All Quiet on the Western Front

Saw All Quiet on the Western Front, a war story about German soldiers made pre-WW2 in 1930. It's a film about the pointless horrors of war and the blithe manner in which civilians will demand more sacrifices of their boys at the front. There are many powerful sequences. Most of the battles are horrifying and intense, even for such an old film. Unfortunately, this film was made shortly after talkies were developed so many times the protagonist will be delivering some bitter line about what hell life on the front is, but he'll deliver it in a loud, declarative manner, proudly proclaiming where he really should be bitterly mumbling.

This awkwardness aside it really is a good film when no one is talking. Even when they are talking, the substance (if not the delivery) is great. At one point the soldier protagonist returns to his hometown on leave. He's asked to speak before a crowd of students, all in the process of being whipped up into a patriotic frenzy by their teacher. He tells them about how war sucks, how they eat rats and have to murder people with shovel-blades. The students call him coward and shout him down. How can he fight against this mindset? I kept thinking of Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism. These students are being told to embrace death, to celebrate only the honor of the battlefield. How can one soldier convince them that their mind will break under the horrors of war?

Another great scene is the very last scene which superimposes a field of white crosses with an early scene of the soldiers going off to war, their faces turning fearfully back, unsure that their enlistments were wise. This film enraged the Nazis of pre-WW2 Germany, was called overly pro-German by the Polish critics of the time. This film has aged a bit badly but I think it was exactly the right film for the time. Alas, due to studio meddling, it received cuts to make it more palatable to Nazi audiences and indeed some of that declarative delivery makes the characters seem very brave and indeed healthy given that they were apparently starving to death. I could see it easily re-cut to make the war look like a fun little romp, like an important and necessary event which would soon be repeated.