All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film)

Plot

Early in World War I Professor Kantorek gives an impassioned speech to his students about the glory of defending the fatherland. The boys, led by Paul Bäumer, enthusiastically enlist in the German Army. Their romantic delusions are shattered during rigorous training under the abusive Sergeant Himmelstoss.

The new soldiers are attacked by artillery even before they reach their front line positions. The 2nd Company is composed of older, unwelcoming veterans, and they pay Corporal "Kat" Katzinsky for a meal of stolen hog with their tobacco, alcohol, and soap. Their first mission with the veterans is a harrowing experience, during which one of them is killed. Another loses his nerve after several days under bombardment and is killed trying to escape the trenches. Their first major attack results in heavy losses on both sides but no change in territory. When the company is relieved, each man receives double rations because they suffered so many casualties. Their discussion about the causes of the war does nothing to change anyone's thinking about the nature of war.

When Himmelstoss arrives at the front, he is spurned because of his bad reputation and forced to go over the top with the 2nd Company. He is killed quickly after showing himself to be a coward. During the battle Paul stabs a French soldier and becomes increasingly distraught as he spends the night trapped in a shell-hole with the dying man. He attempts first aid and begs for forgiveness and returns to the German lines, where he is comforted by Kat.

Paul and his good friend Albert Kropp are severely wounded by artillery fire behind the lines and sent to a Catholic hospital. Paul is taken to the bandaging ward and makes an unexpected recovery. His elation is tempered by the depression of Albert, who has lost his legs. Paul visits his family at home on furlough, shocked how uninformed and optimistic everyone is. Visiting Kantorek's schoolroom he's asked to share his experiences and when unexpectedly expresses disillusionment with the war, the students call him a coward.

Paul cuts his furlough short and returns to the 2nd Company, now filled with replacement even younger than his class had been. The only familiar face is Tjaden, who tells him the fates of several of their comrades. Paul greets Kat as he returns from foraging and discuss the grim outlook of the war. An aerial bomb breaks Kat's shin, so Paul carries him back to a field hospital, where he discovers a second explosion had killed Kat. Crushed by the loss of his mentor, Paul stumbles away while the medics play cards.

Back at the front, Paul sees a butterfly just outside the trench. He reaches overtop the sandbagged parapet to hold the butterfly and is killed by a sniper. Superimposed over the image of a military cemetery, Paul and his classmates are seen arriving at the front for the first time.

Cast

• Louis Wolheim as Corporal Stanislaus "Kat" Katczinsky, an older soldier who was a cobbler
• Lew Ayres as Paul Bäumer, a student and writer, who is the leader of the boys
• John Wray as Himmelstoss, a mailman who becomes the boys' drill sergeant
• Arnold Lucy as Professor Kantorek, who encourages the boys to enlist
• Ben Alexander as Franz Kemmerick, the boy who is blown up, has his leg amputated, and dies
• Scott Kolk as Leer, the boy whose ultimate fate is not shown
• Owen Davis Jr. as Peter, the boy who is shot in the head and killed after getting Kemmerick's boots from Mueller
• Walter Browne Rogers as Behn, the boy who is blinded and then shot and killed in no man's land
• William Bakewell as Albert Kropp, the boy who is hit by shrapnel and has his leg amputated at the same time Paul is injured and hospitalized
• Russell Gleason as Mueller, the boy who is injured by shrapnel shortly after getting Kemmerick's boots
• Richard Alexander as Haie Westhus, an older soldier who was a peat-digger, who Paul is told died trying to save a messenger dog
• Harold Goodwin as Detering, an older soldier who was a farmer with a cherry orchard
• Slim Summerville as Tjaden, an older soldier who makes it to the end
• G. Pat Collins as Lieutenant Bertinck, an officer in Paul's company
• Beryl Mercer as Frau Bäumer, Paul's mother
• Edmund Breese as Herr Meyer, a friend of Paul's father Uncredited
• William Irving as Ginger, an army cook
• Raymond Griffith as Gérald (or Gérard) Duval, a French soldier who Paul stabs and then watches die for hours when trapped in a shell-hole
• Yola d'Avril as Suzanne, the French woman who sleeps with Paul
• Poupée Andriot as the blonde French woman, who sleeps with Leer
• Renée Damonde as the brunette French woman, who sleeps with Albert
• Heinie Conklin as Joseph Hammacher, a soldier with a head injury who Paul and Albert meet in the Catholic hospital
• Bertha Mann as Sister Libertine, a nurse at the Catholic hospital
• Marion Clayton as Erna Bäumer, Paul's sister
• Edwin Maxwell as Herr Bäumer, Paul's father At the time of his death in December 2014, Arthur Gardner, who appeared uncredited as a student, was the last surviving member of the film's cast or crew.

Production

The film was shot with two cameras side by side, with one negative edited as a sound film and the other edited as an "International Sound Version" for distribution in non-English speaking areas.

A great number of German Army veterans were living in Los Angeles at the time of filming, and many were recruited to work on the film as bit players and technical advisers. Around 2,000 extras were utilized during production. Among them was future director Fred Zinnemann.

In the film, Paul is shot while reaching for a butterfly. This scene is different from the book, and was inspired by an earlier scene showing a butterfly collection in Paul's home. The scene was shot during the editing of the film, so the actors were no longer available and Milestone had to use his own hand instead of Ayres' hand for the final shot.

Noted comedic actress ZaSu Pitts was originally cast as Paul's mother and completed filming her part, but preview audiences, used to seeing her in comic roles, laughed when she appeared onscreen, so Milestone re-shot her scenes with Beryl Mercer before the film was released. The preview audience remains the only one who saw Pitts in the role, although she does appear for about 30 seconds in the film's original preview trailer.

Releases

The original version of this all-talking picture, lasting 152 minutes, After re-shooting the scenes with the character of Paul's mother and doing some additional editing, the all-talking version of the film went into general release in the US on August 24, 1930. before the film premiered in London June 14, 1930. The film was re-released in 1939, though only after being cut down to ten reels. This same version, running 102 minutes, was re-released very successfully by Realart Pictures in 1950, and Universal-International brought it back to theaters in 1958.

Re-releases of the film were substantially cut, and the ending was scored with new music against the wishes of director Milestone. Before he died in 1980, Milestone requested that Universal fully restore the film. In 2006, the United States Library of Congress undertook an exhaustive restoration of the film. This version incorporates all known surviving footage and is 133 minutes long.

Home media

Various edited versions of the film have been distributed on home video, including a Japanese subtitled LaserDisc with a running time of 103 minutes. The US Laserdisc from 1987 and the first US DVD (released in 1999), used the same unrestored 131-minute British release print as their source material. Since 2007, there have been numerous international releases of the 2006 Library of Congress restoration on DVD and Blu-ray. Some releases in the latter format also contain a 133-minute restoration of the International Sound Version, albeit mislabeled as the "silent version".

Reception

Critical response

All Quiet on the Western Front received tremendous praise in the United States upon its release. Variety lauded it as a "harrowing, gruesome, morbid tale of war, so compelling in its realism, bigness and repulsiveness", and concluded its review with the statement:

In the New York Daily News, Irene Thirer wrote: "It smack[s] of directional geniusnothing short of this; sensitive performances by a marvelous cast and the most remarkable camera work which has been performed on either silent or sound screen, round about the Hollywood studios. [...] We have praise for everyone concerned with this picture." Writing in 1999, author Mike Mayo also ascribed some of the credit for the film's success to Milestone's direction, saying: "Without diluting or denying any [...] criticisms, it should be said that from World War I to Korea, Milestone could put the viewer into the middle of a battlefield, and make the hellish confusion of it seem all too real to the viewer. Steven Spielberg noted as much when he credited Milestone's work as partial inspiration for Saving Private Ryan [...] Lewis Milestone made significant contributions to [the genre of] the war film."

In a retrospective review, American film critic Pauline Kael commented: "The year 1930 was, of course, a good year for pacifism, which always flourishes between wars; Milestone didn't make pacifist films during the Second World War—nor did anybody else working in Hollywood. And wasn't it perhaps easier to make All Quiet just because its heroes were German? War always seems like a tragic waste when told from the point of view of the losers."

On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 90 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 9.2/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Director Lewis Milestone's brilliant anti-war polemic, headlined by an unforgettable performance from Lew Ayres, lays bare the tragic foolishness at the heart of war." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 91 out of 100 based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Controversy and bannings

Despite its acclaim, the film's subject matter also drew controversy. Due to its anti-war and perceived anti-German messages, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party opposed the film. During and after its German premiere in Berlin on December 4, 1930, Nazi brownshirts under the command of Joseph Goebbels disrupted screenings by setting off stink bombs, throwing sneezing powder in the air, and releasing white mice in the theaters, eventually escalating to attacking audience members perceived to be Jewish and forcing projectors to shut down. They repeatedly yelled out "Judenfilm!" ("Jewish film!") while doing this.

Goebbels wrote about one such disruption in his personal diary:

The Nazi campaign against the film was successful, and German authorities outlawed it on December 11, 1930. A heavily cut version was briefly allowed in 1931, before the Nazis came to power in 1933 and the film was banned again. The film was finally re-released in West Germany on April 25, 1952, in the Capitol Theatre in West Berlin.

Between 1930 and 1941, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of many films to be banned in Victoria, Australia, on the grounds of "pacifism" by chief censor Walter Cresswell O'Reilly. However, it was said to enjoy "a long and successful run" in other Australian states, though the book was banned nationally. The film was also banned in Italy and Austria in 1931, with the prohibition officially raised only in the 1980s, and in France until 1963.

Awards and honors

3rd Academy Awards

All Quiet on the Western Front was the first talkie war film to win Oscars.

Other wins

• 1930 – Photoplay Medal of Honor (Carl Laemmle Jr.)
• 1931 – Kinema Junpo Award for Best Foreign Language Film – Sound (Lewis Milestone)
• 1990 – added to the National Film Registry by the United States' Library of Congress

American Film Institute recognition

• 100 Years...100 Movies – #54
• 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes
  • "And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death." – Nominated
• 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated
• AFI's 10 Top 10 – #7 epic film

Notes

References

References

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