Great story, pretty good film

Rating: 7/10 (16 December 2004)

Before seeing this film I had already read the book All Quiet on the Western Front (in German) by Erich-Maria Remarque and seen the 1979 TV movie All quiet on the Western Front. Being a great fan of the book and having been told by my German teacher in high school that this was a great film, I decided to give it a try. I must say that I was very impressed by the special effects and the great care of the director and the crew in capturing the spirit of the war and depicting the surroundings as realistic as was possible. They did a really great job in making the film believable and I must confess that I've seen more modern films than this, with worse effects and care taken to make it look realistic.
Overall the film was well made (obviously leaving out many gruesome scenes from the book) but I felt that the scenes in which Lew Ayres (Paul Bäumer) tried to be reflective / moralistic or sorrowful were quite cheesy (in an old-fashioned Hollywood kind of way). I mean the guy did a good job in appearing frantic and cheerful, but being filled with sorrow or trying to be reflective on what he did just didn't fit him at all. Also I felt that Marion Clayton (Paul's sister in the film) did a pretty bad job in the few scenes she had. In addition to that, I thought it was a pity that the film didn't end exactly the way the book did. I mean the ending of the film is quite powerful, but the ending words of the book are so much stronger and much more powerful. Of course I read the book in German and considered from that point of view I could have imagined / would have liked to see the ending lines of the book scrolled onto the screen, as the picture slowly faded away.
All Quiet on the Western Front (rated from low to high):
1979 Verison: 7 out of 10
1930 Version: 7 out of 10 (because of the better ending and the overall bigger / better effort this one ranks higher than the 1979 TV version)
Book Version: 9,5 out of 10
post scriptum: I'd like to see a German film version of the book, staying true to the book (especially to it's gruesomeness and it's ending) since I think a totally German version will be much more powerful to begin with