All Quiet on the Western Front

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 Platoon 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. --Marshall Fine more

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John Wray, Louis Wolheim, Arnold Lucy, Ben Alexander, Lew Ayres, DVD, Buy.com, iNetVideo.com

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Smarter Choice Format: DVD: Limited Edition... Product DetailsOriginal Title:All Quiet On The Western FrontActors: Ayres, Lew - Wolheim, Louis - Wray,...	600 reviews *smarter certified	$4.99	See it
All Quiet on Western Front Unlike most message films that date themselves almost immediately, Lewis Milestone's low-key unpolished and...	Buy.com 23,982 reviews *smarter certified	$10.99 Coupon 1 coupon available Code: Detail: Take $5 OFF the purchase of $100 or more at Buy.com Expires:Nov-30-2009 Restriction:New Customers Only. Coupons are not valid on Marketplace items	See it

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Recent Reviews

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Jan-03-2009; 3.5 stars out of 4; The Bottom Line:A compelling adaptation of Remarque's classic novel, All Quiet on the Western Front offers striking images--including battle scenes that look great today--and a wonderful ending that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of...; read full review | report as inappropriate

4/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Dec-21-2008; War/Antiwar; I have read the story both in English and in German. It is a classic tale describing the uselessness of warfare from the viewpoint of the soldier who is caught in the middle between two warring nations and/or cultures. He, as does most...; read full review | report as inappropriate

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Oct-28-2008; Culpability...; True. The blood and gore of modern war films are absent, but so are the orchestrated scores, the heroes, and with them, the implicit glory of combat. The trench warfare and Maschinengewehr machine guns might be dated (along with the...; read full review | report as inappropriate

4/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Sep-10-2008; Still a Classic; I probably saw "All Quiet on the Western Front" for the first time in the mid 50's. I was a young boy at the time and saw it as an adventure film. I later saw it several times and, of course, its powerful anti-war atmosphere really...; read full review | report as inappropriate

Selected Reviews

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Jan-03-2009; 3.5 stars out of 4; The Bottom Line:A compelling adaptation of Remarque's classic novel, All Quiet on the Western Front offers striking images--including battle scenes that look great today--and a wonderful ending that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of...; read full review | report as inappropriate

3/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Mar-30-2007; Nice anti-war message but awfully creaky; It's really easy to tell this is a child of the early sound era - there is lots of overacting and it is very visual in its telling. Modern audiences will find it very heavy-going though.Still it has an ageless anti-war message. An...; read full review | report as inappropriate

2/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Nov-20-2003; Not a classic...; I've seen the film twice now, and it is dated. A classic stands the test of time: what had been called naturalistic acting in this film is today melodrama. Of course, this is a landmark film, but it does not hold up "suprisingly well."...; read full review | report as inappropriate