The Great War V: All Quiet on the Western Front

Last Remembrance Sunday Gracchi posted on the greatest of all war films, Lewis Milestone's 1930s classic All Quiet on the Western Front. I left the following comment:

One of the greatest films I've ever seen, and also one of the greatest cinematic experiences as I went to the special presentation by the Imperial War Museum at the National Film Theatre a few years ago. They showed a restored version made by the Library of Congress. It was a good reminder that America with its resources can do things other countries cannot: a spokesman from the Library gave a speech as to how the film had been put together, and the amount of resources was just unreal.

Much of the work was in restoring the original soundtrack; earlier versions were pretty dire in that respect. Interestingly, the battle sequences were shot silently to begin with, but 'talkies' were just catching on at the time and so they went back and recorded the sound to dub over. The method used was pretty authentic (and had to be, given the state of 'special effects' at the time): they asked the local National Guard along to fire their artillery pieces, which were WWI vintage anyway. Indeed, one of the drill sergeants in the training scenes was a German immigrant who had performed exactly the same role during the war itself.

Two things are striking about the battle scenes compared with almost every war film made since: first, the sound of the shells - a high pitched whistling noise - and second, the sight of their impact. In modern films one sees petrol bombs going off with loud and spectacular results; in All Quiet one sees a slight explosion with a 'crump' sound and the ground shaking.

Other differences between the Library of Congress version and a few others I've seen (I had to go to Amazon USA to get a copy on DvD, and mine is definitely inferior, which winds me up no end) is that the cheesy, tedious dramatic music is removed from the beginning, and the quote from Remark's book (about the film not being an adventure, and that its purpose is to tell the story of the generation destroyed by the war even though they survived its shells) is displayed at the start.

Three other points of interest arose out of the presentation. The first was the showing of original WWI footage. Most of what presented nowadays as 'contemporary' footage are actually 'reconstructions', albeit done at the time by serving soldiers quite near the line. A good rule of thumb in trying to determine whether footage is actual or reconstructed is to ask where the cameraman would have been: if he's above the trenches, close to the action and with men falling around him, you can assume it's a reconstruction(!) The real footage we were shown, of an attack on the Somme, just shows some figures running in the distance (therefore not very exciting for a tv audience, and rarely shown in consequence). Some of the real footage showed not only how accurate All Quiet's war footage is, but also how it played out themes of central concern at the time. For example, there is a scene in the film where the soldiers complain about their food and mention specifically the bread that the other side are enjoying - that was a point of propaganda on the allied side (indeed, the US soldiers were known as 'doughboys' because of it).

Secondly we were shown some of the cartoons made around that time - very sardonic, dare I say it modern, humour involved.

Third, a pacifist film made in the early 30s was shown. It showed a bit of film from WWI, and contemporary footage of military activity, and said that despite WWI's horrors it seemed like every nation was gearing up to do the whole thing again. No mention of Germany was made, however, still less of a certain Austrian gentleman making noise at the time ...

There were some decent war films made in the intervening years, but I think you have to get to the mid 60s at least before the realism and cynicism of All Quiet started to become the mainstream (with the likes of Too Late the Hero and others), too many of the post WWII films were just flag waving propaganda. Indeed perhaps it wasn't until the 1970s with the enormous impact of the Deerhunter and Apocalypse Now.

Certainly a viewing of All Quiet shows how much of the hype around Saving Private Ryan was a bit overdone (Note: make that all the hype surrounding SPR). And if anyone had bothered watching it, they wouldn't have made the abominable British film The Trench a couple of years ago either.