The new version of a World War I classic raises uncomfortable questions about war movies, and those who make them.
The original Hollywood adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s bestselling 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts neues) hit America’s movie houses in April of 1930. Considering that the first talkie, The Jazz Singer — a semi-talkie, really, in which the sound quality was pretty primitive — had been released only two and a half years earlier, All Quiet, directed by Lewis Milestone from a screenplay by Maxwell Anderson (the distinguished playwright) and George Abbott (later a top Broadway director), was a remarkable achievement: a war epic that’s still not just watchable but downright effective, right up to its heartbreaking final shot — as in both camera shot and gunshot.
Great production values, great everything except somehow it can’t hold a candle to the original.
