USA 131m Dir: Lewis Milestone
All Quiet on the Western Front opens with a teacher giving a rousing speech to his class of teenage boys about why they should join the arm and fight in the First World War. Led by Paul, the boys join and soon find themselves in the horror and mayhem of the trenches.
For a film set on the Western Front, there's not much combat. The film realises that it doesn't need to show constant fighting and horror to get the message across- instead it focuses on the psychological side of being in this war. From sitting in a bunker that bombarded by shells to being taken away from the ward in a war hospital, it's the still moments that are most unpleasant for the young men.
I feared that a film of this era would struggle to depict the scenes in No Man's Land effectively, especially when compared to more modern takes like 1917. But rather than aim for a hyper-realistic battlefield, this film uses darkness to it's advantage. Most of the combat scenes are in darkness and we can't see much beyond the central actors. Pyrotechnics are used really effectively and there are still moments with large numbers of extras hurtling through No Man's Land and being shot down. Cinematically , it still stands up well- there's one moment where the camera follows the view of a machine-gunner as he shoots down the enemy which I thought was really effective.
It's interesting that this film follows German soldiers. This was made about ten years before the Second World War and so Germans weren't the ideological enemy they became and remained in public consciousness for some time. No-one really understood what the First World War was about and there's an excellent scene where the soldiers discuss how it started but don't have a clue. A later scene with a close encounter with a British soldier shows just how similar the two sides are.
The best scenes in the film comes when Paul returns home for a period of leave after recovering from an injury. You might expect it to be a happy time but Paul finds a general public who show no understanding of what the war is really like. He enters his old classroom to find the teacher still trying to get the youth to enlist and tries to speak out against it yet is regarded as a coward. Paul realises that the war has changed him so much he can't just sink back into normal life and decides to return to the front early.
There's so much about the film which feels ahead of it's time. Most war films ends up showing heroics and in some way end up glorifying war but at no point here is there anything glorious about this war. What amazes me is that this film was released just over ten years after the war ended and it would have been very much in the memories of many people. Many countries banned the film because it's anti-war as if that's somehow a bad thing. It's not a surprise that Nazi Germany didn't like it but Italy and Austria didn't allow it to be shown until the 1980s and even France didn't relieve its ban until 1963.
A stunningly well made film that still stands up well today and was many years ahead of it's time. It was a warning about the horror and pointlessness of war which was sadly not heeded.
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