All Quiet on the Western Front ***** (1930, Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray) – Classic Movie Review 3426

Director Lewis Milestone is true to the seriousness and pacificism of German author Erich Maria Remarque’s novel in this astonishing film to come out of Hollywood, which still has the ability to shock and move modern audiences. Milestone makes trench warfare chillingly real and it is astoundingly good technically for a movie of its era.

This classic 1930 anti-war film showing life and death in the trenches of World War One from the German side won deserved Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. There were also nominations for Best Writing (Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews, George Abbott) and Best Cinematography (Arthur Edeson).

The film follows the story of a group of German schoolboys, who are talked into enlisting at the start of the war by their jingoistic teacher. Lew Ayres touches the heart as Paul Baumer, the boy soldier who has to stab a Frenchman to death and finally reaches out symbolically to try to capture a beautiful butterfly. Louis Wolheim is also superb as the jaded, veteran sergeant, ‘Kat’ Katczinsky.

Also in the cast are Slim Summerville, John Wray, Raymond Griffith, Russell Gleason, Owen Davis Jr, William Bakewell, Ben Alexander, Joan Marsh, Beryl Mercer, Arnold Lucy and Fred Zinnemann.

It is the first film to be produced by Carl Laemmle Jnr, son of the Universal studio boss Carl Laemmle, who made him general studio manager in 1929, aged only 21.

It originally ran 152 minutes but cut versions run 145 and 138 minutes, with the video/DVD version at 128 minutes and TV version only 101 minutes. The restored version runs 133 minutes.

Nazis stormed screenings of the film in Germany, releasing rats or stink bombs into cinemas, and it was ultimately banned by the Nazi party, and was not properly screened again in Germany until 1956. It played to packed houses in 1930 in Switzerland, France and the Netherlands with trains and buses being laid on to transport Germans to see it.

It was remade for TV in 1979, with Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine, Patricia Neal and Ian Holm.

James Whale directed Remarque’s follow-up story, The Road Back, in 1937.

Remarque was born in Osnabruck, Germany, in 1898. All Quiet on the Western Front was his first novel, written after his experiences as a soldier in World War One and published in 1929. He moved to Switzerland until 1939, when he emigrated to America, where he lived and wrote until his death in 1970, aged 72.

Ayres was swayed by the film’s anti-war message and he became a conscientious objector when he was drafted in 1942. America was outraged, MGM dropped him from his Dr Kildare franchise and cinemas vowed never to show his films again. But he achieved the Medical Corps status he had requested, serving as a medic under fire in the South Pacific and as a chaplain’s aid in New Guinea and the Philippines.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3426

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