All Quiet on the Western Front

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Shot with gritty brutality, caked in dirt and dust and sweat and blood, and gifted a succession of truly punishing extended setpieces that, one after the other, hammer home the true horrors of war, All Quiet on the Western Front is a hell of an endurance piece. If you thought it was hard enough watching best friends see each other blown to pieces by artillery fire, or be fooled by a brief reprieve before the tanks arrive, how about some vicious you-or-me squirming-around-with-knives hand-to-hand combat? It's a meticulously crafted examination of everything horrible that could possibly happen to a young and naive kid who has just walked onto a battlefield. It's won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and Best Score (that last one is an easy fit - the aggressive, intrusive and arguably atypical score gifting the film its one glimmer of something different from its peers). On paper, you can see why it's won so many damn awards, and it is definitely a solid, impressively put-together feature. 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 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.

Various edited versions have been distributed on 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, use the same unrestored 131-minute British release print. Since 2007, there have been numerous international releases of the 2006 Library of Congress restoration on DVD and Blu-ray. [16] The latter format additionally contains a 133-minute restoration of the international sound version, albeit mislabelled as the "silent version". [17] Reception [ edit ] Critical response [ edit ] "17 London Papers Go Wild!" All Quiet on the Western Front ad from The Film Daily, 1930And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death." – Nominated.

They hear that they are to return to the front the next day and begin a semi-serious discussion about the causes of the war and of wars in general. Chambers, John Whiteclay. "All Quiet on the Western Front (1930): the antiwar film and the image of the First World War". Historical journal of film, radio and television 14.4 (1994): 377-411.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. [14] a b "Review: 'All Quiet on the Western Front' ". Variety. May 7, 1930 . Retrieved February 3, 2017. Gamarekian, Barbara; Times, Special To the New York (October 19, 1990). "Library of Congress Adds 25 Titles to National Film Registry". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved May 18, 2020. Schleh, Eugene P. "Books About Film and War". Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 8.1 (1978): 11-14.