From its very first scene - where Professor Kantorek is giving an impassioned rallying call about the nobility of serving the German Army and Saving the Fatherland (largely drowned out by the noise of the marching troops passing by the two windows behind him) to the pathos of the final scene, where Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres) stretches out his hand from his dugout towards a butterfly and is killed by a sharp-shooter - this 1930 movie underscores the horror and futility of warfare. The only grating comes from the (inevitable) strong American accents throughout the whole film. But, of course, John Wayne and other Americans deciphered Enigma and beat the Germans and Japanese single-handed in the Second World War on land, sea and in the air.
1930 Universal Picture - Directed by Lewis Milestone
Based on the best-selling novel by Erich Maria Remarque, this is the first great 'talkie' war film. It makes it clear that the story is least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. When Paul, on furlough after being severely injured, revisits his classroom, he finds the Professor engaged in the same patriotic expressions to a class of even younger pupils. Paul does not parrot the Professor but says it is dirty and painful to die for your country...our bodies are earth and our thoughts are clay.
The black-and-white filming absolutely suits its subject - the graphic results of shell-shock; even just naked fear; the hand-to-hand-fighting; the moment of going over-the-top towards the ghastly rows of barbed-wire, craters, machine-gun noise; the 'quieter' moments of camaradie in the shelters, with the pitiful rationing and the rats; the deaths of Kemmerich and other fellow students; the tin-pot behaviour of the ex-postman Himmelstoss, with its petty cruelties and sheer inadequacies only ended with his craven, then deranged end. There are touches of humour, to relieve the dreadful existence: Stanislaus Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim) with his, usually successful, foraging for grub. It is "Kat" who suggests that, instead of having a war, the leaders of Europe should be stripped to their underwear and 'fight it out with clubs'.
Universal Studios DVD
The film is stark in its sense of realism and misery - 'cattle to the slaughter' on both sides, sums up the image in the viewer's mind. In some ways, the story could equally be shown as an Allies account. The scene of the armchair soldiers (which included Paul's own father), considering the next moves in their campaign ('Forward to Paris'!) for victory could be targeted at all sides. The churchyard scene, with the shells raining down on the advancing troops and also uprooting the very graves is particularly horrific. In amongst this awful totality is the very 'private'/individual experience of Paul in the crater, with the dying French soldier, whom he has bayonetted.
The pathos is stark. Paul cries out: we only wanted to live...we could be brothers...forgive me. The moment when he reaches into the Frenchman's tunic and brings out his documents, which give his name, Gerard Duval, and shows him with his wife and child remains in one's memory. No wonder the film became a cult for the anti-war/pacifist movement (Lew Ayres was a conscientious objector in the Second World War, but served as a first aid instructor, then as a medic and a chaplain's assistant in the Pacific and ended the War with three battle stars). Equally unsurprising was the fact that the Nazis hated it. Brownshirts disrupted the German premiere in Berlin with stink-bombs, releasing white mice in the theatres, attacking perceived Jews in the audience (shouting Judenfilm!) and forcing projectors to shut down. It was only re-released in West Berlin in 1952. Tragically, Remarque's sister was put on a trumped-up trial and executed by the Nazis.
But it is no wonder the film won two Oscars - for Outstanding Production and Best Director - in 1931. Steven Spielberg later claimed that the film's dynamic action scenes influenced his own making of Saving Private Ryan. It's a film that has been on my radar for decades; now, at last, I have watched it. A very worthwhile and salutary experience.
N.B. Apparently, the final 'butterfly' scene was shot after the actors had left; so, it is the Director's hand that one sees, not Lew Ayres's. Two thoughts also struck me: was 'beauty out of reach' in those dire times; the transient nature of a butterfly's life anyway.
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