The Oscar Project Part III - All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front was released in 1930 and was the third film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The film focuses on a group of Germans fighting during the first World War. The story begins with a group of young men being convinced by their teacher while in school to enlist for the army. I felt that this scene really helped capture the nationalism that was one of the predominant causes of the Great War. The movie leads into boot camp, where the boys quickly learn that their ideas of the military are wrong and that their previous relationships that they had with people they knew outside the military have changed.

The story continues with the group joining the war and fighting. Through the movie the characters face many of the ugly parts of war. Friends die suddenly, they must fight for food, and they must deal with their friends being taken to the infirmary only to have them die. Eventually the main character of the film, Paul, must take care of the enemy before himself having to go into the hospital. Afterwards, Paul returns home, on leave, where he discovers that he has changed and is no longer the same person. He expresses this in a great scene where the teacher that convinced him to join the military is attempting to convince more young men to join. The film ends with two more lessons for Paul, the loss of the man that taught him to deal with the war and then his own death, which shows that war never stops.

The movie is most known for being a movie that truly shows the atrocities of war. And it is a well deserved reputation. To this day I have not seen a movie that has better depicted how awful war can be. The only issue that I had with this movie is with the depictions of the characters. The film is told from the perspective of the German army, however all of the characters feel American, they have American accents and resemble American caricatures. This is most likely an issue due to the still relatively new technology of sound. Or it may be that I have built up a prejudice to how characters must be portrayed. However, after just a few minutes into the movie it is no longer an issue, I was just drawn into the movie.

This movie is considered one of the best war epics of all time and it still stands up today. The movie gets 4 out of 5 stars.