 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Cast | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Title:
Director: Writer: Producer: DP: Editor: Studio: Year: TRT: Language: Subtitles: Genre: Ratio: |
All Quiet on the Western Front Lewis Milestone Maxwell Anderson George Abbott book by: Erich Maria Remarque Carl Laemmle, Jr. Arthur Edeson Edgar Adams Universal Pictures 1930 130 min. English English Spanish French Drama / War 1.33:1 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Lew Ayres Louis Wolheim John Wray Slim Summerville William Bakewell |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Summary | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Based on the German anti-war novel of a young idealistic man who enters World War One full of militaristic enthusiasm, watches all his comrades die uselessly, and is himself finally is forced to come to terms with his own mortality. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Features | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Notes Bios Trailer Web Links |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Comments | |||||||||||||||||||||
| By today's standards, this film seems like it was made in 1930. Of course, it was made in 1930, but films were different technologically and aesthetically then, and that can lead people to think that it isn't as sophisticated a film as a version today would be. Certainly a remake would have its own merits, but it could not do more with what it has than this film did with what it had. The acting seems a bit rigid, and it is. And sometimes the writing came be too obvious — this is a film that tells you war is bad — when it needn't be. But for it's flaws, it still creates some great cinema. The camera movements over the trenches during the battle scenes were, at the time, revolutionary. To create the kind of drama these movements create would today be relatively simple. At the time, this was new territory. Most of the equitpment which makes the equiptment that's basic and common today, hadn't been dreamed of in 1930. The difference was, the desire was still there. The desire to convey an urgency and entropy and inevitability through camera movement was there, but they had to make up how to do it. The reason we have the language of film we have, is because films like All Quiet on the Western Front explored the desires and fixed the vocabulary. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||