All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Directed by Lewis Milestone
When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.
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What critics compared All Quiet on the Western Front to
With the exception of All Quiet on the Western Front , stand-outs about the first conflict of machine warfare are sparse.
Most of the acclaimed films about World War I - from "Lawrence of Arabia" and "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "War Horse" and first Academy Award winner "Wings" - are sprawling epics.
The list of great films about World War I in Europe is surprisingly short: After the acknowledged masterpieces All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Paths of Glory (1957), there aren’t many more worth discussing.
But its inherent devotion to life and beauty is part of its power, in the same way that Lewis Milestone’s quietly wrenching 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front —a story not about the experience of English soldiers but of German ones, adapted from Erich Maria Remarque’s novel—stressed that individual moments of life, grasped and held tight, are the only real protection we have against the pointlessness of war.
Reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan in its concept and All Quiet on the Western Front in its display of the battle grounds, 1917 pulls in tight on the storyline.
That exclusive list includes All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), La Grande Illusion (1937), 1960’s Paths of Glory, Wings (1927), and War Horse (2015).
The most influential war movie since Lewis Milestone‘s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), which director Spielberg cites as a key inspiration, Saving Private Ryan is one of the great directorial accomplishments in cinema.
There is still the chance for a single moment to crystalise; and this is represented by the film's most indelible image, a butterfly flapping past the running soldiers, blithely indifferent to what they do; the kind of single moment that catches your eye and holds your attention for just a second, and moves on (it could also, arguably, be a reference to the other famous butterfly in war cinema, from All Quiet on the Western Front , but that's a bit of a stretch).
In a scene reminiscent of All Quiet on the Western Front, high-school student Johnny (Casper Van Dien), his pal Carl (former Doogie Hauser Neil Patrick Harris), Johnny's girlfriend Carmen (Denise Richards), and tomboyish Dizzy (Dina Meyer, the only character with any flesh and blood) listen in boredom to a lecture on citizenship from their instructor, one-armed veteran Jean (Michael Ironside).
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Kubrick was a movie buff who echoed classics like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Howard Hughes' "Hell's Angels," and directors like Max Ophuls and Ingmar Bergman, in his work here.
Exemplary of most of the battles in WWI, and also clearly illustrated in All Quiet on the Western Front, the territory gained was often only a few hundred yards at a time.
It's a familiar situation, popularized in Erich Maria Remarque's antiwar novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" a half a century earlier, but it continues to carry a punch.
This is a film that can be listed with heavy-hitters like Johnny Got His Gun, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket as one of the defining war pictures this nation has yet produced.
Indeed, Vaughn seems to have made two movies at the same time: a slick franchise-friendly prequel and a gnarly riff on Sam Mendes’ 1917, or maybe even Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
The symbolic, existential dimension was also present in some of the better war movies, beginning with Lewis Milestone’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 1930 and on through David Lean’s “Bridge on the River Kwai” from 1957 (both won Oscars), and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), which earned Steven Spielberg an Oscar for best director.
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Spielberg clearly had in mind to emulate some of the best war movies ever made - "All Quiet on the Western Front,"…
Ultimately, it lacks the resonance of such classics as All Quiet on the Western Front, but (apart from its corny bookend sequences) this is still well-meaning, strongly acted and slickly mounted, and ranks among the director's very best films.
I was reminded of "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Milestone's battle scenes were uncommonly graphic for that era and have been cited by Steven Spielberg as an influence on the beginning of Saving Private Ryan .
His latest film does not move us as did Lewis Milestone's 1930 film "All Quiet on the Western Front."
The ambivalence and perspective and distinctive vision we get in all memorable films about war and espionage and violence, from All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) to The Battle of Algiers (1965) to Waltz with Bashir (2008), is totally absent, leaving only the procession of facts (and unmarked prevarications), from the harrowing 9/11 emergency phone-call recordings to the final dead-body shots.