Unlike most "message" films which date themselves almost immediately, Lewis Milestone's low-key unpolished and deeply-felt screen adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque anti-war novel has lost little of its original impact. Years after its release it was still being banned in countries mobilising for war.
The plot follows a group of young German recruits in World War I through their passage from idealism to disillusionment. As the central character Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres) declares, "We live in the trenches and we fight. We try not to be killed - that's all." All Quiet On The Western Front is an anthology of now famous scenes: Ayres trapped in a shell crater with a man he has killed
the first meeting of the recruits and the veterans
infantrymen being mowed down to machine-gun visual rhythms
a moonlight swim with French farm girls
Ayres' pacifist speech to his astonished schoolmates
and the final shot of the soldier's hand reaching for the butterfly.
Introduction by the U.S.'s Turner Classic Movies host and Film Historian Robert Osborne
Theatrical trailer
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DVD
