grantss
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.The original movie, made in 1930, was brilliant. Based on Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel, it was grim and gritty and probably the first anti-war movie ever made. So good it won the 1931 Best Picture Oscar.This 1979 adaptation is not in the same league. Retains the same plot but doesn't have the same grittiness, feeling quite tame in comparison. Performances also feel quite subdued. Overall, not bad, but not great either.Watch the 1930 version instead.
Wuchak
"All Quiet on the Western Front" is the superior 1979 remake of the 1930 classic starring John-Boy Walton (Richard Thomas) as a young German soldier learning the ropes of brutal trench warfare during World War I with the help of his sergeant, played by Ernest Borgnine. Ian Holm and Donald Pleasence are also on hand.The film expertly puts you in the shoes of a young German soldier to show you firsthand what it was like to fight in the trenches of WWI. This is easily one of the greatest war films ever made, very serious, realistic and dramatic with flashes of horrific action.The film was shot in the Czech Republic and runs 131 minutes.GRADE: A
gcd70
Patchy remake of the classic Academy Award winning film of the 30's. Delbert Mann's feature fades in and out from the inspired to the flat, and back again. Mostly though, it is the latter of these two levels that it sticks to.Mann, along with screenwriter Paul Monash, was unable to recreate the simple, understated force of Lewis Milestone's anti-war picture. The first movie was years, perhaps fifty years, ahead of its time. The second is merely a reminder of how good the first one was.As the easy going, compassionate Paul Baumer, Richard Thomas does a good job. Cleverly cast in the Louis Wolheim role, and even more eye-catching, is Ernest Borgnine as war-weary veteran Katchinsky. Hopelessly miscast though, is the immensely talented Ian Holm as the heartless Corporal Himmelstoss. Donald Pleasance and Patricia Neal also star.A shame that this, a reasonably good film, had to be overshadowed by its predecessor. John Coquillan photographs Czechoslovakia and some convincing sets very well.Friday, January 29, 1999 - Video
Michael DeZubiria
It is strange that a made-for-TV-remake (and yes, this is definitely a remake) of the Best Picture winner from 1930 should be so easily as good, and probably better, than the original. This is a special situation because most of what needed improvement in the original was not things that required special effects or much movie magic (the battle scenes, for example, are outstanding in both films), but the realism of it all, specifically things like life on the battlefield, realistic dialogue, and clumsy thematic delivery.FIrst of all, the movie starts right out on the battlefield and is pretty impressive right away. Donald Pleasance is wonderful as the German propaganda teacher buttering the young men up for enlistment, and very soon you'll notice that a lot of the scenes are taken directly out of the original except, as I mentioned, now the realism is updated, which is extremely important.All Quiet on the Western Front, love it or hate it, is one of the most famous anti-war films/books of all time, and because of that, most of the more memorable scenes in the film are meant to deliver this message, but some work and some don't work so well. There is a scene, for example, where the new recruits line up in front of the train and see the wounded being brought back before their very eyes. It's a moving scene, to be sure, but I imagine removing the badly wounded soldiers right in front of the new soldiers heading to the front lines would have been considered bad taste even during World War I. Especially in propaganda-heavy Germany.Speaking of which, the fact that the movie is told from the German perspective is a bit of a difficult area for the film, since it stars almost entirely American and British actors, and we only know they're German, other than from a background knowledge of the story, because it's mentioned a few times through dialogue.The point of the story is to illustrate the difference between gloriously fighting for your country and the reality of trench-warfare. As soon as the new recruits arrive at the front, Ernest Borgnine, in an exceptional performance as Kat, the most experienced private on the front lines, quickly lets them know that even after all of their training, they don't know a single thing about war ("In training camp they fill you full of fancy information on how to be a soldier. We're going to work hard to forget all that."). While most of the more clunky scenes are smoothed out in this remake, some of them are still pretty obvious. I was happy to see that the scene where Paul Baumer, one of the main characters, kills a Frenchman in hand-to-hand combat and then bitterly remorses the act afterwards is changed, but it's not changed much. He mortally injures the man and is then stuck in a hole with him until morning, when he finally dies. He does give a bit of a ham-handed speech, but at least it's more realistic than the original. More importantly, this time it takes the focus away from the pointlessness of war deaths and turns it to the politicians, who come across as warmongers ("We could be brothers. But they never want us to know that. They never want us to know..."). Makes you shudder to think of them generating hatred among young men like puppet-masters so they can send them over to further their agendas. The end of the film faithfully re-creates the end of the original, with Baumer taking a trip home due to an injury, only to be confronted with the reality that his country is completely removed from what is really happening on the western front. It's strange though, that when he embarks on his 16 days of convalescent leave, he does so in full battle gear - helmet, grenades, rifle and everything. Seems like that might be a little unnerving to the public.Nevertheless, the movie certainly gets its point across, but it still leaves me with the feeling that it can still be so much more. It is a very effective piece of anti-war cinema, but even with all of the improvements since the 1930 version, it is still not authentic.
