• Director: Lewis Milestone
  • Year: 1930
  • Starring: Lewis Ayres,Louis Wolheim,John Wray,Slim Summerville,William Bakewell
  • Runtime: 2h 32m
  • Available on: Amazon Prime

My random thoughts about this movie:

  • This is a film about doors. It starts with a door, then throughout the film Milestone puts them centre back, surrounded by characters who go through them (often by force or coercion) and come out the other side changed or dead (mostly dead).

  • Before there was that brutal sequence at the start of Saving Private Ryan, there was All Quiet on the Western Front. God. Damn.

  • All the adults in Paul's life lie to him or fail him (except Katscinsky).

  • Even his mother, who warns about the girls despite the fact it was with one of these girls that Paul has his only tender moment out there.

  • “All they know how to do is die.”

  • This came out in 1930. It says: "Can we not do this again, for the sake of these boys?" Then nine years later we do.

  • Louis Wolheim's Katscinsky is played to perfection.