All Quiet on the Western Front

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed. 

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) on the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. It remains one of the best dramatic depictions of the horror of war. The opening note states the film is trying “to tell of a generation of men, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.”

The film begins in Germany. It is interesting that the perspective is from the enemy of the allies. It creates understanding that war is horrible to the youth of any country. Here, there is a feeling of patriotism as soldiers march through the streets with cheers from the populace. Professor Kantorek (Arnold Lucy) exhorts his students to be patriotic and wishes that they would enlist to fight for “the fatherland.” That paternal influence carries over as a student imagines coming home in a military uniform. The mother is frightened for her child, while the father smiles with pride. Thus, there is an immediate indictment of men as supporters of warfare. The voiceover from the professor says, “Are your mothers so weak that they cannot send a son to defend the land which gave them birth?” That statement is false, since it is the mother who gave birth, not the country. The film satirically shows the feeling at the time that weakness, not love and compassion, seem to define motherhood.

Other students picture being adored by women and received as heroes. Kantorek, abusing his position to manipulate innocent youths, goes on to say that he believes the war will be quick with not that many casualties. Boy, was he wrong about WWI. As to those that do fall in battle, he translates a Latin phrase that says, “Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.” The film suggests that kind of patriotism is just a rationalization to have young men sacrifice themselves. Although acknowledging that one young man there has the talent to become a great writer, Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres), the professor says that personal ambitions must be sacrificed for the country. And using that propaganda a country seduces many youths into sacrificing themselves for what in the end was no good reason. However, one student, Behn (Walter Rogers) cries, probably realizing the horror of confronting death in war.

The others see Paul as a leader and when he succumbs to the patriotic call, the others ride the wave of peer pressure, saying they will enlist. That pressure even convinces the reluctant Behn to join them. The empty classroom after they leave feels like a graveyard for lost possibilities.

In the barracks the young men are pumped up with adrenalin as they think about participating in battles to come, like school children wanting to play make-believe games. Himmelstoss (John Wray), who used to be the town postman, is now their commander, since he was in the reserves. He bullies the group as he puts them through degrading training. The story shows how power can warp the ego and convince a person that one’s self-importance overshadows all others. He says, “I’ll make soldiers out of you, or I’ll kill you!” The crawling through the mud during their exercises symbolizes how uncivilized one becomes to engage in the savagery of war. Even though the film was released in 1930, Himmelstoss’s regimentation and breaking down individuality are what we see in many films about boot camp (for example, Full Metal Jacket and An Officer and a Gentleman).

Ideas of war being glorious turn to feelings of horror. Bombs go off killing soldiers as Behn feels paralyzed next to the body of one of their fallen comrades. There is chaos as everyone scatters. The older, cynical soldiers laugh when Paul asks about getting some food, since they know it’s in short supply. They must pay for their food with supplies to eat portions of a pig that the forager, Kat Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim), stole from a field station. The film depicts a desperate situation where they must steal from each other to get by. Kat tells the new recruits he wonders what can make them want to enlist, but he is talking from experience.

On an assignment with Kat to set up barbed wire fencing, one of the new soldiers complains about the driving of the truck. Kat says if the soldier breaks his arm in an accident, he gets to go home which is better that getting a “hole in your gut.” Whistling bombs fall and the men duck in fear. The immersion in the reality of combat quashes their religious zeal for fighting.

As bombs fall, Behn sustains injuries. One soldier risks his life to get him to the trenches, but Behn dies. Kat says don’t risk your life for a lost cause, which is basically what war is for its victims. The constant bombing keeps them up at night. When one does sleep, he has a nightmare about the loss of Behn. A couple get hysterical as bombs get closer and Kat knocks them out so they don’t rush from their bunker. Franz Kemmerick (Ben Alexander) later does run outside and is wounded in the stomach. The men are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, which was called “shell shock” back then.

If glory hasn’t already been dispensed with, the bullet holes in a bucket carrying one loaf of bread to feed many and the infestation of rats help dispel ideas of glorious heroism. (Does the one load allude to the need for a miracle to feed a multitude?). The soldiers finally get the call to fight. What they witness is horrific. Bombs and gunfire wipe out soldiers. All that’s left of one soldier are his hands grasping barbed wire. Hand-to-hand combat depicts soldiers using bayonets on each other. Camera angles are from the ground to involve the audience in the horror. For 1930, this film is particularly gruesome showing the devastation of war.

When they get back behind the battle lines a soldier wipes blood off a loaf of bread. Even basic sustenance is contaminated by death. At their camp, because the cook prepared food for twice as many soldiers, but only half survived, there is irony in the fact that they get extra rations, darkly benefitting due to the death of their comrades.

The camera focuses on individual soldiers as they suffer and when they eat, showing them as unique people, not just an indistinct mass of weaponry. As they finish their meal, the men, who have had their fill of dead bodies and now food, finally question the whole existence of war. One says that the people of one country become offended by another. Tjaden (Slim Summerville) says he shouldn’t be there since he is not offended. He says if the Kaiser is back home, why shouldn’t he be? Another says he never met Englishmen before and yet he now is supposed to shoot them. He reasons that many have never met a German. The stress here is that those fighting the war most of the time don’t have any personal reasons for being there, and they were never asked their wishes. One soldier says the orders come from those rulers who want to be “famous. Why, that’s history.” One says, “manufacturers get rich.” Amother soldier sums up the driving force behind those that initiate war, which is selfishness. Kat says that the leaders should be the ones fighting each other, which implies that then there wouldn’t be the loss of so many lives that way.

While the comrades visit Franz, he experiences phantom pain in his foot, and realizes that doctors have amputated it. Mueller (Russell Gleason) asks if he can have Franz’s boots until he realizes how selfish (the force behind war) he is being. After the others leave, Paul tries to comfort the nineteen-year-old after the desensitized doctor says there is nothing to be done. Paul returns to the camp and says that he watched Franz die. His understandable defense mechanism was to run away and seek mental comfort thinking about being in open fields and wanting to be with girls.

Paul has Franz’s boots and Mueller puts them on. He says he doesn’t mind the war with such comfortable footwear. The camera focuses on the boots as Mueller marches with a smile on his face. That look is gone as he sustains wounds. There is no escape from the pain that war brings.

The soldiers have learned the hard way about what they have lost and now yearn for the lives they gave up, such as work, families, and the company of women. Himmelstoss shows up and his former recruits mock him now as self-importance has no place in the trenches. He is in the same boat as the rest of them now and he suffers the same fate on the front lines, getting killed by enemy fire, appropriately in a cemetery.

Paul gets attacked in a foxhole by a French soldier whom he stabs. They are in the ditch together all night, and that closeness to another human casualty makes the war intimate for Paul. He now tries to help the victim he was forced to harm. He says that if they didn’t have to wear the opposing uniforms they could be brothers. After the man dies, Paul seeks forgiveness for what he now considers not justified violence but a crime he was forced to commit.

There is some comic relief for these men (and for the audience) as they bring food and drink for local young women so they can spend time with them. Kat gets drunk, as he distracts an inebriated Tjaden so that Paul and his two fellow soldiers can have the three women to themselves. The film is pretty raunchy for its time as the men earlier bathed in the canal and their naked behinds can be seen. Later, there is a conversation offstage between Paul and the girl Suzanne who are obviously in bed together. Even though he will never see her again, she has helped him shed the horrors of war for the moment, a moment he says he will never forget, which unhappily will not be for long.

Back to harsh reality, Paul is wounded and the cruel facts of the hospital become evident. They move those who are dying or dead quickly to a room next to the morgue for convenience purposes. By doing so they open up a bed for the next victim. They must amputate the leg of Paul’s friend, Alfred Kropp (William Bakewell), and his phantom pain is an echo of what happened to Franz, which points to the awful repetition of war. Paul is discharged but as Alfred remains, he blots out the heads of himself and Paul in a picture, showing how the war has ended his life as he knew it.

As Paul walks in his hometown on furlough, there are images of heartbreak as we see one soldier using crutches to deal with an amputation and there is a boy with what might be his dead father’s uniform and weapons. Paul’s mother is ill which adds to the sadness of the homecoming. A butterfly collection in his home is just a memory that shows how peaceful life used to be. The movie is an early depiction (as we later see in many films, such as Coming Home, and The Hurt Locker) of how a returning soldier is alienated by the average lives of others who do not understand the impact of combat on soldiers. One man at the pub acts like the sacrifice of soldiers is needed and that the food is worse back home, saying there is only the best for the soldiers. He tells this misinformation to Paul who has suffered hunger on the front lines. Men at the pub pull out a map and tell Paul what must be done to claim victory. It is easy for them to plot strategy in the absence of what it is really like in the trenches.

Paul returns to Kantorek’s classroom where the professor still is exhorting youths to believe in the heroic mythology about how grand and patriotic it is to sign up to be soldiers. A reluctant Paul tells them the simple truth: “We live in the trenches out there. We fight. We try not to be killed, but sometimes we are. That’s all.” When the professor tells him not to dwell on the negative, Paul angrily says, “When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all.” He says there are millions who die in war “and what good is it?” The point being made is that the cost of war renders nobody a winner. The students don’t want to listen to someone upsetting what they have heard and want to believe. They yell out “coward!” in their naïve ignorance. Paul says he wants to cut his leave short because the pain of seeing how warped are the views of the civilians is more disturbing than being at the front. At least there he knows where he stands, as do the other soldiers.

When Paul returns, he sees more youth there to replace those dying as the circle of death continues. He sees Kat and they speak the truth about how hopeless the war is. When a bomb goes off near them Kat says he broke his shin, but his wounds are worse than he lets on. Paul carries him back to the camp and finds out that Kat died. Kat said he would be the last to go, so his passing is an omen as to the state of the conflict. Paul said Kat was all he had left, so he is now empty of connection to anything.

In a trench, Paul sees a beautiful butterfly. He reaches for it, as if trying to capture some innocence and beauty that was in his childhood. However, death is on the battlefield and an enemy soldier shoots and kills Paul. His outstretched hand, which was seeking an escape. is stopped in the act. The last shot of the film is devastating as young soldiers march off to war with a cemetery and a sea of crosses appearing in the background as if to say that they are heading to their deaths. The thrust here is that it is only quiet on the western front for those in the graveyard.

Gallipoli

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

An important historical note which helps to appreciate this 1981 film directed by Peter Weir is that Australia had just become a united country in 1901, just 14 years before the WWI events depicted in the movie. The Australian engagement in the war was the first national enterprise on the world stage for the country. So, there was a general feeling to prove itself in battle, sort of a trial by ordeal. An example of how there was this sense of proving the strength of its nationalism can be seen in the fact that the country had the only volunteer army fighting against Germany and its allies.

The titles of the film are in red, possibly pointing to the blood that will be spilled later at Gallipoli in Turkey. (The Turks were allies of the Germans). The story starts in May of 1915 with a youth practicing for a running competition. Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) is a fast sprinter, and his uncle, Jack (Bill Kerr) is a loving, but demanding trainer. Archy’s youthful desire to compete successfully symbolizes the young nation of Australia wanting to prove itself. Some of the locals tease Archy about how men prove themselves by fighting, not running. It is possible that this needling is one of the reasons Archy feels he must fight for his country. A bully, Les McCann (Harold Hopkins) makes a wager with Archy, saying he can beat him if he runs and Les rides on horseback. Les says that Archy must be barefoot, to which Archy agrees, as long as Les rides bareback. Les falls off of his horse and loses, but Archy pays for the struggle with bleeding and injured feet. His wounds are a foreshadowing of what can happen in war.

We have a scene during Archy’s recuperation where his Uncle Jack reads from Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The section he reads is significant because it deals with leaving behind the sheltered protection of childhood and testing oneself in order to become an adult. Again, Archy’s journey mirrors Australia’s path to seasoned nationhood. Archy is later seen with local men who want to enlist, but there is one who sees the danger in this bravado, and tells the others that they are signing up to die. There is a large wooden horse at the town where the race takes place, and it reminds one of the Trojan horse, a symbol of how the urge for heroic conquest make one susceptible to deception. Archy competes against Mel Gibson’s Frank Dunne, who is a laborer that wants more out of his life. Archy beats him in the race, gives the prize money to his Uncle Jack, keeps his medal, and says he is enlisting. Jack is upset, not expecting his nephew to return from the war. However, Archy is underage, and is denied entry into the military.

Archy runs into Frank, who says if they go to Perth, nobody there will know Archy, and he can fake his age, and enlist. The travel to the city is a sort of journey to test Archy's survival skills because the two men hop a freight train are left off in the desert. (The desert is always a place of trial in the bible, and there is a shot downward from on high to show the immensity of the land versus their small size, which emphasizes the difficulty of their struggle). And the movement from a rural place to a city shows the transition from innocence to worldly experience. The two men quarrel along the way, and their differences reflect the growing pains of Australia itself. Archy feels that he must fight for his homeland, while Frank, being of Irish descent, sees the war as having nothing to do with him, it being a British conflict. On their way they encounter an old camel rider who gives them directions. The man seems to represent the isolationist attitude that Frank espouses, as he knows nothing of the world war, and says he “can’t see what it has to do with us.” Archy argues that if they don’t stop the Germans and their allies in Turkey, then they will eventually take over Australia (an argument that may have been sound in a world-wide struggle, but which was used later in the Communist domino theory used to justify America’s presence in Vietnam).

Archy and Frank arrive at a ranch, and Archy says he is going to join an elite fighting outfit called the Light Horse Brigade. The owner’s daughters say how much they love the uniforms the soldiers wear. The talk of patriotism and glory in battle, and the admiration of the young women, start to pressure Frank, who wants to improve his lot in life, into changing his decision to stay out of the conflict. However, Frank can’t ride a horse, which shows how idealism collides with reality. Archy tries to teach him how to handle a horse, and in return, Frank makes up a fake birth certificate for Archy. Another old man questions why Frank would want to fight for the British, who would just as soon hang Irishmen (these old guys are like Shakespearean soothsayers, warning of bad future events). When they go to enlist, Archy makes it into the Light Horse Brigade, but Frank can’t pass the riding test, and winds up in the infantry, the most dangerous fighting outfit. There is a big town send-of for the departing soldiers, making it seem like they are going off to participate in a sporting event. It’s as if they will bring back awards that will glorify their feats of accomplishment, instead of embarking on a voyage leading to brutality and death. Frank becomes separated from Archy, but he is glad to reunite with some old mates he used to work with.

The soldiers arrive in Cairo for training. They are still viewing the conflict like a sporting competition as Frank and his friends play ball near the pyramids. One man says that the Pharaohs buried their wives and their belongs with them in the ancient tombs, and says it was “man’s first attempt to beat death.” The point here is that even the great ancient kings, with all their power and wealth, could not escape their mortality. So, what chance do these foot soldiers have in defeating death? Instead of hearing about how slim their chances are of surviving combat, the officers dispense information about the dangers of drinking the local alcoholic beverages and contracting venereal diseases. There is a drill practice battle with the Light Horsemen, where Frank reunites with Archy. However, the mock encounter is  worthless as most of the men lie down and act dead so they can be carried off as opposed to doing the carrying of the supposed casualties.

There are scenes which show mistreatment of the Australians and the local people. Frank and his mates meet some British officers riding on horses, their elevated positions physically reflecting their superior attitudes toward the Australian men, who should be respected for risking their lives to help them.There is an encounter that illustrates how the local inhabitants suffer as they are caught between the warring factions. One of Frank’s friends says he was cheated by a local shopkeeper by selling him a fake relic at a high price. The soldiers harass a man and damage his goods, and he isn’t even the right merchant, as the victim keeps telling Frank and his mates.

Frank, to the disappointment of his fellow infantrymen, gets a transfer to the Light Brigade, which now will fight with the infantry without horses. He can now be with Archy. There is an elegant party which Frank crashes, and at which Archy delivers a note to their commander, Major Barton (Bill Hunter), that says they will be fighting at the strongly defended Gallipoli position. Barton shows his apprehension at the order. The brightness and merriment of the celebration contrasts with the darkness of the following scene where the men will be fighting, and where the only light comes from explosions. The soldiers must restrain from smoking and and making noise as to not give away their presence. There follows a scene in daylight where the soldiers swim naked and during their underwater dives they find ancient shipwrecks with rusted rifles. The images suggest the theme that wars are endless, dating back to antiquity and continuing to the present. Bullets zip through the water, and one man is wounded. The whole scene of youthful nakedness floating in water defiled by weaponry seems to symbolize a demonic baptism into the horrors of adult warfare.

Those men who have been there before Archy and Frank have already started to deal with their situation by engaging in dark humor. For instance, they shake the hand of the corpse of a dead soldier, and say, “G’day, Mate.” A seasoned infantryman shows them that just by poking a little above their trenches, bullets come flying in, ready to cut them down. There is a sign close to him which says, “Abandon hope past this point,” which sound like the words that appear before the gates to hell in Dante’s “Inferno.” They go about their business while there is constant shelling in the background. Frank receives a package from a women’s auxiliary at home which, although meant to be morale boosting, contains articles more fitting for a picnic, and which does not show an appreciation of what those at home have sent their men off to do. He also gets a bill from a man who fixed his bicycle, which is especially insulting giving Frank’s circumstances. Frank once again joins his old mates, and before they engage the enemy, they frequent some local prostitutes. One man tells another that it is okay to indulge, since God turns a ‘blind eye” before every battle. This can be taken two ways - one, that God cuts soldiers some slack before they face death, or it also can imply that the deity has forsaken them, as he “turns” away from them. One of Frank’s infantry friends is killed, another wounded, and yet another suffers from what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There is a briefing among the officers that basically orders Barton’s men to be sacrificed at the Battle of the Nek as a diversion so that British troops can land elsewhere. Barton is promised that there will be heavy shelling of Turkish trenches to protect the advancement of his men.

Barton wants to use Archy, because of his running speed, to convey messages to command headquarters since communications will go down during the battle. Archy tells Barton to use Frank, who he says is just as quick a runner as himself, thus sparing Frank from becoming involved in the fighting. According to IMDb, before the fight, Barton plays some classical music by Bizet, which turns out to be a bad omen, as it is a duet between two men who swear to remain as friends, and who will be reunited in death. On the day of the battle, Barton is to send three waves of troops over the top of the trenches. Unfortunately, the Turks are able to regain their trenches after the British shelling and before Barton sends his men. The first two waves are almost immediately slaughtered by machine gun fire. Frank is sent to have the orders reconsidered, but is told they are to proceed by the colonel in command (who in reality was Australian, not British), and who is misinformed that there were British markers in the Turkish trenches, showing that they have persevered. Information comes down that the British troops have landed easily, are enjoying tea on the beach (as the Australians are being killed), and thus, there is no need for the continued losses. Frank Suggests to Barton that he go over the head of the local commander, and ask the general to reconsider. Frank dodges bullets and delivers the message. The general tells him that he will take some time to reconsider. But, Frank can’t get back in time before Barton must send the last wave over the top.

Death is now palpable for these young men. One looks at a letter and picture of his child for the last time. Archy embeds his running victory medal in the trench as a sort of memorial. Barton knows he is sending his soldiers to certain death, and sacrifices himself, too. The last image we see is that of Archy running, remembering the encouraging words of his uncle. It is not enough, and he is shot.

Weir leaves us with the frozen image of Archy’s body after being hit by bullets, a chilling reminder of how war, sold as an opportunity for glory and patriotic duty, many times strikes down the youth of a country, thus damaging the hope for the future.

The next film is Winter’s Bone.