War is hell the movies tell us.
And so was world war 1.
As depicted in the Netflix film " All Quiet on the Western Front"
the great war is muddy, bloody and brutish.
No heroes here. Just scared young boys killing or being killed.
Where is Franz? I lost Franz!
I am missing my comrades, Sergeant!
I miss my mother, damn it!
Grenades and ammunition! Let's go!
It's not a new story. In fact the Netflix film from director Edward Berger is the
third version of "All Quiet on the Western Front".
Following two American takes. A 1997 TV-movie from director Delbert Mann.
And the 1930 classic by Lewis Milestone.
All take inspiration from the German novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" or "Im Westen nichts Neues" by Erich Maria Remarque.
Published nearly a century ago, the book's message on the senselessness of war has sadly lost none of its relevance.
ARTS - Unveiled
How "All Quiet on the Western Front" changed our image of war.
You will prove yourselves worthy of your uniforms
and break through the enemy front in Flanders.
One of the book's opening scenes shows young students being fired up by their jingoistic professor,
who indoctrinates them with propaganda, pushing them to sign up for the front.
Our future.
The future of Germany,
lies in the hands of its greatest generation.
My friends, that's you! So, off to battle you go!
For the Kaiser, God and the Fatherland! - Yes!"
(director Edward Berger) I think it feels like a universal message about young kids being manipulated by demagogues,
and populists and hate speech, to sort of go with enthusiasm and innocence and they are full of youth,
to the front, and to see that youth and that innocence being mangled up, being torn apart, being killed.
And their souls being killed. I think it's just a very emotional, universal topic.
The ongoing war in Ukraine gives "All Quiet on the Western Front" – the book and the films - a new poignancy.
It's quite strange when you finish shooting a film, and just one and a half years later,
you see pictures on the news that look like the place where you're just coming from.
And at the same time, you feel very confirmed in what you did.
Because suddenly you realize we have to see this, we have to deal with this topic of war over and over again, because it keeps returning.
A Story Born in the Trenches
Erich Maria Remarque served in the trenches of World War I.
He only saw six months of combat, but was wounded five times.
Recovering in a military hospital, he began writing about his experiences, adding stories from fellow soldiers and invalids.
The result was "All Quiet on the Western Front".
(Sabine Kieselbach - DW Literature Expert) The book tells the story of young Paul Bäumer, a 17-year-old who gets drafted, or rather, enthusiastically enlists to go to war.
Just like his schoolmates. This enthusiasm for war was what made World War I so particular,
that so many young men so enthusiastically went to war.
War memoirs were nothing new, but Remarque's book was different.
He'd been a reporter and instead of romanticizing battle, he described the violence and death in the trenches
with an almost clinical precision.
It's written in a very matter-of-fact, reserved tone,
there are a few passages that are a bit sentimental,
but what made it unique was this restraint. He didn't dramatize anything,
just described the horror of war from the perspective of a simple soldier.
(Malte Grunert - Producer) Remarque's novel, and the literary language, is very, very contemporary.
If you read it today, it doesn't feel 100 years old. Its language doesn't feel dated at all.
The book was an instant success, translated into more than 26 languages, it gave silent, traumatized veterans a voice.
You have to remember: no one at the time was talking about the war.
The soldiers who came back didn't talk about it, couldn't talk about it.
Here was someone who gave them a voice. And for those who weren't in the war,
it was a rare, first-hand account.
"All Quiet on The Western Front" sold more than two million copies in its first 18 months in print.
Hollywood soon came calling. Lewis Milestone adopted the book for the screen,
trying to emulate the brutal authenticity of Remarque's words in moving pictures.
Translating War to the Screen.
The result was one of first and most powerful depictions of war on screen.
"All Quiet on the Western Front" is of course a groundbreaking work of war cinema.
[Rüdiger Suchsland - Critic) It shows the ugly sides of war, in particular the mass deaths on the western front.
But Milestone acknowledged the difficulty of making a pacifist film without making war seem exciting.
And so you see the machine gun and then, in a reverse shot, you see the people being mowed down
as though it was the camera itself mowing the people down.
He can't get out of this problem, which is to say that he has to stage the very drama that he is also trying to criticize. (Elisabeth Bronfen - Author)
It's a problem every adaptation has faced:
how to make war seem as horrific as Remarque describes it, without making the battles look too thrilling.
(Albrecht Schuch - plays Kat) If the camerawork is stunning, if the score is incredible,
if it all comes together with wonderful actors, it can happen, and I saw it in war movies,
it could tend to be an adventurous happening, you witness as a member of the audience.
And I thought: we can't do this. It's not possible to do an "advertising clip" an advertising movie,
that advertises war. You can't do this, no.
Making War "Un-Heroic"
For the first German film of "All Quiet on the Western Front",
Edward Berger and his team were determined to make war as un-heroic as possible.
Every detail of the movie — the grimy mud and cramped trenches, the discordant music and the gut-wrenching violence —
was designed to be unnerving, brutal, and above all, realistic.
(Malte Grunert - Producer) It was also very important to sort of show violence that is identical,
whether it happens to friend or foe.
In Remarque's novel, and in our film, the death of an enemy is not a good thing.
The death of an enemy is not sort of less appalling than the death of a friend.
After watching this movie, I guess no one wants to go to war anymore. And that's the thing we wanted to achieve.
In 1930, the brutal battle scenes in the first film version had a similar effect.
Hailed as an indictment of war, Lewis Milestone's epic went on to win two Oscars, including for best film.
But in Germany, right-wing groups were on the rise. They saw Remarque's book, and Milestone's film, as treason.
The Nazi Ban
In 1930 the Nazis were not yet in power, but Goebbels, who later became Minister of Propaganda, organized protests.
They released mice into cinemas screening "All Quiet on the Western Front" and threw stink bombs.
They exerted political pressure and eventually got the film first censored and then banned altogether. (Sabine Kieselbach - DW Literature Expert)
When the Nazis seized power in 1933,
"All Quiet on the Western Front" was one of the first books they banned and publicly burned.
The Nazis didn't like that the war was presented as a cruel event that destroyed people.
That had nothing about the "glory" of war. About the "strong Germans."
The Germans, like everyone else, were shown as weak, as those who die.
It wasn't a war-glorifying book, and it wasn't a glorifying film. It showed the cruelty of war, and that's not what the Nazis wanted. (Sabine Kieselbach - DW Literature Expert)
Instead with their own propaganda films, the Nazis presented a romantic, heroic version of war –
depicting battle as an adventure and death for the Fatherland as glorious.
A vision that would end in the butchery of World War 2 and the Holocaust.
Decades later came the second U.S. version of "All Quiet on the Western Front."
This time in color for TV and starring, as Paul Bäumer, Richard Thomas, famous as the fresh-faced "John Boy"
from wholesome American series "The Waltons."
The film won an Emmy, but had little impact.
Four years after the end of the Vietnam War, pacifism wasn't seen as a very radical stance.
It's a reason, maybe, why the film didn't get that much international attention,
although it's a very good film. (Sabine Kieselbach - DW Literature Expert)
Differences Between Book and Film
"Sir,
I'm asking you for a ceasefire."
All three movies take liberties with Remarque's original novel.
But only the Netflix version adds a parallel storyline in which German vice-chancellor Matthias Erzberger,
played by Daniel Brühl, brokers a peace deal with the French.
In real-life, German right-wingers spun the armistice into a conspiracy theory, turning Erzberger into a scapegoat.
"People are dying out there."
"Then sign."
A week later, after he signed it, they started the legend, backstabbing legend, we call it, They said:
We would have won the war. Politics betrayed us, they said, "he signed the peace away. We would have won.
He betrayed the German nation." He was killed three, four years afterwards by German nationalists, by German terrorists, national terrorists
and this gave rise to the Nazi movement.
For me, it was kind of important to me to not only talk about the First World War but basically, this one big conflict that arose from it. (director Edward Berger)
" I will not surrender"
The film's ending has Paul Bäumer dying in a final, pointless assault minutes before the ceasefire.
A battle not in the book or the historical record.
In the book, he's just a random victim, like so many.
His death is only mentioned in passing, in the last sentence.
That's the laconic meaning of the title. It's "all quiet" on the Western Front but Paul's life ends.
The has denied this by a dramatic ending that is not historically accurate.
There was no such last battle. (Sabine Kieselbach - DW Literature Expert)
Whatever the films' artistic license, Remarque's core message remains.
As timeless as this Berlin memorial to all victims of armed conflict.
The reminder that there are no winners in war.
It doesn't matter from which side you take it, from the Ukrainian, Russian, German, French, English side,
everyone who is involved is getting destroyed somehow.
I mean it just starts with the opening four sentences in the book: I think it's on the first page –
“that no matter if you survived the war, if you escape the shelling - I think he's using that phrase -
the grenades, if you are on the losers' side or on the so-called victory side, the winners' side, your life is destroyed, devastated.
And there are generations to come after you, suffering from what you witnessed. (Albrecht Schuch - plays Kat)
"All of this is like a fever.
Nobody wants it and suddenly it's there.
We didn't want it. The other's didn't want it. And yet, here we are. And yet, half the world is here.
And God watches on
as we slaughter each other."
What do you think of the depiction of war in "All Quiet on the Western Front"?
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