(Adam & Justin's Letterboxd Movie Club)

The only quiet on the front lines of The Great War ... was the silence of the dead fallen on the battlefield.

"We live in the trenches out there. We fight. We try not to be killed, but sometimes we are. That's all."

All Quiet on the Western Front is an excellent early war film that captures the looming threat of death for young German soldiers in the trenches of WW1. Just like 'Wings' which was made just a few years prior, I was really impressed by how well executed the combat was throughout this fellow Best Picture winner. It is a familiar story that we have seen in so many war films, where a…

Film #1 of Project 30

”When it comes to dying for your country it’s better not to die at all.”

It’s really amazing that this 84 year old film’s messages and its viewpoints regarding war and its effects on human soul feel so fresh and modern even now. Lewis Milestone’s adaptation of Eric Maria Remarque’s novel of the same name is an absorbing, tantalizing and incredibly affective piece of cinema which focuses on a group of naive German boys who go to the ugly battlefields of World War I and it shows how anguish, misery and sorrow replaces all their energy, passion and enthusiasm for life and how their courage, valor and heroism soon turns into silence, depression and despair.…

All Quiet on the Western Front is amongst the most crucial pacifistic assertions ever accomplished in film. Based on the world-renowned novel by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, it's an unhesitantly frank look at the complete disillusionment of war from the perspective of an optimistic and loyal young soldier in the trenches of World War I. Lewis Milestone directs with some fantastic tracking shots extending directly across the lines of the trenches, and the many layers of soldiers about to be commanded to rush forward to almost certainly embrace death upsettingly fixes a realistic and permanent perception of the stupidity of war.

It represents an extremely unpleasant presentation of death for the soldiers; one which is entirely lacking any particular…

10/10
Best Picture Winners
Best Director Winners

Right off the bat I can tell you that my first reaction after completing this was “this was made in 1930?”

The cinematography is exceptional for the time. The 30s is when films really started branching out and doing new things in my opinion and it starts here. The visuals are pretty incredible and the sound can be somewhat unnerving. There are scenes that are all missions and explosions with soldiers running and falling. The comparisons to modern war films should be noticed, as I think this film really set a tone for what that would be like.

I also couldn’t believe all of what they covered. This film is very anti war…

All Quiet On The Western Front

A surviving German soldier of WWI, Erich Maria Remarque, wrote a book which became an instant hit in 1927, selling two and a half million copies in its first eighteen months in print. Soon after, Hollywood’s film studios fought over the rights and Universal won the bid. The company wasn’t a major studio at the time, they specialized in low budget films, though producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. spared no expense and ensured that All Quiet on the Western Front had a large budget.

Lewis Milestone, born Lev Milstein, emigrated from Russia at the end of WWI, where he began filmmaking by directing training films in the Signal Corps for the US army, giving him…

There are a dozen or so legendary films in the history of cinema that live up to their billing, and then some. This is certainly one of them. It's so defiantly timeless, and also makes you somewhat wonder why people even bothered making war films ever since.

As a result of the 100th year commemorations of WWI which are currently underway, I finally decided to seek this film out and polish it off. It is one of those films you often hear about a long time before you get around to seeing it, it features prominently in the history of early cinema, particularly the early era of the Oscars. The film title itself is pure pop-culture, to the point of…

I can absolutely see the appeal of this film, with this epic having outstandingly orchestrated sequences with very wide angles, with every drop of action being captured. Dialogue (especially in that opening classroom scene) feels polished and refined for the subject matter and setting, and a lot of the themes presented work for the message getting put across. I especially love the butterfly.
However, this film does has a lot of great, but I think it is trying to do too much too often. When it came to the third scene at the trenches with the same wide shot with no music and the same sound effects, I couldn't help myself from making my eyes wander at those points. Another…

It's incredible that director Lewis Milestone was able to create such a depressing, brutal, big-budget war epic in 1930! The battlefield feels alive with the numerous tracking shots and blaring sound design.

However, it is the quiet moments in All Quiet on the Western Front that really got to me. The montage following a pair of boots, Paul with the British solider, Paul's hand reaching for the butterfly. In a movie about war, the silence is what is so precious throughout. Milestone seems to demonstrate that the silence is what is desired but is shattered by "noble men" who sent innocent men to lose their lives over a bit of land. The ending gives us the silence the audience is…