All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film)

All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American pre-Code epic anti-war film based on the 1929 novel of the same name by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque. Directed by Lewis Milestone, it stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Slim Summerville, and William Bakewell.

The film opened to wide acclaim in the United States. Considered a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I, it made the American Film Institute's first 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1997. A decade later, after the same organization polled over 1,501 workers in the creative community, All Quiet on the Western Front was ranked the seventh-best American epic film. In 1990, it was selected and preserved by the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was the first to win the Academy Awards for both Outstanding Production and Best Director, and it is the first Best Picture-winner based on a novel. Due to being a film published in 1930, it will enter the public domain on January 1, 2026, following the expiration of the copyright on the novel in 2024.

A sequel to the film, The Road Back (1937), portrays troops from 2nd Company returning home after the end of WWI.

Plot
Early in World War I, Professor Kantorek gives an impassioned speech to his male German students about the glory of defending the fatherland. On the brink of becoming men, the boys, led by Paul Bäumer, are moved to enlist in the army as part of the new 2nd Company. Their romantic delusions are quickly broken during their brief but rigorous training under the abusive Seargeant Himmelstoss.

The new soldiers arrive at the chaotic combat zone, where they find themselves under attack by artillery even before they reach their post. Their unit is composed of older, unwelcoming veterans, and, having not eaten since morning, they pay Corporal "Kat" Katzinsky for a meal of stolen hog with their tobacco, alcohol, and soap.

The boys' first mission with the veterans is a harrowing experience, during which one of them is killed. Another dies after—his nerves frayed following several days of consistent bombardment—he frantically tries to escape from the trenches. There are heavy losses on both sides, but no ground gained, after the boys' first major battle, and when 2nd Company is sent back to the field kitchens for a breather and a meal, each man receives double helpings, simply because of the number of dead. After eating, they begin a semi-serious discussion about the causes of this war, and of wars in general.

One day, Himmelstoss arrives at the front, where he is spurned because of his bad reputation. He is forced to go over the top with the 2nd Company and is promptly killed after showing himself to be a coward. Paul stabs a French soldier and becomes increasingly distraught as he spends the night trapped in a shell-hole with the slowly dying man. He tries and fails to help his enemy, and begs for forgiveness. When he is able, he returns to the German lines, where he is comforted by Kat.

While marching behind the lines, Paul and his good friend Albert Kropp are severely wounded by artillery fire and sent to a Catholic hospital. Paul is taken to the bandaging ward, from which, according to its reputation, nobody has ever returned alive, but he makes a miraculous recovery. His elation is tempered by the depression of Albert, whose leg has to be amputated.

Paul is given a furlough and visits his family at home. He is shocked by how uninformed and optimistic everyone is about the state of the war. When he visits Kantorek's schoolroom, he is asked to share his experiences, and, unexpectedly, expresses hopeless disillusionment with the war to the professor and his young students, who call him a "coward".

Cutting his furlough short, Paul returns to the front to be with people who understand him, only to find 2nd Company filled with new recruits who are even younger than he and his classmates were when they enlisted. The only familiar face is Tjaden, who tells him the fates of several of their comrades. Paul finds Kat, who is on his way back from an unsuccessful search for food, and the friends greet each other warmly and discuss the grim outlook of the war. A bomb dropped by an aircraft falls nearby, breaking Kat's shin, so Paul carries him back to a field hospital, only to find that a second explosion has killed Kat. Crushed by the loss of his mentor, Paul stumbles away while the medics play cards.

Back on the front line, Paul sees a butterfly just outside of his fortification. Smiling, he reaches over the top of the sandbags to try to hold the butterfly and is shot and killed by an enemy sniper. Superimposed over the image of a veterans cemetery, Paul and his classmates are seen arriving at the front for the first time.

Cast
At the time of his death in December 2014, Arthur Gardner, who appeared uncredited as a student, was the last surviving member of the film's cast or crew.

Production
The film was shot with two cameras side by side, with one negative edited as a sound film and the other edited as an "International Sound Version" for distribution in non-English speaking areas.

A great number of German Army veterans were living in Los Angeles at the time of filming, and many were recruited to work on the film as bit players and technical advisers. Around 2,000 extras were utilized during production. Among them was future director Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons, Julia), who was fired for impudence.

In the film, Paul is shot while reaching for a butterfly. This scene is different from the book, and was inspired by an earlier scene showing a butterfly collection in Paul's home. The scene was shot during the editing of the film, so the actors were no longer available and Milestone had to use his own hand instead of Ayres' hand for the final shot.

Noted comedienne ZaSu Pitts was originally cast as Paul's mother and completed filming her part, but preview audiences, used to seeing her in comic roles, laughed when she appeared onscreen, so Milestone re-shot her scenes with Beryl Mercer before the film was released. The preview audience remains the only one who saw Pitts in the role, although she does appear for about 30 seconds in the film's original preview trailer.

Releases
The original version of this all-talking picture, lasting 152 minutes, was first previewed in Los Angeles on April 21, 1930, and then in New York on April 25. After re-shooting the scenes with the character of Paul's mother and doing some additional editing, the all-talking version of the film went into general release in the US on August 24, 1930. A 147-minute version was submitted to the British censors, which was cut to 145 minutes before the film premiered in London June 14, 1930. The film was re-released in 1939, though only after being cut down to ten reels. This same version, running 102 minutes, was re-released very successfully by Realart Pictures in 1950, and Universal-International brought it back to theaters in 1958.

Re-releases of the film were substantially cut, and the ending was scored with new music against the wishes of director Milestone. Before he died in 1980, Milestone requested that Universal fully restore the film. In 2006, the United States Library of Congress undertook an exhaustive restoration of the film. This version incorporates all known surviving footage and is 133 minutes long.

Home media
Various edited versions of the film have been distributed on home video, including a Japanese subtitled Laserdisc with a running time of 103 minutes. The US Laserdisc from 1987 and the first US DVD (released in 1999), used the same unrestored 131-minute British release print as their source material. Since 2007, there have been numerous international releases of the 2006 Library of Congress restoration on DVD and Blu-ray. Some releases in the latter format also contain a 133-minute restoration of the International Sound Version, albeit mislabeled as the "silent version".

Critical response
All Quiet on the Western Front received tremendous praise in the United States upon its release. Variety lauded it as a "harrowing, gruesome, morbid tale of war, so compelling in its realism, bigness and repulsiveness", and concluded its review with the statement: "The League of Nations could make no better investment than to buy up the master-print, reproduce it in every language, to be shown in all the nations until the word 'war' is taken out of the dictionaries."

In the New York Daily News, Irene Thirer wrote: "It smack [sic] of directional genius—nothing short of this; sensitive performances by a marvelous cast and the most remarkable camera work which has been performed on either silent or sound screen, round about the Hollywood studios. [...] We have praise for everyone concerned with this picture." Writing in 1999, author Mike Mayo also ascribed some of the credit for the film's success to Milestone's direction, saying: "Without diluting or denying any [...] criticisms, it should be said that from World War I to Korea, Milestone could put the viewer into the middle of a battlefield, and make the hellish confusion of it seem all too real to the viewer. Steven Spielberg noted as much when he credited Milestone's work as partial inspiration for Saving Private Ryan [...] Lewis Milestone made significant contributions to [the genre of] the war film."

In a retrospective review, American film critic Pauline Kael commented: "The year 1930 was, of course, a good year for pacifism, which always flourishes between wars; Milestone didn't make pacifist films during the Second World War—nor did anybody else working in Hollywood. And wasn't it perhaps easier to make All Quiet just because its heroes were German? War always seems like a tragic waste when told from the point of view of the losers."

On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes 98% of 90 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 9.2/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Director Lewis Milestone's brilliant anti-war polemic, headlined by an unforgettable performance from Lew Ayres, lays bare the tragic foolishness at the heart of war." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 91 out of 100 based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Controversy and bannings
Despite its acclaim, the film's subject matter also drew controversy. Due to its anti-war and perceived anti-German messages, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party opposed the film. During and after its German premiere in Berlin on December 4, 1930, Nazi brownshirts under the command of Joseph Goebbels disrupted screenings by setting off stink bombs, throwing sneezing powder in the air, and releasing white mice in the theaters, eventually escalating to attacking audience members perceived to be Jewish and forcing projectors to shut down. They repeatedly yelled out "Judenfilm!" ("Jewish film!") while doing this.

Goebbels wrote about one such disruption in his personal diary: "Within ten minutes, the cinema resembles a madhouse. The police are powerless. The embittered crowd takes out its anger on the Jews. The first breakthrough in the West. 'Jews out!' 'Hitler is standing at the gates!' The police sympathize with us. The Jews are small and ugly. The box office outside is under siege. Windowpanes are broken. Thousands of people enjoy the spectacle. The screening is abandoned, as is the next one. We have won. The newspapers are full of our protest. But not even the Berliner Tageblatt dares to call us names. The nation is on our side. In short: victory!"

The Nazi campaign against the film was successful, and German authorities outlawed it on December 11, 1930. A heavily cut version was briefly allowed in 1931, before the Nazis came to power in 1933 and the film was banned again. The film was finally re-released in Germany on April 25, 1952, in the Capitol Theatre in West Berlin.

Between 1930 and 1941, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of many films to be banned in Victoria, Australia, on the grounds of "pacifism" by chief censor Creswell O'Reilly. However, it was said to enjoy "a long and successful run" in other Australian states, though the book was banned nationally. The film was also banned in Italy and Austria in 1931, with the prohibition officially raised only in the 1980s, and in France until 1963.

Awards and honors
3rd Academy Awards

All Quiet on the Western Front was the first talkie war film to win Oscars.

Other wins
 * 1930 – Photoplay Medal of Honor (Carl Laemmle Jr.)
 * 1931 – Kinema Junpo Award for Best Foreign Language Film – Sound (Lewis Milestone)
 * 1990 – added to the National Film Registry

American Film Institute recognition
 * 100 Years...100 Movies – #54
 * 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated
 * AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes
 * "And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death." – Nominated
 * 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated
 * AFI's 10 Top 10 – #7 epic film