All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) is an anti-war film if there has ever been an anti-war film.  Of course, it's hard to imagine a film about World War I being a pro war film.  Anyone familiar with significant dates in history would instantly recognize that 1930 falls in the period between World War I and World War II, which makes the existence of this film especially interesting. 

The film is about a group of German school children, who are encouraged to sign up to fight for the Fatherland.  The film follows these classmates from their classroom to the recruitment center, and after too short a time in basic training they are sent to the front lines, the trenches of the western front.  It is fascinating that this group of German soldiers is depicted as the protagonists, and I’m sure that there is some literary term with which I am unfamiliar, but their status as protagonists is not through outward expression of good, rather it is a reflection of their innocence.  Starting with the opening scene, where the school children are inspired by their headmaster’s fiery speech, it is clear that the boy’s nationality is inconsequential; the same scene could have taken place in a French classroom, or British, or one in the United States.  Likewise every scene thereafter captures experiences that happened on both sides of the front lines.  The film is an American* film, with the German characters speaking English, which has the effect of making it easier for the viewer to identify with the protagonists; when the only way to tell the soldier apart is by their uniforms, it somehow seems arbitrary to think of one as the bad guy, just because he has a differently shaped helmet.  Of course, it is possible that the decision to have the German characters speak English may have been driven more by 1930’s sensibilities, rather than a conscious decision by the director in service of the plot.  Likewise, the black and white film contributes to subduing any contrasts that otherwise would be evident if we could see the color of the soldier’s uniforms, and while this was clearly not a directorial decision, it does contribute to the overall effect of removing any unnecessary distinction between the soldiers.

There is a poignant scene about halfway into the movie, after one particularly horrific battle, where the soldiers are sitting on the bank of a brook that runs through an idyllic French village, during a meal together they begin to discuss the reasons why they are at war.  They recognize that the people who they are fighting against have much in common with themselves, and cannot think of any particular disagreement that they have with their French neighbors.  They come to the conclusion that a small group of people with power, those who have financial interests, are the only ones who think that this war is a good idea.  One of the soldiers suggests that those few people who actually want the war, are the ones who should be out on the battlefield.  It is a sobering thought to realize that the common man’s sense of duty, and national pride can be so easily misappropriated by evil men.  Of course this simple analysis is insufficient to address the responsibility that each man bears for his participation in war; soldiers from this same generation would participate in the Holocaust of the Jewish people.  That this film was made between the two wars makes its message complicated, but it also is a unique snapshot of history that probably wouldn’t have been possible at any other time.

When I mentioned earlier that the film is an anti-war film, and unlike any other I'd seen before, I am speaking primarily of the portrayals of abject fear, and deep sadness that take hold of the soldiers as they huddle in the dark and damp of their bunker, and encounter the mangled bodies of their friends.  If I had to analyze how a film from 1930 could be one of the most powerful films on this subject, I would likely point to the following two elements:  

1) As I recently discovered, All Quiet on the Western Front was made during a brief 3-year period in Hollywood, known as “pre-code”, just after the incorporation of sound (synchronized dialogue), and just before the adoption of the Hays Code, which brought a self-imposed censorship to the film industry.  The effect that this lack of censorship appears to have, is that the performances are not restrained based on some arbitrarily imposed sensibilities; somehow this allowed realistic human emotions to be depicted on film in 1930; emotions that would be disallowed in film for the decades that followed.

2) What is culturally acceptable has changed over time.  The 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front has a scene with a young soldier sobbing, and screaming with fear as the earth above the bunker shakes with the impact of bombs and artillery.  His behavior is disconcerting, primarily because it is unlike anything ever depicted in a war film made in the last 40 years.  In the film Saving Private Ryan, Jeremy Davies portrays the shell shocked soldier, who is paralyzed by fear.  His is a great performance, and perhaps is an accurate portrayal of men who have found themselves in similar circumstances, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the intensity of the performances in All Quiet on the Western Front.  I suspect that the 1930 film likely handles this basic human emotion more realistically than its modern counterparts, but we have agreed as a society that some things are better left unseen.

From a filmmaking perspective, considering that this film was the third in history to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the film is well constructed.  Since I have not read the novel (upon which the film is based) I can only assume that the film’s narrative structure is similar to that of the novel.  Most effective is the deliberate way in which early scenes in Germany are established; this pays off later when the main character returns home, after being changed by war, and finds that his original perception was wrong, and now his eyes have been opened.

*I think that it's fair to consider this to be an American-made film, even though it's director Lewis Milestone was born in Bessarabia, which is in the area now known as Moldova (imdb.com). It would be interesting to look at the ancestry of the director, producers, and actors, and how this impacted the production, but that would be true about any American film.