S3E4: All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930

Shea Cinema: The Best Picture Project

This is a tough one. We cover Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, released on April 21, 1930. This is an adaptation of the critically acclaimed (and highly controversial) WWI novel. This is our first film that we are intimately familiar with: Sara has seen it dozens of times. That being said, because Sara lost her brother (and, therefore, Dad his son) in the Iraq war, this review will sound a little different. Fair warning: the subject matter and film are very intense, and we do get personal.

Other excellent podcasts that cover All Quiet on the Western Front are History in Film, Best Picture Cast and The Best Pictures Podcast. Check them out, too!

On the lighter side, we do cover five months of history, with several stop-offs with the births of some of our favorite actors.

Books mentioned by Dad:

• The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson
• Cinema: The First Hundred Years by David Shipman
• History Goes to the Movies: A Viewer's Guide to the Best (and Some of the Worst) Historical Films Ever Made by Joseph Roquemore

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Poem Sara reads:
Dulce et Decorum est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.