Instant Favorite.

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Associate producer: George Cukor. Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr. Copyright by Universal Pictures Corporation 17 May 1930. U.S. release date: 24 August 1930. New York opening at the Central: 29 April 1930. U.K. release date: October, 1930. 14 reels. 140 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Conscripted German youths find war is neither glorious nor adventurous.NOTES: Won the annual awards for Best Picture and Best Director, presented by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Also nominated for Best Writing (lost to Frances Marion for The Big House), and Best Cinematography (lost to Joseph T. Rucker and Willard Van Der Veer for With Byrd at the South Pole).Winner of the Photoplay Gold Medal — Best Film of the Year — voted by the movie-going public of America. Also Winner of the Film Daily poll of American film critics for 1930. Also Winner of the National Board of Review citation for Best Film of 1930. Also Winner of the Picturegoer Seal of Merit for an Outstanding and Exceptional Motion Picture. Second place (to "With Bryd at the South Pole") on Mordaunt Hall's Ten Best in The New York Times.COMMENT: Erich Maria Remarque's semi-autobiographical novel, "Im Westen Nichts Neues", was first published in Berlin in 1927. Other Remarque books that have been filmed include "Drei Kameraden" as Three Comrades, "Der Weg Zuruck" as The Road Back, "Flottsam" as So Ends Our Night, a short story "Beyond" as The Other Love, "Arch of Triumph" as The Arch of Triumph, "Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben" as A Time to Love and a Time to Die.In its original form, All Quiet on the Western Front ran 140 minutes. This has now been restored. Continuity, however, is still somewhat jerky and abrupt. The film is constructed along the lines of a stage play with a fade-out at the end of each scene replacing the curtain fall. There is a tendency to make the individual scenes run too long, and despite the large amount of action footage — fully half-an-hour of the film would be solid action — the accent is firmly on dialogue. The pace is slow, sometimes excruciatingly so by modern standards, though this was contrived quite deliberately both for contrast with the sudden bursts of action and also to emphasize the dreariness and monotony of front-line sub-existence.Nonetheless, Milestone's technique often seems uncompromisingly dated and this could prove a drawback for many audiences.Available on DVD through Universal. Quality rating: 10 out of ten.

I cannot really say much except that this film is a piece of work that would make anyone who watched it a pacifist; the grim anti-war message is further supported by the loss of innocence by the main character Paul, the ignorance of the slaughter on the home front by the folks and general behind the front lines in relative safety, and the romanticism of the glories of war held by Paul's professor. With all this is a dark coming-of-age story and a test of manhood and what it means to be a "brave, noble soldier" in spite of terrible conditions and unwinnable battles.My personal problem with this film is that, due to the time it was made, over-acting and melodramatics are employed by the young guys in the film. The adults are very believable and play their part succinctly and without a thespian air--the young men in this film are almost wincingly bad in some places regarding subtly: It's almost non-existent in some scenes. Thankfully, all of that goes away when the characters are forced to charge enemy lines or retreat under shell fire.Another bump in the road that I don't know if it was intentional or not was that when a person fell I had no idea if they had been indeed hit by enemy fire or shrapnel or if they were simply taking cover. It was surprising when someone I thought must have been sniped actually continued to move forward, and somebody I thought was fine turned out to have a bullet in the leg.The slightly jarring fast-forward of enemy/ally advancement towards one trench or another with absolutely no sound calls upon the style of a silent newsreel. It's horrifying and sobering to watch, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

World War 1 and a young German, Paul Baumer, enthusiastically joins the Army. With romantic notions of war and idealistic dreams in his head he undergoes training and then is sent off to the Western Front. In due course the romantic notions are replaced by the harsh reality of war and he becomes disillusioned with it all.Great World War 1 movie, made when the war was still fresh in everyone's minds. Might well be the first anti-war war movie, as it depicts the grim realities of war, rather than the romantic, heroic non-existent version of it. Harrowing, shocking, original, unpredictable, and just as relevant today as in 1930.Surprisingly good production values for 1930. Solid performances all round. Far far better than the 1979 remake.

Louis Milestone's "All Quiet on the Western Front" is a testament not only to the resilience of author Erich Maria Remarque, who was wounded five times, but also to the determination by Universal Pictures producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., son of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle, to produce prestige films. If any movie demonstrated the absurdity of war, this movie does with images and scenes that are unforgettable. Told from the perspective of the Kaiser's army, we follow a school boy and his pals from the class room to the trenches. Initially, an elderly, spectacled, school teacher raves about how they must defend the pride of the fatherland as soldiers can be seen marching outside past the school. "Now, my beloved class, this is what we must do. Strike with all our power. Give every ounce of strength to win victory before the end of the year. It is with reluctance that I bring this subject up again. You are the life of the fatherland, you boys. You are the iron men of Germany. You are the gay heroes who will repulse the enemy when you are called upon to do so. It is not for me to suggest that any of you should stand up and offer to defend his country. But I wonder if such a thing is going through your heads. I know that in one of the schools, the boys have risen up in the classroom and enlisted in a mass. But, of course, if such a thing should happen here, you would not blame me for a feeling of pride." Paul (Lew Ayers) and then his pals encounter the true horrors of war. These horrors include not only the actual battlefield but the devastating horrors on their own side of the battlefield. Later, we watch as our protagonists struggle to make sense out of war and how it started. The most captivating character of the film is Kat (Louis Wolheim) who steals the film. Compared with contemporary films, "All Quiet on the Western Front" lacks the brutality of war, aside from one shot of two severed hands clinging to a barbed wire fence. Like most memorable war pictures, the action is confined to the trenches with no scenes played out in map rooms as general pontificate about strategy. Milestone would later helm more war movies, including "The Purple Heart" (1944), "A Walk in the Sun" (1945), "Halls of Montezuma" (1950) and "Pork Chop Hill" (1959).