All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

by Jerry Roberts

"We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields."

- from "In Flander's Field" by John McRae

The most enduring image in Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front occurs twice, once near the beginning and then again as the image that closes the film. Young men, members of the generation that would fight the first World War march off toward the trenches, packs on their backs, and rifles on their shoulders. They are walking away from us and as they pass the camera they glance back over their shoulders, some of them frightened, some angry, some confused. We can read a thousand expressions on those faces but none expresses joy or hope. The movie closes with this same image super-imposed over a field of white crosses, the same crosses that bring Dr. McRae's haunting poem "In Flander's Field" to mind.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a movie that contains no joys about war, this is an angry, gut-wrenching parable about the nature of war and the unnatural state in which young kids are duped into volunteering to fight for their country. Here is a film that has such a knowing hindsight about the realities of trench warfare that you can scarcely believe that the movie isn't fiction. The characters in the movie are German's but they could be anyone. The bold message of the movie is that every war is the same thing over and over and the only thing that changes are the uniforms.

What distinguishes All Quiet on the Western Front is that it is seen from the German's point of view, though they have accents they could be American, they could be British, they could be German, but none is completely distinguishable. This is the German army but it could have been seen from any side and still have been the same story. Every country experienced what goes in this film: Young naive boys with wonder in their eyes listened to patriotic speeches in which War was presented as a glorious adventure. They are taught that doing one's duty was simply a matter of putting on a beautiful uniform and riding into battle on horseback with a sabre flashing in the sun.

But we know the reality. We know that the first world war was a contest of endurance, that it was a pointless and bloody and that it was a constant unceasing stalemate that never moved in either direction. We know the degradation of humanity and the waste of millions and millions of lives for absolutely nothing.

I could argue that All Quiet on the Western Front reinforces this point over and over for nearly it's entire length, that war is nothing more than a grueling bloody, pointless exercise in hoping you aren't where the bomb hits. However, this is how the soldiers in the trenches saw it, they saw it day to day, month to month, one year into the next for four unbelievable years. They went for the romantic adventure and quickly found themselves knee-deep in mud, decay, rats, starvation, bullets, bombs, rain, blood and death. To desert would have meant being shot.

All Quiet on the Western Front is, to my mind, the best antiwar film ever made. We meet the classroom full of young men being spirited on by a jingoistic teacher who tells these naive lads

"You are the life of the Fatherland, you boys -- you are the iron men of Germany. You are the gay heroes who will repulse the enemy when you are called to do so. It is not for me to suggest that any of you should stand up and offer to defend his country. But I wonder if such a thing is going through your heads." He concludes boastfully that "Sweet and fitting it is to die for the Fatherland. Now our country calls. The Fatherland needs leaders. Personal ambition must be thrown aside in the one great sacrifice for our country. Here is a glorious beginning to your lives. The field of honor calls you."

We meet this man twice, once at the beginning of the film and then again just before the third act. From what we've seen it becomes uncomfortably clear that this man (like many men like him) has never set foot on a battlefield and happily boasts it's glorious benefits because he isn't likely to find himself in their shoes.

We meet these boys with a sparkle in their eyes. They have fantasies about the spoils of war and that's mostly what urges them to join the cause. As they march off to the front, as they fight, as they quickly become disallusioned by the horrors of war they begin to die one by one and their numbers dwindle. At first, our focus isn't on any one particular soldier but as the body count goes up one soldier, a nice kid named Paul comes into focus. He doesn't seem as naive as his classmates but none-the-less he goes off to fight for glory. He is more thoughtful than those around him and we see that most especially in one bone-chilling scene in which he finds himself alone in a trench with a French soldier (the first Frenchman he's ever seen) that he has stabbed in the chest. Feeding him water to keep him alive he finds that it doesn't work and as the soldier dies Paul asks his forgiveness and promises to send news of his bravery to the man's wife and daughter when he finds their picture in his coat.

Paul's growing disdain for the whole mess reaches further than he understands. After being wounded he returns home to see his mother and back in the classroom he confronts the professor who sent he and his classmates off to war all those years ago. We find him again boasting of the glory of battle and the spoils of war to a group of boys who look even younger than Paul and his classmates had been. Urged by the professor to tell the boys about the greatness of fighting for one's country he instead tells them: "It's dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country, it's better not to die at all. There are millions out there dying for their country and what good is it?"

What stays with me about All Quiet on the Western Front are the battle scenes. Like all anti-war films it is determined to see battles with no possible hint of glory. They are bloody, they are loud, they are dirty, they are endless. They work on a visceral level because if you contemplate them too long you risk decending into madness. We see the boys lined up at the trenches, firing out into No Man's Land, not especially at anything but just in case. Then the enemy emerges from the gas clouds, maybe a hundred, maybe a million, charging at the trenches, some are shot dead, some make it to the trench. The boys fire their rifles and machine guns and sometimes they hit something but how could anyone be expected to fight them all off, there are just so many of them. Then the enemy reaches the trenches and as they jump into the trench you are expected to fight them hand to hand, gun to gun, knife to knife. You plunge a knife into a man's heart but the trench is so packed with soldiers, what keeps the soldier behind you from stabbing you in the back? Furthermore the uniforms all look the same so how do you know that the person stabbing you isn't one of your own who has stabbed or shot you in a panic? And when does it end? The enemy soldiers pour into the trench in wave after wave, how can anyone expect to be victorious in a situation like that? How could anyone put a human being in a situation like that, especially one barely eighteen years old.

In Erich Remarque's novel he observes: "We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces". The movie wants to speak for all the soldiers who experienced the bloody massacre of "The Great War", those who survived and most importantly those who did not.