Rating: 
Summary: The book can be read in several hours. Do that first.
Review: "Some time ago there was an army theatre in these parts. Coloured posters of the performances are still sticking on a hoarding. With wide eyes Kropp and I stand in front of it. We can hardly credit that such things still exist. A girl in a light summer dress, with a red patent-leather belt about her hips!" After some more description of this girl, the narrator continues---in these words from "All Quiet on the Western Front": "The girl on the poster is a wonder to us. We have quite forgotten that there are such things, and even now we hardly believe our eyes. We have seen nothing like it for years, nothing like it for happiness, beauty and joy." In the film, of course, this is replaced by the poster itself; for we get to see it as well. Which do you think is more effective in conveying the longing of these soldiers, a simple poster of a girl, or the words (as indicated) above? I don't think there is any question which is more successful. Some things are better left unseen, even in films, I'd argue. The scene in the film would have been much more effective if, say, we got the details from one or two of the soldiers, perhaps sitting around having a drink, describing it to the others. Such would draw us into what they were feeling. Instead we see a picture for a few moments and then the scene changes & we carry nothing from the scene with us as the film progresses. This is not the only example of such herein either. In short, what I am suggesting is that the book is far more effective than this film. Big surprise, you say---most films in this category are inferior to the lauded books on which they are based. I'd agree. I'm just saying that you will not get anywhere near the effect of this book by just watching this film. There ought to be two categories for famous books brought to the screen: those that are complementary, ie., can be either read or seen (or both) without detracting from the work on which it is based, and those that cannot. "All Quiet on the Western Front, I'd suggest, falls into the latter category, but at least I'd hope that you'd invest the few hours it takes to read this book first---borrow it from your library, say---before instinctively looking to give me negative feedback simply because I'm not chiming in with a review of this film that, perhaps, simply reinforces your previously held predilections. Why ought one to go to the trouble of writing a review, after all, if one is not going to be honest? Cheers!
Rating: 
Summary: The classic Oscar-winning anti-war film from 1930
Review: "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."One of the things that is surprising about "All Quiet on the Western Front" is not only that a German anti-war novel about the First World War was made into an Oscar-winning American motion picture, but that it happened so quickly. "Im Westen nichts Neues" by Erich Maria Remarque (who had experienced the war first-hand as a young German soldier) was published in 1928, when it was serialized in the "Vossische Zeitung," appeared in book form the next year in German and numerous other languages, became an immediate best-seller, and was filmed in 1930. The story of Paul Baumer, an everyman who confronts the horrors of war and comes to the realization that such conflicts are futile. The novel is also an indictment of any civilization that could allow itself to descend into a war and put its people through one. The idea is a powerful one and as such forgives the shortcomings of this 1930 film, most particularly the performance of Lew Ayers as Paul. But it is his haunted likeness that looked out from the movie poster and continues to be the dominant image of the film preserved on the DVD case. The film is faithful to the novel (Maxwell Anderson was one of the scriptwriters) and, more importantly, was given a big budget of $1.25 million by Universal Pictures, who hired 2,000 extras for the battle scenes. However, unlike the book, which started with Paul in the trenches and had flashbacks, the film proceeds chronologically. We begin with young Paul, a schoolboy who is caught up with his friends in the war fever and who joins the army expecting a grand adventure. Instead they find brutal discipline, enforced by the sadistic drill sergeant Himmelstoss (John Wray), who used to be the village postmaster. When they get to the front there is the shock of being shelled, seeing friends die, and learning hard lessons about not risking your life for a corpse. The showpiece of the film is a battle between the Germans and the French, involving some rather sophisticated camera techniques, which ends with dozens dead and the two armies right back where they started. Everything else that happens in the film after that point just reinforces that brutal reality. There is also a powerful montage involving a pair of boots that passes from one dead soldier to the next doomed comrade, a terrifying scene where Paul is trapped with a dying French solider in a shell hole, and an unforgettable epilogue "All Quiet on the Western Front" won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for Lewis Milestone, working for the first time on a sound feature. Of the early sound films this remains one of the most watchable, and even the grainy black & white photography lends appropriate pathos. After all, there is not much difference between this what we see here and the film taken on the actual battlefields of WWI. But more importantly there was an effort here to make a great film and even though acting in sound films was in its infancy they succeeded.
Rating:
Summary: Best Picture Winner of 1929-1930
Review: 'All Quiet On The Western Front' was released in 1930 and won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1929-1930. When you watch it, you will see why. The films leading star is Lew Ayres, and he gives a very fine performance as a German college student who enlists in the Army during the First World War, along with the other students in his class, because of the professor at the college who makes them all want to become brave soldiers. We then watch the brilliantly shot action scenes, which are very realistic and sad to watch, as they go to fight on the front lines. They certainly discover the horrors of war, while we watch it. The movie is directed by Lewis Milestone, and has a very powerful, and sad ending, that you wont forget it. Now for this Universal Region 1 DVD. Sadly, the print and sound quality are not really too great in all honesty. However, the film is very old, and still, even if its not in the condition some might like it to be, it is still very watchable. Overall, the DVD is not too bad. This is an absolute must-have for classic film fans. So if you can pass by the fact that the print used here on this DVD is not brilliant, you will absolutely love this movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Should have been 5...
Review: ...but for the flaws of the DVD (although I've seen much worse, and the price is fair), and the missing part ending the book (which was giving the full meaning of the title, and I found this omission unforgivable), the 'communiqué', announcing both the armistice and "All quiet on the Western Front": the death of the soldier who was at the center of the story did not have any meaning neither importance for the cannon fodder accountants (especially since the war was over). Lew Ayres, although doing a fine job as the central character, is way beyond Louis Wolheim who is perfect as the veteran who knows better, especially that the first worry for a soldier is not about glory but plain survival. Boris Vian wrote(about 45 years ago):"War is made by people who don't know each other and fight, for the benefit of people who know each other very well but don't want to fight together"...But they give you some choice, either you die as a hero if listening to them, either as a 'coward desertor' if you refuse to comply to 'military law'; the worst (and it's very well exposed in this movie) being the one who are not fighting but know perfectly what should do those who are.I hope some day we'll see no more of military court-martialing civilians who refuse to go, but civil courts treating military as criminals. What is most interesting is, the best 2 movies (in my opinion) depicting war as it is AND as it should be seen are this one from a book by a german writer (but an american movie), the 2nd, "Die Brucke, aka The Bridge" in 1959, having been made in Germany by a german director, Bernard Wicki; the main difference being the teacher who's trying (unsuccessfully) to calm down the young ones who want to fight for the "Vaterland": 1914 (when nothing done yet), they had to con them in; 1944 (when it was already lost), you couldn't reason them out.
Rating:
Summary: Should have been 5...
Review: ...but for the flaws of the DVD (although I've seen much worse, and the price is fair), and the missing part ending the book (which was giving the full meaning of the title, and I found this omission unforgivable), the 'communiqué', announcing both the armistice and "All quiet on the Western Front": the death of the soldier who was at the center of the story did not have any meaning neither importance for the cannon fodder accountants (especially since the war was over). Lew Ayres, although doing a fine job as the central character, is way beyond Louis Wolheim who is perfect as the veteran who knows better, especially that the first worry for a soldier is not about glory but plain survival. Boris Vian wrote(about 45 years ago):"War is made by people who don't know each other and fight, for the benefit of people who know each other very well but don't want to fight together"...But they give you some choice, either you die as a hero if listening to them, either as a 'coward desertor' if you refuse to comply to 'military law'; the worst (and it's very well exposed in this movie) being the one who are not fighting but know perfectly what should do those who are.I hope some day we'll see no more of military court-martialing civilians who refuse to go, but civil courts treating military as criminals. What is most interesting is, the best 2 movies (in my opinion) depicting war as it is AND as it should be seen are this one from a book by a german writer (but an american movie), the 2nd, "Die Brucke, aka The Bridge" in 1959, having been made in Germany by a german director, Bernard Wicki; the main difference being the teacher who's trying (unsuccessfully) to calm down the young ones who want to fight for the "Vaterland": 1914 (when nothing done yet), they had to con them in; 1944 (when it was already lost), you couldn't reason them out.
Rating:
Summary: An impressive masterwork of pacifist art
Review: A powerful indictment of the tragedy of WWI, as seen through the experience of a German squadron, drawn from an elite German school. The bright-eyed enthusiasm and esprit de corps of the youthful recruits is relentlessly ground down under the weight of bombardments, starvation, grime, bloodshed and indifference. As the film's hero, Paul, declares in his famous speech at the film's end, dying for one's country isn't glorious -- "it's dirty and it's painful." Beautifully shot in black and white, this film slowly, mercilessly, artfully rachets up the tension, with battle scenes and psychological dramas that are literally and figuratively gut-wrenching. This celebrated film, made a decade after the end of the First World War, summed up the disillusioning pall the war cast upon its generation with much the same cathartic power as the movie "Platoon" would, more than half a century later. It's pretty strong stuff, surprisingly so for the time; an early talkie, it suffers soundwise in scenes with dialogue, but is crushingly powerful in its use of battlefield sound effects. Lew Ayres, who plays Paul, is both magnetic and intense, as his Leonardo Decaprio baby face hardens into an anger-filled John Wayne-ish mask. Although this film established many of the conventions of the war genre, it did so unsentimentally, thus escaping the cliched feel of its many imitators.
Rating:
Summary: The meaningless slaughter of war ...
Review: Adapted from the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a WW1 German soldier who changed his name to sound French, this film was made way back in 1930. It was the beginning of the Depression, the use of sound in movies was new, and the feeling in the country was the WW1 had been the war to end all wars. Now, 71 years later, the black and white film is scratchy, the gestures of the actors are over-exaggerated as if it were a silent film, and the special effects of the battle scenes seem crude by today's standards. In spite of all of this, however, this classic film brings its message home loud and clear. This is the story of the young German men who were recruited to serve in the war though tales of glory and patriotism. What they find is death, fear, hunger and the meaningless slaughter of young men of the same generation who happen to be wearing different uniforms. In spite of the technical constraints, the film manages to get it all. We see the hospitals where overworked doctors amputate limbs, we see the men being attacked by rats as well as the enemy, we see the dirt in the trenches and are moved by the hand-to-hand combat which leaves a young German soldier, played by Lew Ayes, confined in a foxhole with a dying French soldier. I understand that the film was banned in Germany until after WW2 and I can certainly understand that it would have been counter to everything that happened next. Through a historical context, this film was great, and its antiwar message a forerunner others to come. There's a famous quote from the lips of one of the disheartened and weary soldiers when he says it all. "Take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put them in the center dressed in their underpants and let 'em fight it out with clubs. The best country wins". Too bad the world didn't listen.
Rating:
Summary: Better than you think!
Review: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is a great World War I movie, however I enjoyed the 1979 color remake a lot better. The movie shows the point of view of a group of German school boys who are encouraged to enlist in the war. In the beginning, enlisting is viewed as the right and honorable thing to do, but that soon changes. I liked watching the boys transform from young school boys into hardened soldiers. Since the movie was made in 1930, the sound is not that great and hard to understand at points. This film is a good movie for studying World War I.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping Chilling Account of the Futility and Horror of War
Review: All Quiet on the Western Front is a gripping chilling account of the futility and horror of war. Telling it through the eyes of a German soldier (the enemy) was a master stroke of genius, as using an American solider might have been considered defeatist. While war is sometimes necessary, every chest-thumping politician who wants to start one should be made to see this move first.
Rating:
Summary: Is it really quiet
Review: All Quiet on the Western Front is a really great movie. I saw it in school in my Western Civ. class. I have seen both the color and the black and white versions. I liked the color version better, but both were really good. In the original film, I liked the part about the boots and how everyone who wore them was "cursed" on the battlefield. Every soldier who wore the boots died on the Western Front.
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