Edward Berger's German-language Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) is a peculiar corruption of Erich Maria Remarque's celebrated 1927 anti-war novel. Although the changes made to Remarque's expressionistic narrative are intended to enhance the film's drama and make it politically prescient as to later developments in Germany, Berger's additions to the plot dilute the force of the anti-war message and, in fact, raise all sorts of problems not existing in the novel's effective, if simple-minded, depiction of the effects of mechanized war on its young participants. Changes to the structure and emphasis of the original narrative leave the viewer baffled. Everyone in the world has read All Quiet on the Western Front or seen film versions of the novel. Remarque's novel, in fact, defines how most educated people view World War I -- it's the template for how we imagine the conflict. Lewis Milestone's original adaptation, released in 1930 (shot as a silent film with sound effects and dialogue interpolated) is one of the greatest of all movies -- a picture so powerful that it has always been banned in country's preparing for war and attempting to persuade their people that battle is grand and glorious. I have seen the movie a half-dozen times -- I think I watched it for the first time with my father when I was in 8th grade and certain scenes, for instance the amputation of Tjaden's legs with his comrades enviously eyeing the young man's new boots that he will no longer need have stuck with me all my life. The combat scenes in the film are remarkable, representing state-of-the-art silent film-making, at once exciting and horrific and, even, the passages depicting the brutalized young protagonist home on-leave, filmed in static shots with muted, remote dialogue (a result of the primitive "radio" technology used to record sound), have an ominous, primitive pathos; in fact, the raspy sound recording contributes to the effect that Paul Baeumer, the main character, has been traumatized to the point that he can barely hear, let alone speak. A later film version made in 1979, and featuring Ernest Borgnine and Richard Thomas, John-Boy Walton from The Waltons TV show brings the movie up-to-date technically but is wholly superfluous. Berger's 2022 version, made in German for Netflix, scraps many of the novel's signature scenes in order to present a rather vapid political commentary on the last days of the War. But Berger hasn't fully imagined the political milieu and presents it in the most banal and stereotypical manner -- evil generals listen to opera while gorging themselves on elaborately prepared food while the poor infantrymen pointlessly die, victims to the commanders' vanity and hypocritical (as well as futile) hyper-patriotism. Although attractively packaged, the political components of the movie are predictable and moronic. (If you want to see vicious officers engaged in vicious management of ghastly attritional combat, then, watch Stanley Kubrick's brilliant and searing Paths of Glory.) The superfluous negotiation sequences with French and German legations exchanging insults add about forty minutes to the film -- it its about 2 and 1/2 hours long; Milestone's monumental 1930 version, made 12 years after the guns fell silent on the Western front is also long -- it was released at 152 minutes, cut to 143 minutes and, now exists, only as 133 minute version.
I've read Remarque's novel three or four times and understand the problem that the book poses: Im Westen nichts Neues is fundamentally shapeless -- there's no plot and not much real conflict. The novel focuses on the inner experience of infantry facing mechanized combat, the frailty of soldiers in a "storm of steel" as Ernst Juenger phrased it. The book is fundamentally expressionistic -- the characters are types, "everyman" civilians hurled into the barbaric circumstances. There are standard expressionistic tropes involving Nature and the inevitable conflict between sons and fathers. The book even includes dithyrambs to trees and sheltering earth -- there is one notable apostrophe to the soil that occurs when a soldier tries to burrow into the muck to avoid bombardment. Because war is chaos to the infantry soldier, there is no real narrative -- the book simply follows the experiences of one trooper, Paul Baeumer from his enlistment out of Gymnasium (he's an aspiring poet and, even, has written a play that is unfinished in his desk drawer) through the cruel indignities of his basic training and, then, into combat. After surviving several major battles, Paul returns home on furlough, but is severely damaged by his combat experiences and can't meaningfully interact with civilians, most of whom are still gripped by war fever. The experience of leave is so alienating that Paul longs to return to the Front where, at least, things aren't obscured by stifling layers of propaganda and patriotic rhetoric. Paul's mentor at the Front, Katycinski ("Kat") is badly wounded and Paul carries him to a field station where he is told that he has wasted his effort -- the man is dead. On a peculiarly calm and pacific day on the Western Front, a sniper kills Paul -- the dispatch from that sector of the trenches doesn't mention Paul's death and simply reports Im Westen nichts Neues (literally "Nothing new on the Western Front" but brilliantly translated into English as "All quiet on the Western Front"). Remarque wrote the book during the Weimar Republic and the novel is completely apolitical -- at the time, Remarque, a veteran of the Great War, penned the novel, the Nazis weren't in power and, so, the book makes no predictions as to the future other than the assertion that a whole generation of men had been destroyed and were psychologically crippled by the experience. (This was also an oversimplification: Remarque lived until 1970, wrote many novels and screenplays and, by all accounts, led a lively existence: he had celebrated affairs with Hedy Lamar, Dolores del Rio, Marlene Dietrich and, at last, married the actress Paulette Goddard.)
Berger's version is in an unseemly hurry to get to the combat sequences. We see the young men listening to a bombastic speech by a Gymnasium professor and, then, enthusiastically enlisting. There is no context as to their families and the characters aren't established as the film rushes into battle. Basic Training sequences important in the novel and Milestone's version are pruned out of the film. The troops go straight from the streets of their home-town village into bloody and disorienting combat. Paul is punished for not putting on his gas mask quickly enough and his commanding officer says that he'll be dead by dawn. There's a horrifying bombardment and, then, in fact, Paul is shot in the head although his helmet saves his life. A frontal assault follows and Paul is told to "harvest" or gather the dog tags from the dead soldiers strewn around the trenches -- he discovers that several of his schoolmates have died, but this doesn't register since the film hasn't established them as characters. Then, Berger begins to interfere radically with the novel's plot. Fast-forward to November 7, 1918 -- that is, four days before Armistice. (The hero's return to home on furlough is eliminated as are some gruesome hospital scenes). A virtuous German, Matthias Erzberger travels by train into a forest where he meets with French high command (they meet in rail dining cars) to negotiate an armistice. Marshal Foch, the French general, insists on humiliating terms. Foch is portrayed as a vain and pompous villain. A 72 hour deadline is established during which the terms of the settlement offer remain open. (This means that the carnage in the War continues.) Ultimately, the generals and politicians agree to end the bloodbath on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Meanwhile, Paul and Kat are still fending for themselves as infantry soldiers. The film is shot to imply that they are somewhere near the place where the negotiations are taking place on a railroad siding in the woods -- but it isn't clear where they are in proximity to both the Front and the forest. (This is simply inept filmmaking by the director). For the most part, the soldiers seem to be in bucolic rural area. Paul and Kat steal a goose from a farmer. They enjoy a comically long scene at a latrine. Both men seem to be defecating for about 10 minutes as Paul reads a letter from Kat's wife to the older man. There's some more combat, including a battle involving tanks crushing men to pulp and flamethrowers. A friend named Tjaden who wants to be a policeman is mangled in the fighting and he loses both legs. When Tjaden discovers that his legs are missing, he stabs himself to death by ripping open his throat with a fork -- this is a very gory scene. Paul and Kat are horrified. The soldiers know the war is about to end -- they are drinking and celebrating around bonfires in the courtyard of a big chateau. Berger has shown us that Marshal Foch is a bad guy and has insisted upon humiliating terms that we know (with the hindsight of history) will lead to the rise of Hitler and the second World War. But Berger wants to be evenhanded about this and, so, he invents (or highlights) an equally vicious German general who insists upon mounting an attack only 15 minutes before the end of hostilities. Paul is killed in the vicious hand-to-hand fighting. The movie ends with a new recruit gathering dog-tags from dead German soldiers. There are several famous passages in the novel that Berger has to cram into the last four days of the War. In one attack, Paul ends up knifing a French infantryman and is trapped with the mortally wounded soldier in a shell-hole. Paul regrets that he has murdered the Frenchman and is further traumatized when the man dies. (In the novel and earlier films, Paul is stuck in the shell-hole with the dying man overnight -- in Berger's version, he escapes during daylight and walks back through No-Man's-Land during daylight.) Kat's death, occurring during a bombardment (which rips up a cemetery exposing caskets and skeletons), Berger stages as a killing arising from the two friends attempt to steal a duck from a long-suffering farmer located conveniently near the front lines but in a peaceful bucolic valley. Kat is shot by the farmer's little boy, carried to the field hospital by Paul where the older man is pronounced dead.
Just about everything that could go wrong goes wrong at the end of the movie. The final attack mounted against the French trenches seems utterly implausible and it makes no sense that the soldiers would en masse agree to this pointless assault. (Berger shows an officer executing a couple of men to "inspire" the others -- but, of course, the soldiers are all armed and it seems utterly unlikely they would agree to a big suicidal frontal attack with only ten minutes remaining in the War.) The motivation of the general ordering this assault is mysterious -- he seems to be acting as a moustache-twirling villain acts; the wicked general is channeling Erich von Stroheim, but doesn't play the part nearly as effectively as Stroheim. The climactic hand-to-hand combat involving Paul and some Frenchmen is staged like an Indiana Jones fistfight -- it has a lot of Hollywood razzle-dazzle that is out of place in this dour film. Predictably, the French are enjoying some champagne and brandy when they are the victims of the cowardly sneak attack perpetrated by the Germans. The film's ending makes hash of the movie's famous title -- there's a lot to report on the Western Front including the Armistice preceded by a huge battle. The movie fatuously presents Paul's death as tragic and pointless because it occurs about one minute before the Armistice goes into effect. But would his death in 1915 or 1917 have been any less tragic and any more meaningful? The ticking clock aspects of Berger's ending are meretricious and border-line despicable. Remarque's muted ending, after the novel's exuberant Sturm und Drang expressionism, is extremely impressive and moving. The war continues just without Paul. Milestone's film, if anything, improves upon Remarque: we have been shown that Paul collects butterflies -- in the famous final shot, we see his hand groping across the mud toward a butterfly; then, a shot rings out and Paul's hand goes limp.
The 2022 version is pretty uniformly praised by critics. In fact, it's not very good and it's hard to understand why Berger would import the entire negotiation theme into the film, effectively destroying the context for the picture's famous title. The unmotivated and dastardly attack in the movie's last ten minutes is incomprehensible. Germans view everything through the lens of Hitler and, I suppose, Berger's approach to the movie is distorted by that perspective. Hitler and his cronies claimed that the Germans were winning the War when they were "stabbed in the back". Berger seems to want to show that the Germans, in fact, stabbed the French in the back by mounting the final sneak attack. The more you think about this movie and it's weird decision to cram all the famous scenes in the book into a four day period, the worse it seems.
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