All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Buy This Item All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) by Universal Studios  Available from Amazon  $9.98  on 11-26-2008     This 1930 film, No. 54 on the AFI's Top 100 list, still holds up as a surprisingly forceful and honest antiwar drama. Indeed, the modern sensibility is almost as startling as the sometime stagey acting of Lew Ayres, which can be excused by the fact that, three years after the introduction of sound, actors were still applying stage techniques to talking pictures. Ayres plays a German college student during World War I, who is brainwashed into enlisting in the Army (along with the rest of his class) by a zealously inspirational college professor. Once in uniform and on the front lines, however, he quickly discovers that the glory of the Fatherland is of little concern to a soldier dodging bullets and explosions, whose comrades are dying in his arms. As powerful in its way as <I>Platoon</I> almost 60 years later, it remains a classic tale of young soldiers' confrontations with the possibility of imminent and arbitrary death. Director Lewis Milestone shows a surprising range of techniques in this film from the formative years of moviemaking with sound. <I>--Marshall Fine</I> Reader Reviews It's hard to imagine how with movies like these made 70 years ago people are still duped by their leaders and thrown into needless wars. Considering the age of the movie its amazing how entertaining and pertinent it still is, special effects are very good, but don't expect Saving Private Ryan.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) Available from Amazon Price: $9.98 Updated on 11-26-2008.

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