Kino Eye: All Quiet on the Western Front
I’ve never been keen on re-makes, so in order to “get my retaliation in first” I’m writing about All Quiet on the Western Front , the 1930 classic Hollywood film directed by Lewis Milestone, not the new German version directed by Edward Berger (which may or may not be good — I haven’t seen it). Along with Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) and others, it remains one of the classic anti-war films. All Quiet… follows the young German recruit Paul Bäumer, who enthusiastically heads off to the war to fight for country and Kaiser, to be confronted by the horrors of trench warfare: the hunger...