Guest Programmer Night #2

The greatest war movie is an anti-war movie and that‘s how it should be. Like most really good movies, All Quiet on the Western Front is a simple story, simply told. A young soldier gets pumped up about going to war by a speech-making teacher. When he gets there he finds a grim world, far removed from glory or conventional ideas about heroism. What is heroic is surviving, both physically and mentally, minute by minute, day by day. The title is ironic: a bulletin that was issued constantly when no major battles were going on but the lives of the soldiers were hardly “quiet”, as they faced artillery barrages, strafing from the skies and sniper’s bullets. Even in times of relative clam, living in trenches and maintaining dignity and spirits was a constant battle, with the soldier’s only allies being his companions, who, one by one are killed during the course of the war and the story until finally it is the young man’s turn as he reaches for a butterfly, a rare symbol of beauty and hope in his dismal life. Watching this, one thinks not just of war but of life. Nobody gets out alive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbArOFsXs6I

The starkness of early sound films actually helps here. The film is in black and white. There is minimal music. Violins don’t play during the sad parts. The whole thing is stark and real.You feel as if you are in the trenches with them. The violence has a machine-like quality as the machines of war had been created to the point where conventional heroics were no longer possible.

What’s interesting is that protagonist is a German soldier, not an American solder, as in King Vidor’s’ classic The Big Parade (1925). In the post World War I era, there was a strong feeling that the enemy was not a nation or group of people, but war itself and the bad guys were those who urged people to make war while the worse guys were those who profited off of it. There are many films of the era whose sensibilities seem similar to that of the late 60’s, when the Vietnam War was becoming unpopular, and now when the wars in the Middle East have come under scrutiny. That attitude largely remained right up to the eve of World War II, as seen in Idiot’s Delight (1939): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot%27s_Delight_(film)
Both Clark Gable and Burgess Meredith would shortly change their view of war as they both had distinguished war records, winding up as Captains in the Army Air Force.

When the men came back from World War II, the feeling was very different. There was no doubt that the bad guys were the dictators we had brought down. But the challenges upon returning home were the same. Men who had turned themselves into soldiers had to turn themselves back into civilians and pick up the strands of their lives. William Wyler made a great film about this, The Best Years of Their Lives. Fredric March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell play three such men. March was one our great actors on stage and in film for decades. Andrews was becoming a matinee idol, if a rather sardonic one. Russell wasn’t a professional actor at all but a guy who had lost both hands when a defective fuse detonated an explosive he was working with while making a training film. He had to learn to live with hooks he could operate in place of his hands.

Russell has adjusted to his plight and keeps up an optimistic front. But he has to convince his girlfriend and her family that he’s still a human being and a man and worth the emotional investment of having the daughter marry him. Andrews can’t get back his old job unless he’s willing to work under a former underling who stayed behind and would be his boss. He also has to deal with his glamorous but materialistic wife who likes to have the sort of good times he can’t afford. March goes back to work for a bank working for an apparently sympathetic boss, (Perry Mason’s Lieutenant Tragg Ray Collins), who had a “Mr. Potter”, (from It’s a Wonderful Life), inside of him. He doesn’t want to loan the banks precious money to those who don’t have good collateral. March sees a man’s character, as exemplified by his service to his country, as the best collateral the bank could have. Andrews is given the classic line: “Last year it was Kill Japs…Kill Japs…Now it’s Make Money…Make Money”.
U-Tube doesn’t have the whole film but here is the beginning when the three of them meet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL70a1n7lFc&feature=related
March makes his speech about investing in people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igXHsHZhoYU&feature=related
The movie makes a statement against extremism in this scene featuring Ray Teal, later the Sheriff on Bonanza:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbArOFsXs6I
Andrews comes to terms with himself in the finale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU0d3DVcKoY&feature=related




The past is a series of presents. The present is living history we are priviledged to witness