All Quiet
on the Western Front is a quite faithful adaptation of the novel of the same name (in English
— its German title is Im Westen Nicht Neues, literally In the West No News), written by Erich Maria Remarque, who
had been a German soldier in the war. In fact, the director
Lew Milestone traveled to Germany to get the rights to film the novel
from Remarque himself, then stunned the author by asking him to play
the lead role of Paul Bäumer. Remarque refused for the excellent reason that he was not an actor. The film begins with virtually the same lines as the novel: “This story is neither an accusation nor a confession,
and least of all an adventure” and so on. (The book’s
wording in its English translation is “This book is to be neither” and then is identical.) Do you agree? Is it neither an accusation nor a confession? If you disagree, is it both equally? Or is it one more than
the other?
The major change
the film makes in the novel is structural. The novel begins with the
characters already at war. The first dialogue is the argument
with the cook who does not want to begin serving because he has cooked
for too many men. The dialogue is often virtually identical —
the adaptation simply takes whole passages directly from the book. Scenes from before the war are told in flashback. Why do you
think Maxwell Anderson (himself a successful playwright) chose a chronological
structure? How does he use the scenes at the beginning and the
scenes when Paul Bäumer returns home on leave as a framing device
for the narrative of the film?
This film was
an immediate box office and critical success. It won the Academy
Award for Outstanding Production — what we call the Best Picture
Award today — and was the first talking dramatic film to win. (The Broadway Melody, a musical, had won the prior year,
and the silent film Wings about Great War pilots had won
the first Outstanding Production award the year before that.) The American Film Institute ranked it as the 54th best film ever made. Since then, AFI has also named it the 7th best epic film. Virtually
every director who has made a war film since its release has named
it as an influence. Meanwhile, the countries in which it was
banned at one time include France (until 1963, for being anti-French),
Germany (for showing Germans as cowards), Poland (for being pro-German),
Italy (who knows why, but they banned it until 1956), Austria (until
the 1980s!), and Australia. When the film was first shown in
Germany, before Hitler came to power, Nazis stormed theatres, threw
stinkbombs, and released rats into the audience. The film was
re-made in color in the 1970s with Richard Thomas as Paul and Ernest
Borgnine as Katczinsky, and that version is better than you might expect. It
is being filmed again now for release supposedly in 2020, although the production has been on-again, off-again since 2010, and this press
release does not leave me hopeful: “By creating new storylines
ourselves, we believe this modern rendition will encompass greater
depth and historical context, but still remain congruent with the
spirit of Erich Maria Remarque’s work.” What accounts
for this film’s powerful and enduring impact? And don’t
just say the subject matter; many films were made about the Great
War and none are as acclaimed as this one.