All Quiet on the Western Front has been hailed as one of the greatest antiwar films ever made. It is more: it is one of the greatest films ever made. It was the fourth winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture (in 1930).
Based on Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel, this film follows the journey of Paul Baümer, an earnest schoolboy who heeds his professor's call to join the German army at the start of the First World War.
We see Paul as he confronts the town postman, now converted into a cruel sergeant who abuses his trainees. We watch Paul's growing friendship with Corporal Katczinski-"Kat"-with his gusto for life and his genius for finding food anywhere. We see Paul's reaction as a classmate loses a leg and-as the war dismally progresses-most of his comrades are killed and his company dwindles to a fifth of its original size.
Wounded, Paul is granted leave, but he returns home to find that he no longer has anything in common with his loving family. They can understand nothing of what he has gone through, and he feels alienated from their tenderness.
The war, the greatest and bloodiest in history up to that point, comes to seem drearily routine-perhaps its greatest horror.
"This work is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand for it," wrote Remarque. "It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."
As Remarque tells us, All Quiet on the Western Front is not a manifesto or a polemic. Its greatest strength lies in capturing the full gamut of war-the pathos, the grotesqueness, the terror, the boredom, even the small moments of joy. From beginning to end, the film's greatest triumph is its profound and unforgettable humanity.
