The first classic film of the sound era, still resonates today

Rating: 8/10 (11 October 2013)

All Quiet on the Western Front is now generally regarded as the first classic movie of the talkie era. Seeing it today, this seems like a pretty fair claim seeing as it's a film that still resonates all these years later. It's pretty uncompromising and hard hitting for its time but this must also surely be a result of it having been made before the seriously restrictive Hays Code was implemented later in the 30's, limiting films for years in what they could show on screen. As it is, this movie was made in the very small window in the early 30's when talkies were not straight-jacketed by this regressive code. It was, nevertheless, a controversial film in other ways. Its strong anti-war message was not one that went down well in many quarters and was considered unpatriotic; while it was also criticised for depicting the Germans in a sympathetic light. It was released only a dozen years after the end of World War 1 and the Germans had been painted as barbarians by much of the then media. But in some ways by centring the story on young German soldiers it was able to distance itself from accusations of an unpatriotic message, seeing as we were not seeing Americans criticising their war effort. But mainly, and more importantly, by focusing on Germans the wider anti-war message is made far clearer, as it's made abundantly obvious that both sides were populated by terrified young men who were fighting a horrific war against each other; a war they had no say in. It was, therefore, a brave and intelligent decision to base the story around young German soldiers. Interestingly, the American Academy clearly agreed and awarded the film best film and director Oscars.
World War 1 was a horrific stalemate war that was fought in trenches stretching from the English Channel to the Swiss border. It was arguably the worst war ever in terms of the conditions that soldiers actually fought in. Trench warfare was brutal with tactics that often had men marching against machine guns. Millions of soldiers died in this ludicrous Catch-22 war. And while All Quiet on the Western Front is about this war, it's really more specifically about the lives of the soldiers. There isn't much focus at the history of the conflict itself, the approach is far more personal. We follow a group of young idealistic Germans from the moment they are convinced by highly charged oratory that to die for their country is a great thing, to the grim and horrific reality of what those words actually mean. The film is a thorough condemnation of war. Its characters are very far from gung-ho heroes that we know from many other war films, they are terrified boys. And in choosing this route, the film is far more realistic. The boys realise that the great adventure they believed in, is in fact their worst nightmare. Their experiences are contrasted jarringly with scenes back in the Fatherland where those not involved in the fighting still spout idealistic nonsense about how noble it all is; it's easy being philosophical when your neck is not on the line.
Aside from its bold message, it's a technical triumph. Because of its age much of what we see and hear is pretty primitive cinematically. The sound is rough and probably needs subtitles for most people, while the battle scenes can't rely on special effect like we see now. The explosions are real and you really feel a danger in the actual film-making process as a result. The rawness of the production works in its favour. There is no background music either which adds to the sombre realistic tone but may very well have been due to sound recording difficulties - in those days the orchestra had to be playing live just off screen in order to get the synched sound and this would have added huge challenges. It's easy to not realise the technical difficulties that the early sound films had to surmount. But overcome them, this film did and especially so in a brilliant battle scene where the French attack the Germans. This extraordinarily well orchestrated sequence encompasses a huge battlefield with hordes of men advancing over it with explosions going off left, right and centre. The fluid camera work moves across the trenches dramatically capturing the mass attack. The violence is strong for the time, with bloody hand-to-hand fights, dead bodies and even severed limbs. It's worth seeing the film just for this tour de force section alone. But this is a film that counters such striking material with smaller, equally disturbing moments, such as the haunting scene in a bomb crater where one of the protagonists is stranded and forced to spend the night with a French soldier who is slowly dying from a wound he has inflicted on him. It's touching and depressing. There are many such moments in All Quiet on the Western Front. A film that is still extremely relevant today, over 80 years later.