The greatest war movie ever made

Rating: 10/10 (26 February 2007)

All Quiet On the Western Front retains its authenticity today because it truthfully portrays the real foot soldier -- not the hyped-up John Wayne/Sly Stallone/Arnold Schwartznegger phony bragging, swaggering, fearless, ruthless, heartless, bullet-proof, muscle-bound, nail-spitting, bully-boy soldiers of later American war movies, but the simple naive kids of a sheltered era. The movie is also completely devoid of background music to artificially stir the audience, allowing the quiet dignity of the boys themselves to be the sole focus.
This movie could never be made today because American filmmakers (and film-goers) would expect to impose 21st Century cunning and bravado onto what was a very innocent generation of kids who had never traveled more that a mile or two from their farms or towns and who found themselves in an overwhelming nightmare of mud-sucking trenches, mustard gas, and mortar shells, who died without glory and without their mother's comfort. The movie was made 12 years after the war ended, reflecting a less complicated Germany, and could not even have been made a few years later, after Hitler perfected hatred and killing as a national sport.
It may be hard for us raised on pro-war anti-Nazi movies to believe that the German soldier could be so tender as this  but consider the German-initiated, unofficial Christmas truce of 1914, when German and British troops defied their officers and ventured into no man's land between the trenches to exchange Christmas trees, gifts, beer, food, photos, and even addresses with promises to write each other when the war ended! They even played an impromptu game of soccer and sang Christmas carols together. There was probably less hatred between the German soldier and his enemies in WWI than there was between Americans in the American Civil War.
Remember, too, that this was the last major war between Christian countries, when Christian values and old-world chivalry made their last stand on the battlefield. (Another great WWI film, also made in the thirties, that reflects this chivalry is Jean Renoir's "The Grand Illusion.") Later opponents of the U.S. were either atheists (Nazis & communists), Buddhists (Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese), or Muslims (Iraqis), none of whom would ever wax warm and fuzzy over Christmas or come singing across the battlefield to the tune of "Stille Nacht." So the enemy armies of WWI had a lot in common and no real reason to hate each other. In later wars, Americans have found it easier to dehumanize and even "demonize" the enemy because he is not Christian and therefore not "like us." All Quiet On the Western Front reminds us that ALL our enemies are "like us".
Above all, All Quiet On the Western Front is a damning indictment against war, not by preaching or pontificating, but by the stunning, haunting, utterly silent ending image of all the dead boys who walk silently away at the end, each looking back at us over his shoulder with an accusing look -- accusing the audience, accusing us, for their deaths.