Must-watchWorld War I · Film · 1930
All Quiet on the Western Front
Fired up by their teacher's speeches, Paul Bäumer and his classmates rush to enlist, only to discover in the trenches of the Western Front that nothing they were promised about glory survives the first bombardment.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: Paul's hometown (Remarque's Osnabrück)
Professor Kantorek's patriotic lecture sends the whole class marching to the recruiting office, and a brutal drill sergeant turns them into soldiers.
Stop 2: Western Front in Flanders
Key location
Under endless shelling the recruits learn from the veteran Kat how to survive, and Paul spends a night in a shell hole beside a French soldier he has stabbed.
Stop 3: Home on leave
On leave, Paul finds that no one at home understands the war, and when he tells his old classroom the truth the boys call him a coward.
Stop 4: Back at the front
Paul returns to a company filled with boys even younger than he was, where only a few familiar faces remain.
What really happened
The film adapts Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel, drawn from his own service: born in Osnabrück, he was sent to the Western Front in June 1917, fought in Flanders between Torhout and Houthulst and was wounded by shrapnel on 31 July 1917, the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres.
Neither the book nor the film names its town or its sector, so Paul's war stands for that of the roughly 13 million men Germany mobilised, about two million of whom died. The Nazi regime later banned the novel and burned it in 1933, and Nazi-led riots disrupted the film's Berlin screenings in December 1930.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- All Quiet on the Western Front
- Directed by
- Lewis Milestone
- Countries
- United States
- Languages
- English
- Released
- 1930
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Combat
