"This story 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 face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
— opening scene
All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American war film directed by Lewis Milestone. It was the first screen adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's iconic 1929 anti-war novel of the same name.
World War I is raging in Europe. A group of German classmates, including protagonist Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres), are goaded into enlisting by their jingoistic teacher, Kantorek (Arnold Lucy). The boys go to boot camp on a wave of patriotic fervor, but their brutal experience under vicious martinet Corporal Himmelstoss (John Wray) saps them of their enthusiasm even before they are sent to the front line.
The front line, of course, is a place of nightmarish horror. One of the classmates is killed in their very first day in combat. The boys are taken under wing by Corporal "Kat" Katzinsky (Louis Wolheim), who becomes a sort of father figure. The brutality of the war strips Paul of his innocence, and as he sees his friends die one by one, he struggles to survive and to hold onto something of his humanity.
Compare the contemporary German film Westfront 1918. See also the first German-language adaptation, 2022's All Quiet on the Western Front.
Tropes:
- Armchair Military: When Paul goes home on leave, the civilians have the audacity to dismiss his experiences in the war by saying he hasn't seen the whole of it compared to them who apparently know a lot more, as they are sitting around a table, smoking cigars and moving pieces around a map. All Paul can do is sit and elicit an expression of sombre disbelief.
- Ascended Extra: Behm and Kemmerich get more scenes, given how the film shows the recruitment and training of the soldiers rather than just describing it.
- Age Lift: Tjaden is only a few years older than Paul and his classmates in book, but is played by forty-two year old Slim Summerville in this film.
- Bloodless Carnage: During the charge scene, not a lot of wounds are shown, with the exception of some tears in the back of German soldiers and two bloody hands holding on to barbed wire. Also played straight during the machine gun scene in the charge, where loads and loads of French soldiers are mowed down, yet their wounds are not shown.
- Book Ends: Just after the beginning of the film Professor Katnorek gives a speech to Paul and friends on the 'wonders' of joining the German army and manages to persuade them to enlist for the 'fatherland' and to do their bit for Germany. Near the end of the film Paul catches his former teacher once again giving his speech to even younger looking men. This strongly implies that Professor Katnorek has done this many times during the war and one wonders how many young men he managed to persuade to fight via propaganda.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Kat tells a newbie that it happens to everybody.
- Brutal Honesty: When Paul's schoolmaster urges him to tell the next batch of recruits how glorious it is to be a soldier, he hesitates for a bit before telling them exactly how brutal and dehumanizing the experience is and that they're being sent to their deaths like his class before them.
- Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: When Paul goes home he sees his sister's butterfly collection. In the final scene Paul is shot and killed while reaching for a butterfly.
- Call-Back:
- Early in the film, Kemmerich brags about his fancy, custom-made leather boots. Later, he dies, and Paul brings back his boots for Mueller to wear.
- Fairly early in the film, as Paul and his squad are marching into a combat zone for the first time, there's a shot of Paul and several other soldiers looking back at the truck that dropped them off. At the end, after every soldier in that shot has been killed, the shot of each soldier looking back is repeated now with graveyards cross sign.
- The famous ending where Paul is killed while reaching for a butterfly is a call back to earlier in the film when he came home on leave, and he and his sister talked about his butterfly collection.
- The Cameo: Raymond Griffith had a very successful career as the star of a series of comedies in the 1920s (see Hands Up!). Unfortunately for him, he could not raise his voice above a whisper due to a childhood bout of diptheria, so his acting career ended with the debut of the talkies. This film has his final role, a memorable non-speaking part as Duval, the French soldier that Paul kills.
- Catapult Nightmare: Kemmerich has a nightmare about Behn after Behn is killed.
- Composite Character: In the novel it's a minor character who is taken to the "dying room" at the hospital, only to surprise everyone by coming back in triumph. In this film it's Paul himself who makes that return.
- Dead-Hand Shot:
- Paul's death is depicted like that.
. His hand goes limp as he's shot by a sniper, while reaching for a butterfly that has landed just outside of the trench. - The most shocking scene in the whole movie shows an enemy soldier who is part of an attack on Paul's unit. As the soldier is reaching for a line of barbed wire, an artillery shell explodes. When the smoke clears, his severed hands are still clutching the wire.
- Paul's death is depicted like that.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Himmelstoss, who clearly takes petty pleasure in making the boys miserable during boot camp.
- Does That Sound Like Fun to You?: When on leave, Paul goes back to his old classroom to see Kantorek using the same speech he told his class on another group of young innocent students. Excited to see one of his former students drop in, Kantorek encourages Paul to tell them how grand being in the front lines are. To his credit, Paul is really uncomfortable and insists he has nothing to say, but caves to his teacher's demands... and flat out tells the students that War Is Hell and accuses their teacher of sending them to their deaths like his class before them. Because the students there haven't experienced it for themselves, virtually all of them quickly denounce him as a defeatist.
- Downer Ending: Most of the characters are killed, including Kat being killed by shrapnel from a bomb, and Paul being shot and killed by a sniper on the front line.
- The Film of the Book: Much more faithful to the novel than the 2022 German film, retaining many plot points (Kemmerich's boots, Paul and his friends swimming across a canal to get with some French girls, Paul going home on leave) that the later film omitted.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: After the men have spent five days in a bunker under enemy bombardment, one of Paul's friends snaps under the strain. He starts screaming and tries to get out. Kat punches him in the face a couple of times and stops him from escaping. (Moments later Kemmerick similarly snaps, succeeds in running out of the bunker, and is mortally wounded.)
- Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: The sergeant finds a private who has cut serrations into his bayonet, and explains that the opposition will not like this and do particularly nasty things to him if they catch him. The sergeant then goes on to explain that in hand-to-hand trench warfare, the best thing is to lop the opponent's head off with a short-handled shovel.
- Insert Cameo: Paul's death scene shows his hand reaching for a butterfly; then a shot is heard, and the hand goes limp in death. The hand in the scene belongs to director Lewis Milestone.
- It Will Never Catch On: In the opening scene Mr. Meyer expresses confidence the war will end in a few months. That's soon followed by Kantorek the jackass teacher saying "I believe it will be a quick war. There will be few losses." The exact time frame isn't specified but later comments make it clear that Paul and his buddies joined up pretty early in what turned out to be a four-year war.
- Lowered Recruiting Standards: When Paul gets back from leave and makes it back to the 2nd Company he's greeted by a 16-year-old boy. Tjaden sarcastically comments that all they're getting now for replacement is untrained boys that go out and die.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Very few characters die in subtle ways. Almost all the French soldiers charging and the Germans get gibbed by artillery shells.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The German characters are played by American actors, who speak with American accents. This, however, is intentional Translation Convention, in order to show American movie-goers just how much like us the German protagonists really are.
- Old Soldier: Kat, the trench warfare veteran who tells Paul and the other newbies stuff like how different shells sound different, and when you can ignore them and when you should dive for cover immediately.
- Phantom Limb Pain:
- The gang goes to see Kemmerich in the hospital. He complains of terrible pain in his right foot. The camera pans down to reveal that his right foot has been amputated.
- Later, the same thing happens to Albert, and this time Albert, who was there when everybody visited Kemmerich, realizes what it means, that his leg has been amputated.
- Rule of Symbolism: See the Analysis page for use of symbolism in the film.
- The Scrounger: Kat. When Paul and the other new recruits join their combat unit, they ask about food, and are told that the only canteen in the area is Kat, and if there's food within 25 miles, he'll find it. Cue Kat stealing an entire pig from a supply train.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: When Paul is in bed with a French girl, the camera remains pointing at the opposite wall while they talk.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The film follows war movie conventions rigorously right up to the third act, where the main characters are picked off one by one in trench warfare, until they are all dead. The Audience Surrogate Paul survives long enough to stand up while sketching a butterfly in the trenches on the day of the Armistice, promptly getting shot and becoming the last casualty of World War I. The closing title card? "All Quiet On The Western Front." All this is, of course, true to the spirit of the book.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The French soldier Duval is just a Red Shirt with no lines, but his death at Paul's hands is memorable in a disturbing way, and gives the latter a moment of Heroic BSoD.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Leer is killed near the end of the book, but survives the battle where Paul is injured in the film and isn't among those who Tjaden lists as having died or been court-martialed once Paul gets back. Lieutenant Bertnick's death scene is also cut from the film.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: Paul is so uncomfortable when he's home on leave that he goes back to the front three days early. Later he tells Kat that "it's not home there anymore."
- These Hands Have Killed: Paul has a crisis of conscience after killing Duval, the Frenchman who wound up in the shell hole with him. It's the first time he knows that he has killed with his own hands.
- Training from Hell: While the book also had some training described in it, the film goes to great lengths to show not just how awful the training is, but also how ineffective it really was on the front lines, such as when Kat tells Paul and his classmates that a bayonet is pretty useless in a melee fight compared to a sharpened shovel.
- War Is Hell: German schoolboys naively choose to go to war only to find a world of brutal training and pointless death. It is also considered one of the greatest films ever made, and one of the finest
anti-war films ever made, if not the best. The fight scenes are so realistic that they are still being used in documentaries about WWI to this day. - What Happened to the Mouse?:
- Himmelstoss is last seen charging along with other German soldiers. While the novel states he came out okay and became less of a Jerkass, the film seems to imply that he died during that particular attack.
- Albert's fate is left ambiguous, as he is still in the hospital following his leg amputation when Paul is discharged and sent on leave.
