All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) Director: Lewis Milestone
“I saw him die. I didn’t know what it was like to die before!”
★★★★★
One of the greatest war films of the 20th century, All Quiet on the Western Front offers a harrowing, haunting depiction of trench warfare and the frenzied jingoistic madness that led to outbreak of the “Great War.” All Quiet on the Western Front is based on Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel of the same name published in 1929 and later banned by the Nazis. Remarque gained experienced as a German soldier during World War I before he was severely injured with shrapnel wounds during which time he struggled to re-acclimate himself to civilian life, a key theme in the story. All Quiet on the Western Front was made on a budget of $1.25 million for Universal Pictures, under the leadership of Carl Laemmle, Jr., and shot on open ranchlands in California with over 2,000 extras featured.
The film opens with a title reading:
“This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure for 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 the shells, were destroyed by the war…”
In a small German town, young soldiers are headed off to war. In the schoolhouse, a German schoolmaster regails his students with tales of the heroism of german warriors who go off to fight and die for the homeland. In elation, all the boys rise up in a fit of rapture, elevated by their teacher’s call to arms. All the young men in the classroom immediately rush to enlist in the German Imperial Army, one of whom is a young man named Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres). From here, the boys are put through a grueling boot camp before being marched off to the front lines along the Western front where they quickly encounter a horrendous lack of food, clothing, and shelter, and the trenches are infested with rats while they face constant bombing from the French army. Often forced into cramped situations of brutal hand-to-hand combat, the German boys often find themselves routinely driven to the point of sheer insanity as they await the coming of nightly explosions. One by one, each of the boys faces carnage –in one scene, we see a man running through the no man’s land only stopping when he clings to a nearby fence as a bomb explodes leaving only his severed hands still hanging on the barbed wire.
During a moment of pause while on temporary leave, the boys ask themselves how a war is started. Does a mountain in Germany get mad at a field in France? Is there something natural about why they should hate the French? The German boys have nothing against the Frenchmen personally. They bemoan the richness of the Kaiser and the manufacturers who grow fat and rich off the war. Paul then visits his wounded friend, Franz, whose legs have been amputated shortly before he dies. The boots of the dying are then passed to the boots of the living –from one soldier to another.
In the next battle, Paul becomes trapped in a foxhole and stabs a Frenchman to death. The man slowly dies agonizingly throughout the night and in the morning Paul apologizes to the unknown man’s corpse. He rummages through the soldier’s things where he finds a photograph of the man’s two children and Paul weeps. Later Paul is hit with shrapnel (just like Erich Maria Remarque), and he is sent to the hospital before eventually going home on leave only to find that things are not the same. He returns to his old classroom to find the same jingoistic professor still whipping up more young children into a rage of nationalism to fight for Germany. Paul contradicts the professor and explains the horrible brutality of war. He is then shamefully castigated as a coward.
With no place to go, Paul returns to the front only to find two of his old comrades still alive –but the rest of the soldiers are nothing more than baby-faced sixteen year old boys. While greeting one of his comrades they are both hit by a bomb and his comrade dies. In despair, Paul wanders aimlessly out of the trench and rests beside a Gatling gun. During a rare moment of calm on the battlefield, he notices a small butterfly resting amidst the carnage. While reaching down to pick it up, a French sniper shoots and kills Paul before he can grab hold of the butterfly (notably, this final scene is different from what is depicted in the original novel).
The film ends with a strikingly silent scene of young soldiers as they silently march off to war –the boys appear tired, scared, and helpless. The extraordinary thing about All Quiet on the Western Front is that it lifts the curtain on the enemy during wartime –we are given the perspective of the Germans rather than the French, British, or Americans, for example. And we see that the German boys are not uniquely evil, vicious, or irredeemable; instead, they are shown to be markedly similar and familiar to the boys on the other side of no man’s land. A deservedly well-celebrated film, All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for four Academy Awards, justifiably winning Best Picture.
Credits:
- Director: Lewis Milestone
- Written by: Maxwell Anderson (adaptation & dialogue), George Abbott (screenplay), Del Andrews (adaptation), and C. Gardner Sullivan (supervising story chief)
- Based on: the 1929 novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque
- Produced by: Carl Laemmle Jr.
- Starring:
- Lew Ayres…..Paul Bäumer
- Louis Wolheim…..Stanislaus Katczinsky
- Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
- Edited by: Edgar Adams, Milton Carruth (International Sound Version)
- Music by: David Broekman
- Production Company: Universal Studios
Other Notes:
- All Quiet on the Western Front was the first film to win both Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards.
- Despite being only the 3rd winner of Best Picture, All Quiet on the Western Front was also the second World War I film to win the award (the first being Wings).
3rd Academy Awards (1930):
Held on November 5, 1930, the third Academy Awards ceremony took place a mere seven months after the 2nd Academy Awards ceremony. This was the first ceremony to be voted on by the full membership, rather than by the small clique that voted at the previous two ceremonies, and so it had a much more democratic atmosphere. This was also the first Academy Awards ceremony wherein a portion was captured on film (the ceremony was later re-enacted and recorded). However, two guests of honor were not found in the footage. One was William Hays, Hollywood’s chief censor, who lectured the crowd for an hour about the importance of public taste and morality. The other was Thomas Edison who was given an honorary award for pioneering efforts in early film technology. He did not appear in person, but recorded a short video offering his thanks.
- Best Picture: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) (Note: Louis B. Mayer presented the award to Carl Laemmle, telling him he thought it might win a Nobel Peace Prize. Laemmle said it was the proudest moment of his life next to the “thrill of becoming a grandfather”).
- The Big House (1930)
- Disraeli (1929)
- The Divorcee (1930)
- The Love Parade (1929)
- Best Directing: Lewis Milestone – All Quiet on the Western Front
- Clarence Brown – Anna Christie
- Robert Leonard – The Divorcee
- King Vidor – Hallelujah
- Ernst Lubitsch – The Love Parade
- Clarence Brown – Romance
- Best Actor: George Arliss – Disraeli as Benjamin Disraeli
- George Arliss – The Green Goddess as The Raja
- Wallace Beery – The Big House as Butch
- Maurice Chevalier – The Big Pond as Pierre Mirande and The Love Parade as The Count Alfred Renard
- Ronald Colman – Bulldog Drummond as Hugh Drummond and Condemned as Michel
- Lawrence Tibbett – The Rogue Song as Yegor
- Best Actress: Norma Shearer – The Divorcee as Jerry Martin (Note: Norma Shearer was married at the time to MGM’s head of production Irving Thalberg. This led to accusations of unfairness within the Academy, especially because she won the award over Greta Garbo. Joan Crawford, who would have to wait util 1946 for her first nomination, said: “What do you expect? She’s sleeping with the boss.” To make matters worse, her own brother, Douglas Shearer won the new award for Sound Recording for his work on The Big House).
- Nancy Carroll – The Devil’s Holiday as Hallie Hobart
- Ruth Chatterton – Sarah and Son as Sarah Storm
- Greta Garbo – Anna Christie as Anna Christie and Romance as Rita Cavallini
- Norma Shearer – Their Own Desire as Lucia ‘Lally’ Marlett
- Gloria Swanson – The Trespasser as Marion Donnell
- Best Directing: The Big House – Frances Marion
- All Quiet on the Western Front – George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson, and Del Andrews, based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque
- Disraeli – Julien Josephson, based on the play by Louis N. Parker
- The Divorcee – John Meehan, based on the novel Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott
- Street of Chance – Howard Estabrook, based on a story by Oliver H. P. Garrett
- Special Awards: None
Did the right film win Best Picture?
The Academy undoubtedly made the right decision in selecting All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930 –one of the greatest war films of all time. And while I would not have chosen another winner for Best Picture in 1930, other great films worthy of consideration included: F.W. Murnau’s tender final picture before his untimely death City Girl, Raoul Walsh’s epic Western starring John Wayne The Big Trail, and of course the first of six classic Hollywood collaborations between Director Josef von Sternberg and Actress Marlene Dietrich Morocco.
Click here to return to my survey of the Best Picture Winners.
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