The Benchmark

Rating: 10/10 (12 November 2019)

I actually read the unexpurgated version of Erich Maria Remarque's novel when I was eleven years old and it had a profound effect on me. Suddenly, I was able to see that being British or German was irrelevant. This was about a group of ordinary young lads, not that much older than me, who were tricked, corrupted and dehumanised by war. Something always started by those who rarely have to fight it. The descriptions of battle are disturbing; a naked corpse hanging in a tree with a still-smoking cigarette between its lips, raw recruits falling into shellholes and choking to death in the poison gas lingering there. The main character Paul Baumer escaping a bombardment by climbing into a shattered coffin alongside its long-dead occupant in a ruptured cemetery. It certainly removed the idea of glory from my psyche.
Later, in about 1964, the movie was shown on TV, appropriately on Armistice Day. I knew I had to watch it and I wasn't disappointed. With the limitations of censorship at the time, it stuck pretty closely to the book. I felt that the schoolboys were old friends I knew well. Consequently their inevitable successive departures were very poignant. The spectacle of the battles was awesome. Thousands of extras racing across the screen to some frightening sound effects of screaming shells. A rail-mounted camera, representing a machine gunner's point of view, sweeps across a line of advancing French troops, cutting them down, literally like wheat under a scythe. The mayhem is decidedly reminiscent of the beach assault in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. And I understand that Spielberg acknowledges the influence of the earlier movie on his opus. There are quieter scenes of course. The troops' elation at being given double rations due to the number of casualties sustained by their unit and a tender love scene when Paul and two others spend the night with three French girls. Possibly the only time he will ever experience intimacy. The scene is frank without being explicit. Relying on shadows on the wall to depict what we all know is going on. The final scene is a gut wrencher. Paul is the only one of the group left. Whereas in the book, the manner of his death is not detailed. Here director Lewis Milestone pulls out all the stops to show us the futility of the whole obscene practice of war. It is all quiet on the Western Front. From his trench Paul sees a beautiful butterfly resting amid the squalor of no-man's land. Instinctively he reaches for it. We see his outstretched hand and arm inching ever closer to the creature but, the staccato crack of a sniper's rifle causes the hand to clench and then go limp. It's over, and silently the ghostly figures of Paul and his companions walk away from the camera. Each one looking us straight into the eyes for the last time as if to say "You won't let this happen again. Will you?"