Bram Veneman Essential watching.Pace of the movie was perfect. German perspective of the war also brilliantly adds to what you may already have seen from allied side. If you like this movie, watch: the big red one, Stalingrad, now you see me now you don't, generation war.

ham_on_bluray The first 10 minutes of a film, in my opinion, is the most important part of any production. It establishes your characters, the tone, the setting, everything. The first 10 minutes of All Quiet on the Western Front is easily one of the best openings to any film I have ever seen in the past few years.The doors open and the camera pushes in to reveal hordes of soldiers moving in formation, marching for their country. It dollies to the left, following them as if to show us what to expect for the next 2 hours. The pull back and reveal a professor sermoning to the young and impressionable minds of the new generation about how honorable it is to serve. The benefits, the courage, the prizes, the glory. Long, intimate close-ups of each student show every perspective. Crying, smiling, even the in-betweeners that don't know what to feel.They take this romanticized idea of enlisting in the armed forces and sing their hearts out with glee and dance through their classroom screaming with joy in their wide-eyed childish wonderment. A wide shot as the boys leave their classroom and their chanting begins to fade out. An empty classroom only echoes the cheers of joy that it once held, while the audience watches in fear for it knows these young gentlemen are only walking to certain death.

JohnHowardReid Associate producer: George Cukor. Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr. Copyright by Universal Pictures Corporation 17 May 1930. U.S. release date: 24 August 1930. New York opening at the Central: 29 April 1930. U.K. release date: October, 1930. 14 reels. 140 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Conscripted German youths find war is neither glorious nor adventurous.NOTES: Won the annual awards for Best Picture and Best Director, presented by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Also nominated for Best Writing (lost to Frances Marion for The Big House), and Best Cinematography (lost to Joseph T. Rucker and Willard Van Der Veer for With Byrd at the South Pole).Winner of the Photoplay Gold Medal — Best Film of the Year — voted by the movie-going public of America. Also Winner of the Film Daily poll of American film critics for 1930. Also Winner of the National Board of Review citation for Best Film of 1930. Also Winner of the Picturegoer Seal of Merit for an Outstanding and Exceptional Motion Picture. Second place (to "With Bryd at the South Pole") on Mordaunt Hall's Ten Best in The New York Times.COMMENT: Erich Maria Remarque's semi-autobiographical novel, "Im Westen Nichts Neues", was first published in Berlin in 1927. Other Remarque books that have been filmed include "Drei Kameraden" as Three Comrades, "Der Weg Zuruck" as The Road Back, "Flottsam" as So Ends Our Night, a short story "Beyond" as The Other Love, "Arch of Triumph" as The Arch of Triumph, "Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben" as A Time to Love and a Time to Die.In its original form, All Quiet on the Western Front ran 140 minutes. This has now been restored. Continuity, however, is still somewhat jerky and abrupt. The film is constructed along the lines of a stage play with a fade-out at the end of each scene replacing the curtain fall. There is a tendency to make the individual scenes run too long, and despite the large amount of action footage — fully half-an-hour of the film would be solid action — the accent is firmly on dialogue. The pace is slow, sometimes excruciatingly so by modern standards, though this was contrived quite deliberately both for contrast with the sudden bursts of action and also to emphasize the dreariness and monotony of front-line sub-existence.Nonetheless, Milestone's technique often seems uncompromisingly dated and this could prove a drawback for many audiences.Available on DVD through Universal. Quality rating: 10 out of ten.

John Bailey In the early 20th century, war changed from a game of professionals to an all-out contest of whole nations. Generations of young men were fed into the meatgrinder that was WWI; the first really technological war on a mass scale. No general staff understood what modern weapons would mean. These weapons created a war of stalemate and trench warfare, both sides evenly matched, and no breakthrough possible, with the ordinary soldier suffering the most. That is the story that 'All Quiet on the Western' Front tells.It tells it from a German perspective because it was adapted from Eric Maria Remarque's novel based on his experiences as a combat soldier in the German Army. The book is itself a testament to the grueling fate of soldiers of both sides. Interestingly, another book came out of Germany about the war, Enst Junger's "Storm of Steel" which paints the same bleak picture of the war, but concludes with patriotic pride that the millions of dead were worth it as a test of strength.The film 'All Quiet on the Western Front' is one of those works of art that come only once every few years. The reasons are several. 1. It follows the book fairly closely, and the book was good. 2. The realism was first rate for a film of that or any other period. 3. The acting, while not always modern, is well done in the major parts. The actor who plays 'Kat' dominates the film and the film's hero, 'Paul', played by Lew Ayres, although his performance is also good. 4. The direction was superb, and the movement of the camera during the battle sequences is amazingly good for that era. 5. The sound effects of the warfare scenes are quite good, as good as I've ever heard in that kind of film.It's also interesting that America was able to produce a film from the standpoint of what was an enemy nation only 12 years before. But is seems less an accomplishment when you consider that the soldiers in the film question the war and all wars. If they'd been in the American Army, there would have been censorship problems about those sentiments coming from American soldiers. Nevertheless, the film is an admiral anti-war statement-- the futility of war at all times and for all nations. Hitler and Goebbels certainly knew the film's power-- it was banned from showing in Germany after the Nazis took power there in 1933.It's not banned anymore. If you feel a film that old will be too dated, you will come to understand that really good filmmaking happens in all eras. If you haven't seen this film yet, you have a remarkable experience ahead of you.Have people learned the lessons of this film? I hope so, for the weapons of war are much more terrible than before. That fact is what has stopped war. But this film, and the knowledge it imparts played a small part too.