Review: All Quiet on the Western Front

Young Richard Thomas is one of several German classmates encouraged by propagandist teacher Donald Pleasence to enlist and fight for the Fatherland in WWI. Whilst Thomas sees and experiences death and danger all around him guys like Pleasence (who calls Thomas a ‘dreamer’) stay at home, strategise and pontificate, as the youth are the ones doing the killing and dying. Thomas finds himself under the incompetent and blustery tutelage of megalomaniacal Drill Sergeant Ian Holm, a petty and cruel man who has no actual front line experience (and is also a complete coward). Thankfully Ernest Borgnine’s on hand as the practical, veteran soldier who is able to help guys like Thomas learn to stay alive, and cope with life on the front line.

 

I haven’t seen the much lauded 1930 version, nor have I read the Erich Maria Remarque novel, but I found this 1979 Delbert Mann (he directed Ernest Borgnine to an Oscar in “Marty”) TV movie version to be fascinating and really quite powerful at times. It is a sometimes shattering account of what the war was like for these young men on the front line (you can almost smell the dirt of the trenches), and how they were brainwashed by their often gutless superiors into thinking they were doing something noble. One also has to remember, it’s told from the German POV, not terribly common for an American production of the time. Furthermore, this is essentially an anti-war film, and it’s a rarity to find a film about either of the World Wars which takes an anti-war POV.  

 

Thomas has never been better, especially notable in a scene where he kills one of the ‘enemy’, and must live with the consequences. It’s something he was not taught in class back home. Borgnine (perfectly cast), Pleasence, and Holm steal their every scene, though the talented Patricia Neal isn’t in the film much, and as Thomas’s mother, she merely acts sick (Yet she, and a deserving Borgnine earned Emmy nominations).

 

Astonishingly well-made for a TV movie, it could very easily pass for a theatrical film. Indeed it was shown theatrically outside of the US. The screenplay is by Paul Monash (“The Friends of Eddie Coyle”), from the Remarque novel. Definitely worth tracking down.

 

Rating: B