"After all war is war," Ayer Film Post #2

All Quiet in the Western Front (1930), directed by Lewis Mileston
Synopsis: The film follows a group of young soldiers, whom have just been told by their schoolmaster to forget everything they thought they were going to be, for they are now going to fight for their country in World War I. The film is shown through a vey anti-war point of view, and for this the film was banned from the country mobilizing war. The film shows the horrific, but realistic events of the war (of which some people were not quite ready to see).

My thoughts: While watching the movie I immediately thought to the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est,” by Wilford Owen. The film incorporated all of the horrors that war brings into this one film.
- There was the haunting speech by the schoolmaster, telling his pupils to give up their lives for war.
- The horror of killing another man for the first time.
-The overcrowded hospitals, of which soldiers end up being ignored and their possessions are stolen, for they are seen as already dead.
-Losing a best friend in the war.

I was quite shocked as to how much I enjoyed it. Crankyman recommended it me and I just though “Great… a war film made in the 1930’s, how boring,” but it in all honesty it is now my all time favorite war film. I found the battle scenes intruding, for the audience just sees the battle in neat aerial shot and that is all, which makes these battles seem more believable than those in films like “Saving Private Ryan,” were there is just too many distractions; between conversations, explosions everywhere, multiple different characters dying, but Mileston just shoots a battle, without these distractions.
I also decide how much I like a film based on how much of it I remember a few weeks later, and I remember multiple remarkable scenes. My favorites include:
-The speech by the schoolmaster telling his students to enlist
-When the soldiers face the first death in their group. It is a gruesome scene of a soldier being blinded, and soldiers realizing for the first time not all of them are going to live.
-When the main character Paul Ayer is trapped in shell crater with a soldier he killed. He has a one-sided conversation with the dead body and he says “If we threw away these uniforms we would be brothers.”
-Haunting scenes in the hospital when soldiers are taken to the “Dying Room.” (Hospitals are certainly not portrayed as a safe place in the film; they seem to be just as dangerous as the war outside).
-When Paul arrives home and visits his old schoolmaster. The schoolmaster wants Paul to tell his new class about how great war is, but Paul is unable to do it
-Paul goes back to war and meets up with his friend Kat. Kat hurts his leg, so Paul carries him on his back. However Kat gets shot in the neck, but Paul does not realize this and Paul continues to carry him and talk to him. (I have never cried during a movie, but this scene was the closest I have gotten to shedding a tear during a movie).
-The last scene of the movie when Paul reaches for a butterfly, but is shot when doing so. Since butterflies are a creature that sometimes symbolize freedom, this scene shows that Paul was never able gain freedom from the war. This scene is one the most famous endings in the history of film.


NOTE: I will start talking about trends once I write about films in the sixites