All Quiet on the Western Front

• Film Title: All Quiet on the Western Front
• Original Year of Production: 1930
• Studio: Universal Pictures
• Director: Lewis Milestone
• Cast: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim and John Wray
• Producer: Carl Laemmle Jr.

All Quiet on the Western Front is set in Germany during World War One. The academy award winning film for best picture opens to a group of school boys being lectured by their Professor to join the war effort and support their “fatherland”. The rest of the film follows the war effort through the experiences of these German boys, especially the star Lew Ayres as Paul Baumer. This film is modeled after a troubling time in European/world history. Increasing technological and industrial capabilities coupled with the developments of nations led to Europeans fighting over land in the names of their respective countries. Mechanized warfare lead to greater weapons such as guns, planes, canons, biological warfare, and grenades left war on both fronts to fight each other in what became known as trench-warfare. The film seems to accurately describe the hardships these soldiers suffered. Men began going crazy, many more starved waiting for food, and plenty of soldiers were shot and killed and left to rot in the trenches. In trench warfare, it’s safe to say there are no winners, for even survival came at a heavy mental price. Some soldiers went mad waiting in their entrenched bunkers for food, sleep, an end to the sound of guns blasting and bombs dropping. Although the film was written by a WW1 veteran with seemingly primary insight into the war one must recognize that the work was fictional. Many events seem rational and potential real such as Paul returning to his school with his anti-war message or laying with some French women only to never see them again. However, mainstream dramas must present an interesting story in order to capture the hearts and minds of its audience. Rosenstone covers the elements of a mainstream drama as follows. “ Condensation or compression” was used the film in order to cover months and years of war  into a concise two hours of film. “Dialogue” was also used from the words of despair from Paul and his friends to the dropping sounds and explosions of bombs and the screams of fear from grown soldiers that helped to create a dramatic and brutal past war. “Characters” such as Paul are the action and are the main focus of the story. Although Rosenstone suggests that “characters” in a mainstream historical drama are based on actual historical figures, we will include the fictional characters of the film in order to illustrate the elements of the film. (Rosenstone, p.39) These elements are combined to create a mainstream drama such All Quiet on the Western Front.

The thesis of the film has to deal with reasons for going to war. At the film, Paul and his schoolmates are basically coaxed into joining the army by their professor and his false words of nobility and heroism by those who join. Soon after joining many of Paul’s friends die in combat, lose their limbs, or just break down mentally. The war had taken his friends, he realized that his fight was not noble and without honor. He was spoon fed nationalistic ideas such as Germany being the “fatherland” and basically that would make him and his friends the children that were designated to defend its honor. However, Paul came to realize with his own eyes that war traditional tales of war such as these were false and that conservative elites were the ones that started and benefited from war. He then realized that he made a mistake by joining the German army. Paul soon realizes this while he returns home after a short furlough after being wounded. In the turning point of the film, Paul returns to his old school and spots his old professor running off at the mouth with the same words of heroism and noble deeds for those that defend the fatherland in battle that suckered Paul and his other classmates. The instructor invites Paul in to speak to his class of young men, actually younger than Paul’s class because of the German army’s enormous need to replace dead and dying soldiers at the front. Paul then goes on to encourage the kids not to join the army because killing innocent men for unjust causes has left him with a lot of remorse and a sense of despair. The kids then chastise Paul by calling him a traitor and his sincere anti-war words fall on deaf ears. Paul then finally returns to the front and tells his last remaining friend Kat that there’s no more room in society for him. Soon after Kat is wounded and killed by bomb explosion. Paul then carries his body to a field hospital and medics tell Paul that his last friend has died. Stricken with grief, Paul’s world becomes darker than ever before. In the final scene Paul is in the trenches and sees a butterfly several feet in front of him, out of the bunker. While Paul is reaching for the only beautiful thing in the trenches he is shot and killed by a French sharpshooter. Paul is killed and the film and its anti-war message come to an end.  

The film was released on December 1930, in Germany. The film was shown for only six nights until it was banned from the public by Germany’s Censorship Board because it was a threat to the public order. (Imhoof p.175.) This came as the result of German citizens boycotted the film because many felt the American made film was critical of Germany’s war effort during WW1. In Imhoof’s article Cultural Wars and the Local Screen, he suggests that this film reflected on Germany’s defeat and was disruptive to declining Weimar Republic. This issue was also political in nature. The conservative members of German society during 1930 saw that Germany and it’s problems were the result of the Versailles Peace Treaty and saw such liberal films as All Quiet as unpatriotic and wrong. Liberals felt the film and its sobering fictional story was not far-fetched and the film served to produce fundamental change for Germany. (Imhoof p.179)  The film alluded to the struggles of a nation to come to terms with the meaning and reasons why it lost in WW1. While many liberals felt that Germany after WW1 was in dire need of change, while conservatives in power and in the streets till felt their ideas still supreme in restoring the “fatherland”.