Have you ever come into contact with a work or art that despite its age is extraordinarily relevant? It's almost a shock to the system really to know that something so old and created at a time far different than our own can seem relatable. In some cases that can be a beautiful thing and in others it can be a bit sad, knowing that not much has changed. Today's subject is one of those works of art. It's a film almost one-hundred years old and based on a book from just a year prior, unfurling a tale about the dangers of extreme nationalism, the dangers of weakening democracy, and above all the meaningless brutality of war and the effect it has on humankind.
So if you’re like me and you enjoy film and the impact and the emotion they convey then grab a glass of your preferred liquid and join me for the next little while. For me that’s a cold iced mocha latte from our friends at Saxbys here in Philadelphia. So sit back, relax, and let’s talk about the love of film. Welcome to Glazed Cinema.
The month of August is known to usher in the hotter weather as summer is in full swing. Youth enjoy their last bastion of freedom outside before the upcoming school year begins. Working adults and families alike take advantage of vacations and enjoy the outdoors and have fun. However, one-hundred ten years ago August looked different. While the sun and nice weather should have meant happiness and relaxation, there was a palpable sense of gloom and dread as a storm approached Europe. Like the moon eclipsing the sun, these foreboding feelings shrouded everyone’s psyche and dimmed the normal brightness of summer in darkness.
The world was entering an unknown phase of which no one was prepared. Word began headlining newspapers across the globe as one by one nations began declaring war on one another. Sparked by an assassination, several nations began drawing lines in the proverbial sand. As August continued to roll on and things continued to escalate many feared that September would look vastly different than it did the year before. Unfortunately, those fears were not just accurate, but they were severely understated. The storm that washed upon the shores of Europe lasted four long years and in the end it’s estimated that around forty-million people lost their lives. It was the darkest time in modern world history up to that point in time and it became known as The Great War.
Almost eleven years later a German war veteran, Erich Maria Remarque published a novel based on his experience and those of his fellow soldiers fighting in The Great War. The book was titled “Im Westen nichts Neues”, meaning Nothing New in the West. The book became an immediate success and within its first eighteen months sold over 2.5 million copies and was translated in over twenty languages. For the English version of the book however, it was translated by an Australian, Arthur Wesley Wheen, who had also fought in the war to be the title we know today. Wheen stated that while the translation was imperfect, he felt that his title more captured the essence of Remarque’s words. The story was a massive hit upon publication and moved readers across the globe with its hard hitting and brutal portrayal of The Great War. Shortly after the book’s publication a film version was approved and our subject today began to take shape.
The movie begins with a dialogue screen the reads, “This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war…"
All Quiet on the Western Front was directed funded and released by a little studio called Universal. Now me saying that now may sound like sarcasm, after all Universal is one of the biggest studios in Hollywood with countless classics to its credit. However, in 1930 Universal was a small studio, specializing in comedies and shoe-sting budget westerns. The studio was run by a man named Carl Laemmle, who wanted a big picture to challenge the major studios of the time, MGM, Warner Brothers, and Paramount. Laemmle, a German-American saw potential in All Quiet and approached Remarque for the rights. Once the project was approved, Laemmle devoted 1.2 million dollars to the effort.
However, in approving the film, Remarque had a request, which Laemmle agreed to, which was that no significant changes nor additions be made from the novel. For Laemmle and the screenwriters, Maxwell Anderson and George Abbott this request was taken very seriously. In fact, during some dialogue sequences words of the novel are used directly to a high percentage of accuracy. This made it impossible for audiences to misinterpret or get a different point from the movie than the book and kept the two more entwined.
Now, for us today, this idea and plan to make this movie at the time it was made seems like a no brainer, but it was a massive risk. At the time no major studio had made a movie about war that had ever done well at the box office. The generally accepted idea was that audiences at the time wanted to escape the war, not be confronted by it. Those few films that tried failed to bring in any audience or dollar return. The only movies that touched on war that did any monetary return were those that used war as the backdrop to a romance that drove the plot. Where the war is distant, removed, in the past, and the soldier gets the girl. Here though, we have a film delving into the literal trenches of war, an anti-war film that pulls no punches, and shows the brutality that was the Great War as a condemnation of it and future wars.
To direct the movie, Universal employed Lewis Milestone, who had directed a fair share of pictures before embarking on this film. With him were an assembled a cast of actors who fit each role to deliver the message, and a skilled cinematographer to film the sequences and help achieve the vision. The cinematographer behind the camera was Arthur Edeson, who before taking on today’s subject helped film a large number of motion pictures.
All Quiet on the Western Front was ground-breaking in its cinematography. If you watch or have watched this movie you’ll notice a distinct lack of blood, gore, or anything distasteful, yet it’s still wrenching, unnerving, and heartbreaking even today. This purposeful lack of grotesqueness was made up for through the use of a movie’s most important instrument, the camera. It may not seem like it looking at movie cameras now, but back at the dawn of sound in cinema cameras were very large pieces of equipment and most of the time they were static. It became the responsibilities of those in front of the camera or moving background images to provide the movement. Here though, Edeson and Milestone do something very new, they mobilize the camera. Through tracking shots they followed moving actors to give a sense of pace, urgency, and emotion. They also used crane shots to give a sense of scope to the battles and amplify the danger of war.
In those battle scenes where crane shots were used, more than two-thousand extras were hired to film the sequences necessary. This provides a genuine feeling of enormity and further amplifies the anti-war message. By using these sweeping and scaling crane shots the horror of what we’re seeing is extenuated upon in what was an unparalleled approach and execution for the time.
Interspersed are the scenes showing what effects the war has on those fighting it. Acted by the days techniques this part of the movie further hammered home the film’s message. Particularly so thanks to Lew Ayres, who played the protagonist, Paul. He plays Paul with a sense of honesty and sincerity. He plays Paul with an innocence and gentleness that when juxtaposed with the loud, harsh, and brutal environment he’s cast into makes the horrors of war that much more aghast. This approach also makes his outbursts all the more effective.
There are some bits of dialogue that will feel dated. Afterall this movie was made almost one-hundred years ago. I would caution those who are unfamiliar with viewing older pictures to try and not compare against today’s techniques and approaches. Doing so not only affects your experience, but also diminishes the brilliance of a film that played a part in building toward the techniques we know and love today.
When this film debuted it had a similar effect as the book it shared its name with. Critics who saw the film wrote about their experiences and opinions to their readers. One reporter wrote, “A harrowing, gruesome photograph of war, so compelling, so real and terrible that it leaves you in a cold sweat…to bring back with terrific force the horrors of a thing almost forgotten.” Another London critic wrote, “Realism reaches its zenith in this picture. I hate it. It made me shudder with horror.” Another warned its readers, writing, “Don’t go to be entertained. Prepare to be shocked, shaken, remorselessly swept along…Nothing is glossed over, all is set forth on a living screen.” There is one last snippet I’ll share, but I’ll save that for the end of the episode.
Audiences were deeply affected and moved by this picture and a good portion of that had to do with something new…sound. The first major motion-picture using sound outside of accompanied music was just three years earlier, The Jazz Singer, produced by Warner Bros. So something like All Quiet with sound effects, spoken dialogue, and everything in between further added to the effect this movie had on its audience. Universal’s release was nominated for seven Oscars at the third ever Academy Awards and was the first film to ever win both awards for Best Picture and Best Director. It was praised for its artistry, effectiveness, and accuracy of the book it was based on.
However, some countries weren’t ready to show their country this movie as it was banned in several countries. This sadly wasn’t exclusive to just the movie version either as the book was also banned in many places, including those where the war was fought. France, Austria, Italy, and Germany all banned the release of the book and Universal’s film of the anti-war novel. For France and Austria the ban on the movie wasn’t lifted until much later on in 1963 and 1981 respectively. Germany by far had the most violent reaction under the Hitler’s government. It was declared unpatriotic among other things and the government even revoked Remarque’s natural citizenship, though he was an American citizen at that point. Worse, the propaganda minister, Goebbels not only banned the book, but orchestrated its removal from bookstores across the country. He then planned and held a mass burning of the book in 1933, the first ever large-scale demonstration of book burning in world history. Shocking that it was this book of all books. The movie version was never burned, but it was banned alongside the book nonetheless.
Universal’s All Quiet on the Western Front inspired countless films and unveiled new techniques of filmmaking that are still used today. We can certainly see its influence in other great war films like Paths of Glory, The Battle of Algiers, and a previous episode of this podcast, Come and See. It was the first true anti-war film and one that has withstood the test of time as a great picture.
The first time I saw this it was on Turner Classic Movies and I had heard the title from History class, but never seen the film nor read the book. When it started I felt that this was different from other older films I had seen previously. There was a reality to it that affected and moved me while highlighting the senselessness of war and the true horrific effect The Great War had on people fighting it. There are also so many great scenes in this film that are striking, memorable, and affecting. This put into perspective how terrifyingly brutal World War One was and just what cost was paid in the trenches and on no man’s land. I still hold this movie in very high-regard today. For me it’s among the best movies ever made and is on a shortlist of the best anti-war films ever put to celluloid. It even inspired me to pick up the book, which read very familiar to the movie, though oriented differently.
I don’t feel like I can talk about this film without mentioning the most recent adaptation to the screen. Just two years ago a remake was made via Netflix and admittedly when I first saw it advertised it evoked an eye-roll. Largely because, I didn’t really feel this needed a remake, but when I read more into it I was given cause to pause. The director Edward Berger stated he wanted to tell this story from a German perspective in the German language. He also wanted to raise a warning to the rising nationalism and xenophobia on the rise particularly in Europe. We mustn’t ignore the past. We must learn from it. I would also caution you to do the same. Our history is important and we should want to learn about it. Like Berger I too am seeing shades of where the world was one-hundred years ago and sadly there are those that don’t.
Well, I may leave that to a critic who likely worded it best. He wrote, “Every man, woman, and child should see All Quiet on the Western Front. It may frighten you; it may shatter tour nerves; it may send you out of the theater mentally and physically exhausted; in some it may even stir up memories better forgotten, but when you have remained through more then two hours of torn bodies, shattered limbs, the twisted agony of men gone mad and the savage, uncompromising reality of battlefields strewn with limp forms, you will have seen more then merely a triumph of movie-making. You will have seen a war against war.”
If you’d like to watch All Quiet on the Western Front for yourself you can find it on a variety of streaming services. At the time of this recording you can find it on Tubi. Tubi is a streaming service with a diverse catalog of offerings including movies and TV shows and the best part is it’s completely free to enjoy.
Apart from Tubi you can also find it on Hoopla. Hoopla is streaming service that offers a variety of entertainment option ranging from movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and digital comics. Hoopla can be linked to your local library card and is completely free to use.
Lastly, you can also find All Quiet on the Western Front on other services including Prime Video, Microsoft Store, Fandango at Home, and Apple TV for $3.99 to rent.
If you like this podcast, tell your friends and follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Each week there will be new content including hints about episodes before they air. If you’d like to learn more about the podcast visit our website at glazedcinema.com. There you’ll find more info about the show and a place to submit ideas for future episodes. For film fans who are hearing impaired the blog page on our website features each episode in written form as well. As always, tha ks for listening and I hope to see you next time with another becerage and another fine film on Glazed Cinema.
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