All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Starring:
Lewis Wolheim
Lew Ayres
John Wray
Arnold Lucy
Ben Alexander
William Bakewel
"Slim" Summerville
Beryl Mercer
Photography:
Black and White
Cinematography:
Arthur Edeson
Distributed By:
Universal Pictures
Release Date:
April 21st, 1930
Runtime:
152 minutes
133 minutes (restored)
Country:
United States
Budget:
$1.2 million
Box Office:
$3 million
Sequel:
The Road Back (1936)
All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American epic pre-Code anti-war film based on the Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name. Directed by Lewis Milestone, it stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.
Why It Rocks
With a stark emphasis on the futility of war and its tragic waste of youth, this film stands as a landmark picture, powerful for its antiwar theme and still potent as a piece of early sound-era filmmaking
This film based on Remarque’s novel –which took a logical, dispassionate approach to depicting the war – was meant to be a “prestige” picture, meaning it had a much larger budget than the usual Universal “program” film. When the book was adapted to film, most of Remarque’s motifs were incorporated, even keeping the book’s ratio of war-to nonwar-related scenes.
Lewis Milestone had a screenplay done that doesn't focus on fighting, but instead concentrated on the young characters who would be sent to the front. The key to the film’s success is its combination of finely drawn characters and powerhouse combat scenes, which have influenced countless war movies since.
Lew Ayers' inexperience as an actor at the time suited his character (Paul Baumer)'s naivete, although this is balanced out by the cast having more experienced actors, such as Louis Wolheim whose broken nose and guttural voice makes him an excellent choice for "Kat", a hard-bitten sergeant. There’s also Slim Summerville -- a former Keystone Kop and director of slapstick shorts -- who specialized in portrayed rural bumpkins, and serves as the closest thing the film has to comic relief, and Beryl Mercer as Paul's mother, whose scenes are extremely moving, making the homefront scenes as engaging as the battlefield scenes.
In the famous foxhole sequence, Paul stabs a French soldier, then tries to keep him alive and ultimately begs forgiveness of the corpse—all in the midst of artillery fire stretching through the night, the following day, and into the night again. Ayres’s shifting reactions to what he has done are heart-wrenching, but the Frenchman’s wordless performance is even more memorable. He is played by Raymond Griffith, a major silent comedy star who had retired from acting due to the sound films, and having a vocal affliction that kept him from speaking above a whisper. To see Griffith in his final screen appearance, struggling to speak before slowly dying, carries supreme poignancy.
With $1.5 million spent prior to the film’s release, its budget was shown within the first shot: In hallway where servants are hard at work cleaning, a front door’s opened leading to a street bustling with soldiers, marching bands and onlookers.
The war scenes were state-of-the-art for 1930, directed by Milestone with tremendous movement, immediacy, and depth in nearly every frame. Dramatic crane shots look astonishing for having been accomplished during a year in which most cameras were trapped in immobile, soundproof booths. Combined with the fluid camerawork are striking battlefield explosions, achieved by setting off dynamite remotely just before or after the actors ran by, with little room to spare.
Milestone and his cinematographer Arthur Edison used silent film techniques to free the camera, letting it soar over crowds on a crane or prowl up the aisles of a high school. At the same time, Milestone mixed sound adroitly, using the marching bands to drown out a teacher’s lecture, and constructed montages that gave the effect of delving into characters’ thoughts through free association techniques. This was done to sweep viewers into an experience so real that the horrific events that would soon to unfold couldn’t be denied.
The war itself is introduced slowly, first sending a group of recruits through training, then bringing them close to the front lines. While many of the scenes would later become commonplace, here they retain an almost document-like realism – mostly because the film doesn’t glorify the war. In The Birth of a Nation -- an inspiration for many of the film's battle scenes -- viewers are meant to root for the Southern side, but in this film, there's no one to root for, which is pretty striking since Germany was the enemy for much of the film's audience.
The director seems to be directly quoting The Birth of a Nation in All Quiet’s first full-fledged battle scene. The camera ascends on a crane to show a vast battlefield – a vision that’s still incredible –which is followed by the film’s single most remarkable shot, with the camera panning among the top of a trench as advancing soldiers are cut down by machine gunfire.
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