All Quiet on the Western Front

Professor Milada Polisenska

5 June, 2008
Tyrone Schiff
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I decided to watch the film called, All Quiet on The Western Front, which was

made in the year 1930. It is a film based on a book. The book itself did unbelievably well,

selling over 2.5 million copies. The film fared equally as well, ending up winning the best

picture award at the 1930 Oscar Awards.

The movie is a commentary on the horrors of war. It follows a group of school

boys through their enlistment and eventual fighting that they have to do in World War I.

Things pick up when the boys are encouraged by a school teacher of theirs to enlist in the

army. They end up joining together, but at the wrong time. War is about to break out and

that means that they will have to go and fight.

The movie does a superb job of showcasing on an individual level how terrible

and scary war is. The movie shows death in its scariest form and shows how the boys

have to deal with the hardships of trench warfare as was necessary in World War I. As the

movie progresses, the young, innocent boys that we saw at the beginning become hard

and ruthless. Their ideas of the “enemy” and of the ideas of “right and wrong,” soon slip

away as the mutilation of war surrounds and encompass their entire being.

The main protagonist of the film is Paul Bäumer, through who the movie tells the

story. We can see as the movie progresses how Paul’s disconnects his mind from his

feelings, keeping his emotions at bay in order to preserve his sanity and survive. As a

result, the compassionate young man becomes unable to mourn his dead comrades,

unable to feel at home among his family, unable to express his feelings about the war or

even talk about his experiences, unable to remember the past fully, and unable to

conceive of a future without war.

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It is an extremely compassionate and compelling performance that he gives in the

film and really punctuates how terrible the war was on the individual who was forced to

take part in it. One of the most intense scenes in the movie is when soldiers engage in

hand to hand combat in one of the trenches in no mans land. It really does a good job of

depicting the struggle and strife of the generation, as well as the feud amongst nations

versus the death of men.

This was an excellently done movie that I enjoyed watching very much. I was not

surprised when I hear that it won best picture in 1930, because it was well acted and well

done. It definitely also speaks a lot about 20th century social history, as it portrays the

“lost generation” that were forced as adolescents to go off and fight in a war that was not

theirs and ended up being a massacre. This was a truly inspiring and wonderful film that

all should watch.