I’ll be up front about it—I think All Quiet on the Western Front is the best anti-war film ever made (at least to date), based on the now-classic 1928 German novel by Erich Maria Remarque with a forward that includes the following quote:

“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.”

Modified to fit the medium, this same quote opens the film. The images are haunting, the story extremely powerful. This is an early talking picture, and like The Broadway Melody, a silent version was simultaneously released to movie theatres not yet equipped for audio exhibition. The newly restored Blu-ray Disc contains both versions (sound and silent) for a fascinating side-by-side comparison. Even though the technology could be vastly improved today, the telling of the tale could not. From a cast of largely unknown young men to the gritty, realistic battle scenes to the lack of almost any music score (lending a claustrophobic but authentic feel), this film doesn’t miss a mark.

Arnold Lucy as the schoolmaster.

It tells of a loss of innocence, following a group of German schoolboys who are worked into a patriotic frenzy and coerced as much as inspired by their fanatical and dangerously misinformed schoolmaster to leave their desks, homes, and families and enlist right away in the army.

This scene is repeated much later in the film when a disillusioned and broken Paul Bäumer, played by Lew Ayres, returns on leave to his home, to the very classroom where he made the decision that would forever change his life. He sees the same jingoistic schoolmaster filling a new group of innocent young heads with visions of glory and patriotic heroism. The schoolmaster then turns with great pride to Paul, who is still dressed in uniform, to enforce these inflated impressions of “what it’s like” to be in a war, and Paul completely shatters the delusional perspective in front of the whole class.

What strikes me most about All Quiet on the Western Front is its story, which is raw, emotional, and often disturbing. Perhaps seeing it as an “early Talkie” with black-and-white shadowy images and, in some cases, crude production values lends an aspect of realness that makes me feel as if I were there with them in 1914—and the fact that this movie was shot a mere 16 years after these (fictional) boys enlisted and went off to war also seems more authentic to the era than a modern, polished production of it would be.

I love that the opening “hometown” scenes in the German village were filmed quite obviously on Universal’s back lot. I say “quite obviously” having lived in Los Angeles for more than two decades and having visited Universal Studios where I took the tram tour many times. This is the same outdoor set used for village settings in Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and more movies than I can count. That adds a layer of grounded familiarity as well for me, so when the boys go marching off to war in a production released 85 years ago, I feel in an odd (perhaps parallel-universe) way like I know where they came from.

Lew Ayres as Paul Bäumer in “All Quiet on the Western Front,” 1930.

The acting varies from subtle to sledgehammer, but I never find it insincere. There is one scene between Paul and a French soldier he fatally wounds in the trenches that is particularly heart-wrenching. When Paul agonizes over the soldier’s dead body, it puts a human face on both sides of this tragedy. Gone are any traces of glory or “winning” or patriotism. This is about two people caught up in one of the ugliest sides of human nature.

All Quiet on the Western Front stays with me, long after I see it. While I’m watching this film, it often seems like a simple, straightforward telling of the story. It’s only days later, when I still can’t shake its images from my head, that I realize how powerful and haunting it is, how strong the direction and cinematography are, and how successful a book-to-screen adaptation this movie truly is.

All Quiet on the Western Front