Where Only the Shells Sing

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2018)

Besides Kubrick's Path to Glory imo the best movie on WWI and one of the best (anti-)war movies of all time.
The true excellence of this movie is not only in the war scenes and the acting but in the characterization of the soldier's nature and the nature of war. On top, you get a feel for the war of the trenches - without bombastic and shallow theatrical music like recently in Nolan's (imo far overrated) "drama" Dunkirk who tries to make drama with dramatic music where enough drama already should be. The only "sound-effects" in All Quiet on the Western Front are those of war - the screams of the soldiers, the "singing" of flying shells and the many explosions and the sounds of guns.
Whereas the remake with "Sonnyboy" Richard Thomas (playing Paul Baumer) from 1979 is also a good one, the adaption from 1930 of Erich Maria Remarque's epic is imo the more intense and superior one.
Fantastic movie, especially for all young who never watched this piece, watch.