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For Germans, it must have indeed been a strange experience watching Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Still crippled by the aftermath of WWI and with a new chancellor rising in power, Germany’s reception to an American depiction of its army is impossible to imagine. Right-wing Germans blamed their loss not on army tactics or lack of resources, but on leftist betrayal. But Milestone (a Russian émigré) and Carl Laemmle of Universal, thought otherwise. In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, they found the source from which to express their sympathy for the idealistic German soldiers killed in battle.
Published in 1929, Remarque’s book became one of the leading pacifist works peering into the horrors of war through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, an idealistic German young man joining the army after lectures about national pride and honor. What attracted Milestone to the book must have been its theme of men destroyed by war, a theme Hemingway was making also making famous in America.
As Paul, Milestone cast a 20-year old newcomer by the name of Lew Ayres. Ironically, the movie that made Ayres’s career would indirectly break it. So affected was Ayres by the film’s anti-war stance that during WWII he would become conscientious objector and anger the Hollywood studio chiefs all too eager to blindly boost moral. But All Quiet on the Western Front is testament enough of Ayers’s power as an actor. As Paul, he carries the heart and message of the film on his shoulders.
The efforts of Lewis Milestone and Lew Ayres made All Quiet on the Western Front a monumental step in the development of the talkies. It’s a masterful and courageous film. It was the only major Hollywood movie brave enough to present WWI from a different point-of-view.
Shot by shot, All Quiet on the Western Front is a work of genius. It begins with an interesting juxtaposition of a classroom with students versus a military parade outside. If it had appeared in a modern movie, that scene would have come across as obvious and clunky in its symbolism. But All Quiet on the Western Front is actually more powerful today than it was in 1930. Who today can listen to the professor’s “fatherland” speech without thinking of Hitler? In 1930 people needed to see this and judging by Hitler’s election in Germany three years later, few took the film’s advice seriously.
This opening is a disturbing look at propaganda’s role in stirring patriotism. It’s creepy how enthusiastic the students become, marching out singing nationalistic songs, leaving an eerie shot of the empty classroom, a grim foreshadowing of their fates. Looking wider, this is a sad reminder of how many young lives WWI took as it wiped out entire generations in towns throughout Europe.
Initially, Paul and his friends are still in their idealistic stage. The war is glorious for them and they joke about whose going to be in the infantry or cavalry. The fact that the soldiers are played by and act like all-American boys may have worked unintentionally to the film’s advantage. Young guys are young guys, no matter what country they’re from. Americans were also reminded that they weren’t immune to propagandistic national fervor.
On the other hand, their sergeant Himmelstoss (John Wray) is every stereotype of a German general rolled into one. He is responsible for the first deaths, which goes against the “leftist betrayal” theory. He uses the soldiers as pawns while he goes out and enjoys himself. Unfortunately, this was all too common in reality. In trench warfare, soldiers were expendable, made to die just to gain an insignificant amount of land. This is why futility and meaninglessness are common themes in WWI literature, including the novel this film is based on.
The soldiers’ first experience with real warfare is hunger and the unsanitary conditions of the dugouts. Their new supervisor Kat (Louis Wolheim) is the first to realize that it’s better to be sent home. In fact, Kat is the anti-Himmelstoss and a foreshadowing of what the young soldiers would be if they survive. Perhaps he too was idealistic at first but has now been hardened by his experience in the trenches.
Paralleling the viciousness of war on closer inspection is the appearance of the bombs. From far away they look like fireworks (it makes sense since fireworks are also a symbol of military pride). Up close, however, they are as ugly as the battlefield. Milestone has added a barbed wire, mud, and suffering to the first battle. In an effectively horrifying scene, one solider has his eyes burned out by one of the gas bombs. Hollywood would lose this kind of grim sensibility during WWII with its gung-ho flag-wavers.
This first battle brings the first death and the men’s loss of innocence. They witness first-hand how war desensitizes people. Kat refers to Behn, the casualty, as just a “corpse”. There is some survivor guilt among his friends since they convinced the reluctant Behn to go to war. Indeed, WWI brought post-traumatic stress disorder (then known as “shell shock”) into prominence.
The battle scenes are frighteningly effective with the imminent threat of death written all over them. There is a disturbing shot of soldiers hiding in a puddle right before it’s bombed and they just disappear. Nothing prepares you for the gruesome shot of severed hands on the barbed wire fence. All of this is so realistic that it feels like actual war footage. It’s hard to imagine anyone watching these scenes making a case for war in good faith.
The power of these disturbing shots was an obvious inspiration for the D-Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan, in which a soldier was seen carrying his own hand. Unfortunately, war movies took a step backwards after the realism of All Quiet on the Western Front. We wouldn’t see a combat film this brave or effective until the Vietnam War.
Beyond the combat scenes there are other brilliant pieces. Take the discussion among the young soldiers about how wars start. Through it, they realize how meaningless combat is. Why are average guys fighting and suffering for petty quarrels started by political leaders. They don’t feel like the English or the French are their enemies but, rather, the leaders and generals with vested interests in war.
Following this is a truly heartbreaking scene in the army hospital. A soldier named Kemmerich (Ben Alexander) is suffering from “phantom limb” and cannot comprehend that his leg is gone. The poignancy of this scene involves his friends’ support. At first, his comrade Müller (Russell Gleason) appears to be an insensitive jerk, asking Kemmerich for his boots now that he can no longer use them. However, we soon see that he isn’t insensitive, just another victim of the twisted world of war. Paul does bring Kemmerich’s boots to Müller, then breaks down, talks about seeing Kemmerich die, and how it feels good to be alive. Ironically, Müller is wounded using the boots, they get passed on, and the new owner is killed. The boots represent the futile cycle of death that the young soldiers are caught in.
What probably made Lew Ayres an objector was the scene in which Paul is wracked with guilt after killing a French soldier in the trench. He tries to help him, tells him he won’t die, fully realizing the terrible effect of war that turns everyone into murderers. By now he sees this French soldier not as an enemy but as a human being just like himself. Thanks to Lew Ayres’s flawless performance, we can tell how hard Paul is hit psychologically by the experience and how consumed he is by guilt.
The second half of the movie isn’t as consistently strong as the first. Some lighter moments water down the steam. We could have done without the scene with the French girls, since it feels so unrealistic compared to everything that’s come before. It’s interesting, though, to see Paul and Suzanne’s post-coital conversation as a product of pre-Code Hollywood. There is the drinking scene mandated in every American movie set in Germany. The film even develops a dark sense of humor with jokes about who will be filling the coffins.
Still, there are some intense and impressive scenes, beginning with Paul’s own experiences in the hospital, screaming that he doesn’t want to die. The film takes an interesting turn when Paul returns home and can barely talk. He finds it difficult to adapt to civilian life like the characters in Hemingway’s stories. He finds his mother, but she gathers enough strength to welcome him back. Yes, this scene is a bit obvious but the sentiment is still felt. It may have worked better, though, to introduce Paul’s interest in butterflies earlier. This would have given it more impact. As is, it feels like a last-minute character addition.
In the context of the movie, these minor missteps are insignificant. Milestone has said what he wanted to say with a strength and courage seldom seen at the movies and he ends with the same force. Paul finally stands up to the blowhard professor and tells his new students that war isn’t noble and that the men who plan wars are not the same men who fight them. This scene must have been the real stinger for the Nazis. Goebbels was so infuriated by the film, in fact, that during a screening of the film in Germany he released stink bombs and live mice in the theater.
Why does Paul go back to the front? It’s obviously not out of national pride. Does he have a death wish? Maybe he became so disillusioned with the reception he got back home (the students called him a coward) that he had no other place to go.
The ending of All Quiet on the Western Front is in itself a masterpiece, both conceptually and in execution. It was depressing in 1930 but knowing that WWII came less than a decade after this film, the significance of the butterfly has become clearer and eerily prophetic. It represents not only Paul’s lost dreams but also unattainable peace.