Milestone's First and Best Anti-War Epic

Rating: 10/10 (11 March 2015)

Louis Milestone's "All Quiet on the Western Front" is a testament not only to the resilience of author Erich Maria Remarque, who was wounded five times, but also to the determination by Universal Pictures producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., son of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle, to produce prestige films. If any movie demonstrated the absurdity of war, this movie does with images and scenes that are unforgettable. Told from the perspective of the Kaiser's army, we follow a school boy and his pals from the class room to the trenches. Initially, an elderly, spectacled, school teacher raves about how they must defend the pride of the fatherland as soldiers can be seen marching outside past the school. "Now, my beloved class, this is what we must do. Strike with all our power. Give every ounce of strength to win victory before the end of the year. It is with reluctance that I bring this subject up again. You are the life of the fatherland, you boys. You are the iron men of Germany. You are the gay heroes who will repulse the enemy when you are called upon to do so. It is not for me to suggest that any of you should stand up and offer to defend his country. But I wonder if such a thing is going through your heads. I know that in one of the schools, the boys have risen up in the classroom and enlisted in a mass. But, of course, if such a thing should happen here, you would not blame me for a feeling of pride." Paul (Lew Ayers) and then his pals encounter the true horrors of war. These horrors include not only the actual battlefield but the devastating horrors on their own side of the battlefield. Later, we watch as our protagonists struggle to make sense out of war and how it started. The most captivating character of the film is Kat (Louis Wolheim) who steals the film. Compared with contemporary films, "All Quiet on the Western Front" lacks the brutality of war, aside from one shot of two severed hands clinging to a barbed wire fence. Like most memorable war pictures, the action is confined to the trenches with no scenes played out in map rooms as general pontificate about strategy. Milestone would later helm more war movies, including "The Purple Heart" (1944), "A Walk in the Sun" (1945), "Halls of Montezuma" (1950) and "Pork Chop Hill" (1959).