Shockingly brutal and honest anti-war film, especially considering when it was made. It's both funny and moving, and has some very human characters who go through real trials and tribulations. Excellent. Holds up far better than I ever expected.

The anti-war novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque was required reading at school. Despite the fact that I could recall many details, I decided to reread the book and watch the previous adaptations for the first time in preparation for the 2022 film. The 1930 version was released only two years after the book, and even World War I was still relatively recent at the time. The fact that not just some historical material was adapted here but a current event makes the whole thing even more interesting. Due to the year of release, obviously, the later experiences of World War II could not have had any influence on the film. What is noticeable right from the start is that director Lewis Milestone decided to tell the story chronologically. This is one of the few deviations from the novel that I disliked. You follow the protagonist, Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres), and his classmates, who volunteer for the war and go through basic training. All of this is taking a tad too long for my liking. But once we get to the front, everything moves quickly. It also looks spectacular. This is especially true given the year the film was made. There are certainly only a few more than 90-year-old films that are still so easy to watch today. On the western front, Paul and his comrades finally meet other key characters from the novel, including Stanislaus Katczinski (Louis Wolheim), Bäumer's closest friend in the novel and all adaptations. Wolheim's interpretation of the character is perfect. He plays the role almost exactly as I imagined it while reading. The actual staging of trench warfare is appropriately claustrophobic. You get a very good sense of how pointless this war was. It was a dulling experience for the soldiers involved. For them, life was really only about the next meal or the next fight at that point. Again and again, comrades die one after another. With increasing pragmatism, the protagonists accept their fate. The longer the war lasted, the clearer it became that a "lost generation" was fighting there, with no idea why. But they were well aware that the "enemy" in the opposing trenches was no different. The tone of the book is perfectly captured. The film also still works with a modern eye—it's one of the most important movies of all time.

**A challenge to watch the most popular film on letterboxd from each year, starting from 1930** 🎞 1930 - _All Quiet On The Western Front_ was an amazing surprise. I didn’t expect a film from 1930 to feel this poignant, self-aware and bold. The issues raised in this film about the pointlessness of war make for some of my favourite dialogues in any war movie I’ve watched. The depiction of the life of a soldier in its different stages offered some much refreshing realism in an era (the one we’re currently in) where war epics have become increasingly glamourised and romanticised. The humour throughout was so sweet and made the tragedy even more heartbreaking in comparison. A fantastic movie!

All Quiet on the Western Front is undeniably important, but it isn’t a consistently engaging experience. The battlefield sequences carry a rawness that still lands, and its message has power. It presents war as chaotic and dehumanizing, which gives the film weight. Where it stalls is in the pacing. By today’s standards, the story doesn’t always hold attention, but it’s still a film that earns respect.

Honestly I might as well prefer this over the Netflix adaptation of it even though both are amazingly well made films. For a film that been out nearly hundred years ago l, yet the horrors of it still holds up well. You don’t see much films that portrays the opposing side that being the Central Powers and the 1930 All Quiet on The Western Front happens to be it. The casting plus Lew Aryes did a fantastic job on their acting. This also may as well be one of the greatest war films ever made especially on the Anti-War genre that depicts the experience of soldiers fighting in the trenches in the Great War.