerable critical and popular acclaim. This
All Quiet on the Western Front won the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year, and its director, Lewis Milestone, won the gold statue for Best Director (his second Oscar). Milestone is also known for directing
The Front Page (1931),
Of Mice and Men (1939) and the original
Ocean’s 11 (1960). (There was also a TV film of
All Quiet starring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine released in 1979. It received a Golden Globe award for best made-for-tv movie, but was not widely viewed or reviewed; and I haven’t seen it.)
My surprise at the current film’s reception is not because it is a bad picture. It has some good things going for it: for example, the photography and special effects, particularly in the many scenes of WWI battles and their carnage, are phenomenal, with a very realistic, if mostly desolate, look and feel. Lots of muddy grays and browns. The score of the film is a blend of somewhat mechanical or industrial sounding music in some scenes and a sharp, stark rapping of a snare drum in others. While controversial, it does contribute to the bleak, mostly grim scenes of war. Fully two thirds of the nine Academy Award nominations garnered by All Quiet on the Western Front are for the splendid technical achievements in the production: the cinematography, production design, visual effects, sound, makeup and instrumental score [there are no songs]. As a depiction of the horror of war and of the First World War in particular the movie is, arguably, great.
I said ‘arguably’, because one of the criticisms of this new iteration of
All Quiet on the Western Front – one that I agree with - is that it relies too heavily on grueling, relentless scenes of battle and the horrific WWI battlefield slaughter; and it pays only superficial attention to the effect these things have on the human beings doing the fighting. There’s a reason that this film received no Oscar nominations for its actors. This is not a knock on their talent; it’s just that they – by which I mean the two principal actors, Felix Kammerer, who plays Paul Bäumer the protagonist, and Albrecht Schuch as Stanislaus “Kat” Katczinsky, Paul’s older mentor and eventual buddy – have little to do other than grimace in battlefield rage and horror. Paul’s other buddies, friends from school who joined up with him, have even less to do and barely make an impression on us viewers as individual personalities. Because we never really get to know these folks in any meaningful way, it’s hard to feel involved with them. In Paul’s case, this means that we don’t care much about him – except perhaps in the way we automatically respond to any protagonist a little bit.
The new All Quiet changes the structure of the story in a couple of significant ways. Perhaps these modifications were intended to strengthen the narrative, but in my view they do the opposite.
The novel starts with Paul and his cronies as soldiers relaxing behind the lines, having just returned from two harrowing weeks at the front, where roughly half of their company had just been killed or wounded. Within nine pages, though, Paul (the narrator) is recalling the time just a few months before when he and his fellows were eighteen-year-old high school lads. The war having just begun, the boys were hectored by their schoolmaster about the moral imperative to fight for the German fatherland, not to mention the patriotic glory they would experience when they did so. “
Won’t you join up, Comrades?” he shouts in a moving voice, until the whole of the class marches down to the enlistment office and does just that. Three pages later, we are back with battle-weary Paul the veteran soldier. The schoolmaster and other elders had let the young men down, he writes. The boys trusted them, but “
the first bombardment taught us our mistake, and under it the world as they taught it to us broke in pieces. … While they taught us that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death throes are stronger.” We readers are only on page 15 and can see that this is a story about much more than the thrill and righteous ardor of battle.
In truth, Remarque tells us as much in the dedication, in which he writes: “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. 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 1930 film begins similarly, with Paul and his crew in their high school classroom. We hear martial music and see soldiers marching in neat formations down the street outside. As in the novel, the schoolmaster is exhorting the boys to quit school and join up. “
You are the light of the Fatherland, you boys”, he says. When you’re a soldier, he your parents will be proud, the girls will swoon, and you will have the deepest of life’s experiences. Most importantly, “
the Fatherland needs you, what’s holding you back?” Just as in the book, the class enthusiastically rises to join the fray. Once on the battlefield, the illusions instilled in these boys are quickly shattered by the horrific conditions in the trenches, the senseless battles whose only tangible result is the sacrificial slaughter of tens of thousands of their fellow combatants – on both sides. The only thing to sustain one is comradeship with your fellow soldiers. Yet, as comrades are killed and maimed, even that belief frays into meaninglessness and tragedy when there is no answer to the question “What are we fighting and dying
for?”
What both the old and the new movies have over the novel is the ability to
show us the hideous, awful barbarity of war in general and the First World War in particular – not with mere words but with dramatic aural and visual imagery. Film allow us to see and understand the immense scope of this tragedy that destroyed a generation of European men, in a way that may be impossible to accomplish in a book. And both the 1930 and the 2022 films do this with great success. Having seen both films recently, however, I am particularly impressed with how well the earlier picture accomplished this. One could say that with the benefit of ninety years of technological advancement the current
All Quiet on the Western Front does a better job of depicting war, and on one level it does. It’s in color. It gives us a wide screen view. The special effects are more sophisticated, as is the cinematography in general. But to be honest it is not
that much better.
Compared to the new All Quiet, however, there is more poignancy to Paul’s experiences in the earlier film. We feel this due to our growing attraction to and sympathy for Paul – played by the handsome, fresh faced, likeable Lew Ayres [Young Dr. Kildare (1938), Johnny Belinda (1948)]. Because we like him, it’s easier to feel for him in his suffering and degradation, in his grief and disillusionment as the war drags him down. In the current film, by contrast, I never felt like I knew or cared much about Paul or his buddies. I was still gripped by the battle scenes, but because I did not feel much attachment to these guys, their emotional struggles were far less affecting.
I’ve previously noted that the important theme of disillusionment is much stronger in the novel and the 1930 movie than in the current
All Quiet on the Western Front. One prominent reason is the new picture's omission of a key episode featured in the other versions of the story: when Paul finally gets leave to return home for a few weeks. After enduring so much hardship and deprivation at the front, having seen friends die violent deaths and having himself killed in battle, he is looking for a reprieve, for solace and understanding. He is a changed man from the idealistic boy he was when he was left home. But in his town and with his family, nothing has changed at all. They still see him as a boy. They still think how wonderfully adventurous his life must be. They still think the war can be won. They don’t understand anything. Paul soon realizes that there is no home for him anymore. After just a few days, he opts to return early to his unit and the war. It’s a tragic and very powerful scene. Neither this, nor anything like it is to be found in the new film.
Another difference in the 2022 All Quiet is an addition rather than an omission. A subplot has been added that allows viewers to see the larger picture, essentially a meta-narrative of the war. Here are the generals and diplomats on both sides who - for the better part of three years from 1915 through 1917, despite numerous attacks and counterattacks - have overseen a massive stalemate in the war. All this time, while their troops are living at the front in squalid, muddy trenches, these guys are living in luxury, well behind the field of combat. The decision makers see the millions of casualties (if they see them at all) not as a human catastrophe, but simply as the expected byproduct of the geopolitical war-game they are playing. By the end of 1917, dissident German politicians realize the hopelessness of their country’s position when the U.S. enters the war, and they seek authorization to sue for peace. Chief among these is Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Bruel) who, on behalf of the German Reich, eventually signs the armistice agreement (essentially an unconditional surrender) with France and the Allies. (Three years later, Erzberger will be assassinated for his ‘treasonous’ act by a right-wing zealot.)
At first, I thought the addition of this extra material was a mistake, because it interferes with and detracts
from the power of the primary story about Paul and the men actually doing the fighting. Now I’m not so sure. The book did not have much contextual information, nor did the 1930 movie. Probably because back then the readers and viewers, only a dozen or so years removed from WWI, knew all about that stuff. These days, a hundred years after that war ended, I suspect that many viewers know little or nothing about it. Nowadays, the predominant view among historians is that there was no overriding, reasonable justification for the First World War at all, other than the Putin-esque egotism and ambitions of the German Kaiser and his kin. So, adding a frame of reference like this may be particularly apt after all.
What is my bottom line about the new All Quiet on the Western Front? I think it’s a very good but not a great movie. Its dazzlingly realistic and horrific scenes of war and slaughter are among the best ever filmed, but not head and shoulders better than such scenes in films like Saving Private Ryan (1998), Dunkirk (2017), or even All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Unlike those other movies, the new All Quiet sets itself apart because its battle scenes are so unrelenting – each goes on for a long time, and they make up most of the picture. Together with its brilliantly bleak cinematography, it’s a bit much. Particularly in the absence of a compelling plot or interesting protagonist.
As to point of view, you may ask: is this really an antiwar movie or just an anti-World War I movie? Good question.
2 hours 28 minutes In German (mostly) with subtitles
Grade: B+
Streaming on Netflix.
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