Lewis Milestone's adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel is a masterpiece whose power to disturb remains undiminished by the passage of time. The film stars Lew Ayres as the young Paul Bauman, who, along with a group of his teenaged classmates, are conscripted into the German army during WWI. The youths quickly realise that the patriotic hogwash they had been fed by their schoolmaster has absolutely has nothing to do with the horror they observe and experience on the front lines.

I tell you something: no film has shocked me more than this one. Power that only the first half an hour of Saving Private Ryan (1998) can only dream about in comparison. I mean the scenes of the enemy above you in the trenches jumping in unrelenting waves over you is the stuff that recurs in the darkest dreams. Truly frightening and brings death right up in your face like a madman raging and pressed up against your window.

That is just one scene in a film filled to capacity with iconic scenes; a film that deserves its place in any list of greatest films of all time. And don't get me started on the butterfly and hand scene! Suffice to say it can bring as many tears to as many eyes as it did when it was first released. Needless to say, no war movie moved me more or should I say anti-war movie for the sheer futility of the First World War, caused by the stupidity and utter dumbness of the aristocratic powers-that-be who seemed to have used these killings fields as a chess set for some kind of private feud, has never been captured like it has here.

"You want to commit another 20,000 men to their deaths, general? Would you like tea and scones with that decision?"

How any government can expect so much from a generation is something I will never understand if I lived for a million years.

I remember as a kid growing up in the 1970s how my French teacher told me that her grandfather had fought in the First World War and had half his ear eaten away by a rat in the trenches. I wondered since whether it was a tall-story but having seen All Quiet on the Western Front I realised that that must have been only the beginnings of his problems.

This is the only worthy epitaph to the unknown soldier who showed bravery I couldn't begin to comprehend let alone replicate. And the bravery is more remarkable when it is for something he didn't believe in.

Who did? There wasn't enough room in the ivory tower of the Kaisar to hear his reasoning. His bloated self-importance meant there was room only for those close to him.

Those unbelievably believable idiots. The generals that is.

For there is no leader no matter how clever or how exalted their place in history who can be anything but the smallest footnote to the life of the unknown soldier in those hell-on-earth trenches.

Yes, we know those company of soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front. But we don't know those by their side in those trenches or those just beyond the silver screen.

This film remembers them all.

© Paul Page - leninimports.com

Winner of 2 Oscars in 1930 for Best Picture and Best Director (is that all????????).

This release includes the English edition of Erich Maria Remarque's remarkable novel the film is based on - his recollections as a German soldier in the trenches of the First World War.

Complete review with pictures.

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