For me it's the scene in the pub where Paul and Albert are fantasizing about the girl in the poster. It perfectly encapsulates their frame of mind, and in the context of the film, the pointlessness of war.
Anyone else agree?
But that's only because the automated teller machineyolatrolamaton isn't working.
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Some great scenes without dialogue:
1. The soldiers using shovels to kill rats in their dugout.
2. After the troops pick up a bottle of wine from an enemy trench, they don't bother to uncork it; they just knock the top off and guzzle from the broken bottle.
3. When Paul is on leave, he sees a small boy playing war in the street.
I think the battle scenes were very stirring and well done for the time. Hell, most of today's war movies with tons of CGI soldiers, explosions, and equipment can't even hold a candle to this 80-year-old movie.
The battle scenes really showed a glimpse into just how messy and ill-concieved the trench warfare was in WWI. Makes you wonder how it would have been to be watching in a theater in 1930, before having seen nothing that would even come close to that.
The lice burning contraption scene was funny/telling too... ;)
The scene with the butterfly gets me every time. Also notice that this scene always makes it to the fifty greatest cinematic scenes etc. So we aren't the only ones who appreciate great cinema.
apologies- if my name offends anyone.
Just saw this film again for the first time in many years and found it as powerful as ever, even more so than I remembered. I was always moved by the sequence when Paul returns to his hometown, especially when he goes back to his old classroom. His professor is still urging the boys to earn glory for the Fatherland, and wants Paul to make a speech about his heroic exploits. When he tells them in plain language what war really is, the boys call him a coward and the professor stares at him in surprise.
Also, as someone else mentioned, it's terribly poignant when Paul sees a small boy in a village street, dressed in a military costume and playing war. With hindsight we know more than the filmmakers knew in 1930: that the boy would be just the right age to grow up and fight in WWII.
The lice-burning scene suggests that all wars are messy. Besides the horrors of combat, soldiers in the field have to deal with hunger, thirst, fatigue, dirtiness, and boredom. Even the best movies about war (usually World War II and Vietnam) rarely go into the level of detail that this movie does.
shareI find the scene where his mother says goodbye to him very moving. I also find the last scene where he is trying to catch the butterfuly incredibly touching to the point of tears by the end of it. Overall a wonderful film and I can't believe I put off watching it for so long.
sharethe movie grabbed me from the start just with the marching, and people stealing flowers from that poor woman to throw at the passing soldiers, im not sure what it was really, the sound was so perfect, and it seems to perfectly encapsulate what ive learned people used to view war as being, a fantastic place to send young men to be brave and all that crap, kind of heartbreaking honestly... but after that the movie was moving along at a regular 1930-esque pace ive come to expect.. lots of old-style acting, and directing with goofy reaction shots in closeup and silly obvious dialogue.. and then suddenly that scene with them losing their minds from sitting around listening to bombs going off and developing shell-shock. at first it seemed kind of funny.. but then you realize its not... it was kind of jarring and not what im used to in movies like this.
and then when they finally start fighting in the trenches, and they are forced to retreat... the moment this movie really smacked the crap outta me was when that HUGE line of bombs goes off exploding dirt FAR into the air ahead of the advancing french troops, who then turn and run... holy crap, it was just amazing, even the sound, i had to rewind it 3 times just to get it all in because i couldnt believe something like that was happening in a movie from 1930.
and then when Paul was trapped in the bomb-crater with his victim, i fully empathized with him, i knew exactly how he felt and i balled my eyes out the whole damn time.
all the scenes with his disillusionment with "Reality" and his home, and of course the death of the one person he had left(and that i felt the same way about actually, the one character i felt i relied on to get me through the rest of the movie)... even though i saw it coming 10 miles away, it didnt make it any better.
really.. just... waaaay more than i had ever expected from a brand new sound movie, and that they knew enough to keep it all silent without a score mucking up the emotions, just the sound of bombs going off all the time... fantastic movie.
im so happy i finally took the time to sit down and watch it, ive always been facinated by ww1... this certainly helped flush the whole experience out a bit for me... a lot more than i had expected.
So many scenes to choose from! I really can't make up my my between the crater scene, or the one where Paul & his two friends sneak over the river for a liason with three lovely French girls. We all know about the crater scene, so I'll concentrate on the one with the girls.
The bit that got me was when Paul kissed her hand (especially after seeing the scene in the pub with the poster girl). She looked at him, and we all knew what would follow, eventually. It was just so beautifully filmed - so poignant and touching. The scene in the morning where the camera simply films her bedroom was really touching, I thought, and remarkable, given that this film was made in 1930! If it had been made in the last few years we all know that we would have got a full on sex scene - all sweat & passion, but here, the art of the film-maker was what was on full view instead, and we're much the richer for it.
All in all, 'All Quiet on the Western Front' is one of the greatest films of all time - it certainly is among my personal top 10.
Boo!
I thought the battle scenes were amazing, and very well done by the standards of our era, let alone 1930. I was struck by the utter futility of trench warfare and the attacks "over the top." Just making it to the enemy's trench, with all the bombs and machine-gun attacks, was incredibly difficult, and even if you did, what then? You'd be instantly ganged up on and bludgeoned to death. I cannot imagine how brutal and nerve-wracking it must have been for the foot soldiers making those attacks, over and over. Can you imagine doing that for four years?