All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Country: US
Technical: bw 130m
Director: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray
Synopsis:
Harangued by their schoolteacher, seven students abandon their studies at the outset of the Great War to go and join up. Quickly disillusioned as to the glory of dying for their country, they one by one succumb to enemy fire until only their leader, Paul, is left.
Review:
One of the first Hollywood war films with sound, but comparable with Pabst's Westfront 1918 in many respects, this Universal production of Remarque's novel goes all out for prestige and justifiably reaped it in bucketloads. Some of the acting (particularly Ayres's, actually) hits bum notes, and the dialogue can be over-literal, as if passages from the book have been shoehorned in (and yet, surprisingly, the close-to-armistice setting of the cruelly ironic finale is not one of them); but most of it is spot on: the earthy detail and frank dialogue between soldiers, the demonstrative affection shown, and the inexorable power and bloodthirstiness of the battle scenes. The sound is primitive, what with the shells' whines and thumps, but this somehow makes the film more effective, and when they go off it is real earth and masonry we see rise up. Milestone never quite made it to these heights again, and for Ayres it was downhill to Dr. Kildare and TV work.
Country: US
Technical: bw 130m
Director: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray
Synopsis:
Harangued by their schoolteacher, seven students abandon their studies at the outset of the Great War to go and join up. Quickly disillusioned as to the glory of dying for their country, they one by one succumb to enemy fire until only their leader, Paul, is left.
Review:
One of the first Hollywood war films with sound, but comparable with Pabst's Westfront 1918 in many respects, this Universal production of Remarque's novel goes all out for prestige and justifiably reaped it in bucketloads. Some of the acting (particularly Ayres's, actually) hits bum notes, and the dialogue can be over-literal, as if passages from the book have been shoehorned in (and yet, surprisingly, the close-to-armistice setting of the cruelly ironic finale is not one of them); but most of it is spot on: the earthy detail and frank dialogue between soldiers, the demonstrative affection shown, and the inexorable power and bloodthirstiness of the battle scenes. The sound is primitive, what with the shells' whines and thumps, but this somehow makes the film more effective, and when they go off it is real earth and masonry we see rise up. Milestone never quite made it to these heights again, and for Ayres it was downhill to Dr. Kildare and TV work.
Country: US
Technical: bw 130m
Director: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray
Synopsis:
Harangued by their schoolteacher, seven students abandon their studies at the outset of the Great War to go and join up. Quickly disillusioned as to the glory of dying for their country, they one by one succumb to enemy fire until only their leader, Paul, is left.
Review:
One of the first Hollywood war films with sound, but comparable with Pabst's Westfront 1918 in many respects, this Universal production of Remarque's novel goes all out for prestige and justifiably reaped it in bucketloads. Some of the acting (particularly Ayres's, actually) hits bum notes, and the dialogue can be over-literal, as if passages from the book have been shoehorned in (and yet, surprisingly, the close-to-armistice setting of the cruelly ironic finale is not one of them); but most of it is spot on: the earthy detail and frank dialogue between soldiers, the demonstrative affection shown, and the inexorable power and bloodthirstiness of the battle scenes. The sound is primitive, what with the shells' whines and thumps, but this somehow makes the film more effective, and when they go off it is real earth and masonry we see rise up. Milestone never quite made it to these heights again, and for Ayres it was downhill to Dr. Kildare and TV work.