As the excess and frivolity of the 1920’s dissolved into the sobering and disturbing reality of the bill that came due in the 1930’s, so too did the Academy award its highest honor to a film that reflected that transition from fun and carefree to coming of age seriousness. The Broadway Melody, so representative of the flappers and high times that those of us who did not live through the 20’s associate it with was the winner as that decade of waste was ushered out. All Quiet on the Western Front, an unapologetic anti-war film, took a far more serious turn, and ushered in a far more serious decade.

Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the film follows a group of German school boys who are convinced by their teacher to join the fight for the Fatherland. Enthusiastic and certain they’ll all be home with medals and glory, they bound off to war unaware of the horrors that await them. Their first night in the trenches introduces them to the bombardment that they’ll face night after night, and one by one they’re killed, wounded or succumb to madness. Lew Ayres played Paul, the young man who is the first to show his weakness, and in turn earns the respect of the grizzled veteran Kat. Paul then becomes the grizzled veteran by the end. The years in the trenches turn him from an idealistic youth to a cynical man who wonders why men of the same generation have to fight each other simply because they hail from different countries and speak different languages. When he’s stuck in a fox hole with the corpse of a French soldier that he had to kill in hand to hand combat, Paul talks to the dead man and promises him that he’ll take care of the his family. He looks at the dead man and he sees, not only himself, but his entire generation.

The war takes such a toll on Paul that he can’t stand home when he’s sent there on leave. His mother dotes on him too much and his father boasts on him too much. He spends time in a tavern with his father and his father’s friends who, ignorant of the hell-like conditions that the men are living and dying through on the front lines, demand that Paul and his comrades continue to push all the way to Paris.  His former teacher presents Paul to the present crop of students that he’s trying to brainwash in the same manner that he brainwashed Paul and his classmates. When Paul relates the true horrors of war to the boys, they turn on him and call him a coward. All this leads Paul to decide that this village isn’t home anymore. His true home is on the front with Kat and his comrades. There’s no gray area on the front. You’re either dead or alive and there’s not pretending either way. Like a man just released from years in prison, Paul has no home on the outside. Like many of his generation, he can’t feel safe or secure anymore. All of the peace is gone from his life. He goes back to the front where he feels he truly belongs.

That is the overarching lesson that makes this film instructive for aspiring screenwriters. We have characters that are put in impossible situations and they have to adapt in order to survive. Paul starts out the film in the Ordinary World of his village, where the war is a strange but fantastic place where young men go to achieve glory. He enters the Special World of the war only to learn that it’s a very different place than what he’d been led to believe. There is no glory in war. There is no heroism. There is only survival. Paul comes out of it as a completely changed person in the end. And yet, there is still an idealistic piece of him yet. Right until the end, there is a piece inside of Paul that still appreciates beauty and softness in the hard and ugly world that surrounds him.  If you’re currently working on a script and struggling with how to get your main character to change and grow throughout, take a look at All Quiet on the Western Front to see how these film makers did it, for they did it in a way that is complete and believable.

Thinking of this in terms of the Hero’s Journey, the Return With the Elixir stage is somewhat muddled. He can’t go home again in the truest sense. Paul’s elixir turns out to be cynicism in a world gone mad.

One thing about the theme of this film. I read the book in high school and I remember the anti-war undertones while I was reading it, as well as having them pointed out to me by my 10th grade English teacher. What we have in the theme is another example of how sound set film making back. Overall, this is a fantastic film that far surpasses The Broadway Melody in terms of film making quality and style. However, screenwriters had yet to master the art of writing good dialogue. There is little to no subtext in any of the dialogue, so much of the film’s  anti-war message is told to us through dialogue that is on the nose and borders on preachy. That probably wouldn’t have been an issue had this film been made three years earlier.

That brings me to one other point that I’d like to make. All Quiet on the Western Front was the third film to win the equivalent to Best Picture and the second to use World War I as its setting. I find that to be interesting in that World War I, at that point in time, was the seminal moment in history for most people. The Great Depression hadn’t quite reached its depth and the United States was still more than a decade away from entering World War II. In fact, at this point in time no one outside of Austria had ever even heard of Adolph Hitler. Wings, the first winner, was also anti-war in its theme, but as a silent film, it’s message was delivered in a more subtle manner. There is a title card near the end after Jack begs David’s parents for forgiveness after accidentally killing him, and David’s mother says simply, it was the war. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the characters spend most of the time lamenting their circumstances, and the audience is shown and told in great detail how devastating The Great War (you can’t call it World War I when there still hasn’t been a World War II) was on this entire generation.

Did the Academy get it right?

I believe they did, although you have to take my opinion with a few grains of salt since I haven’t seen any of the other films that were nominated. The reason I feel that the Academy got it right in this circumstance is because this is more than a very good film. It’s also an important film and a symbolic film. It bridged the gap between frivolity and seriousness. It had a serious message that needed to be heard.

In the end, All Quiet on the Western Front did what all films of this type, and certainly Best Picture winners, should strive to do. It entertained and enlightened.