All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
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All Quiet on the Western Front Movie Review
All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 war film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Lew Ayres. It’s an amazing film and personally I would say it’s the best ever of its genre.
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“You still think it’s beautiful to die for your country.
The first bombardment taught us better.
When it comes to dying for country,
it’s better not to die at all“
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It follows German soldiers who go to WWI and it particularly focuses on one young man’s experiences. He eventually experiences the horrors of the war, gets back and has a quarrel with his old teacher who is still inspiring young boys to go to war and goes back to fight and in the end dies in that beautiful, truly moving and heartbreaking finale.
The storytelling here is impressive. The film is very long at over two hours, but never at all boring and slow because it is superbly edited and paced with a great flow and a very engaging story and characters. The beginning is great, but the third act has all of my favorite sequences such as that tragic ending, the scene with the mother, the aforementioned teacher sequence and the moment between the two friends before one’s death. Another moving, truly tragic scene is the hospital sequence with an amputated man.
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The movie truly is heartbreaking and emotionally devastating to watch. But thematically speaking, it excels the most and is the biggest reason why it’s such a classic decades after its release. This is one of the first true anti-war films with a terrific, strong anti-war statement that is very much felt and so well delivered to the audience. It not only showcases the foolishness of war, the horrors of it and the tragedy of man’s death whatever side he’s on, it also shows us how these terrible older men have been sending kids literally to fight on their behalf by using shameful manipulation tactics.
Lew Ayres is terrific as Paul Baumer and the fact that he wasn’t even nominated is ludicrous having in mind that the Academy obviously loved this film. He should have been nominated and he should have won in my opinion as his performance here is a career-defining one. He’s so good and even quite subtle, especially for this period and for his young age. He’s the heart and soul of the film and one wonderful protagonist for whom you can really get behind.
Professor Kantorek is an important, great character whom you hate easily and you should hate. As for the others, they are great as a team because individually nobody gets enough screen time, but that’s a nitpick because this film features character development that is better than the majority of its genre competitors. Kat is the most memorable of the bunch and the friendship that develops between the two is endearing to witness.
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All Quiet on the Western Front is particularly impressive in its technical aspects. Yes, the characters, storytelling, emotion and themes are all amazing, but these technicalities are even more so which says a lot. The dialogue is very strong, realistic and the film showed realistically how soldiers talk in real life.
The realism is evident in every single frame as the film is quite violent for 1930 and particularly grounded in reality when it comes to the portrayal of the war’s horrors, the action and the battles in the trenches. It makes you fear for the characters because the horror is very much real and felt. The fact that they managed to make such a realistic film in the first year of sound pictures is to be admired.
Lewis Milestone’s direction is absolutely magnificent and he rightfully won an Oscar for it. The same goes for the overall film which marks the very first time that the Academy got it right in the Best Picture category. By honoring it, they made one of the best choices ever in the most important and most uneven category.
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But the score is also very good and the sound design and mixing are absolutely fantastic and another category where the film should have won easily. It sounds so realistic and so great for this early period that it ranks miles above its contemporaries. The same goes for the cinematography which is splendid. The film looks beautiful at times, but mostly very dark, grainy and cold, thus transporting you to the trenches superbly. It truly is a technical marvel to behold and one of the best looking and sounding movies of the first half of the 1930s.
With splendid cinematography, terrific sound, great dialogue, highly realistic battle sequences and an important, strongly conveyed anti-war statement, All Quiet on the Western Front is the ultimate WWI film which is also magnificently acted by Lew Ayres who was shamefully Oscar snubbed for his terrific performance. The film is long, but never uninvolving as it’s superbly paced and brilliantly directed by Lewis Milestone. It’s a very emotional, tragic and quintessential look into the horrors and foolishness of war. This is a groundbreaking film that ranks among the finest Best Picture winners ever and is in my opinion the best war film of all time, period.
