Best Pictures #92: 2022 (95th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

by A.J. 

Best Pictures #92: 2022 (95th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

“You are fortunate to be living in great times.”

The 2022 version of All Quiet on the Western Front is good enough to stand alongside the best anti-war films, but it will stand out because it is one of the still small number of movies about the First World War, and, most notably, it is German made. Published in 1929, Erich Maria Remarque’s now classic novel about an eager, patriotic German teenager experiencing the true horrors of war on the Western Front in Northern France, was first adapted by Universal Pictures the following year. That film, directed by Lewis Milestone, won Best Picture at the 3rd Academy Awards and remains one of the great anti-war films, with sights that still shock and scenes loaded with undated pathos. The novel and film ran afoul of the emerging Nazi party, who sabotaged screenings before both the novel and film were banned after they took power. Another version of All Quiet on the Western Front (there is also a surprisingly memorable made-for-TV version from 1979), seems unnecessary, but director Edward Berger uses modern cinematic styles and techniques, in addition to modern technology and visual effects, to create a harrowing and effective anti-war film.

Modernizations aside, the biggest difference between this version and the classic film and novel is the addition of scenes of the German High Command negotiating the armistice. Daniel Brühl plays real life German official Matthias Erzberger, who works to negotiate a quick armistice. He is not presented as heroic, but he is frustrated by the stubbornness of the German generals and the arrogance of the French generals, who understand that they are winning. While the politicians and generals quibble over words and protocol, teenage Paul, who joined the German army in spring of 1917 full of patriotic idealism, and his fellow soldiers are suffering and fighting and dying in mud and squalor, in conditions that before 1914 were unimaginable. The sharp and jarring juxtaposition of these scenes is intentional and highly effective. The First World War was called The Great War and The War To End All Wars because the methods of the war and conditions it created were so awful that, surely, there would be nothing after.

Berger’s film excels at something terrible, successfully conveying the horrors of modern industrial war: the grueling and terrible conditions of trench warfare; stabbing a man multiple times only to be trapped in a bomb crater with him as he dies slow enough to make you realize his humanity; the absurd and terrifying sights of soldiers in gas masks; a friend exploding into a spray of blood; WWI era tanks, lumbering steel rhombuses slouching forward and spitting explosions; soldiers with guns that throw fire instead of bullets.   

As Paul, Felix Kammerer is good at being simultaneously a generic stand-in for any young person caught up in their country’s war and a distinct person, easy to distinguish and follow. Albrecht Schuch is memorable as “Kat,” a veteran of the trenches. Paul and Kat have quiet moments together, cherished for their calmness and connection. Paul has an arc, though it is uncomplicated (patriotic idealism into jaded realism), and the rare moments of calmness do not build character so much as they maintain humanity. The amazing and moving speech Paul gives to a group of high school students at the behest of his former teacher (whose words inspired him to enlist), where he tells them that it is awful to die for your country, as well as the final image of the 1930 version, one of the most famous and poignant in film history, are replaced with a new gut wrenching ending.

I read one critic describe Sam Mendes’s WWI film 1917, a Best Picture nominee of 2019, as a movie not about the horrors of war, but a horror movie about war. I am not sure I agree with regards to that movie (I found it extremely tense and affecting, but a bit too thrilling to convey horror), but I believe this sentiment is true of Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, and, now, perhaps, Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front; time will tell. This is a rough movie to watch, and I probably would not have seen it if it had not been nominated for Best Picture by the Academy Awards. I was much more willing to watch the 20-minute vomiting and diarrhea scene from Triangle of Sadness than to watch this movie. However, this is one remake I will never begrudge because its effect and the effect of the 1930 version and the novel remain the same: war is cruel and disgusting and the ones who fight and suffer and die have no say in how it is fought or when it ends. 

Nominees: Malte Grunert, producer

Director: Edward Berger

Screenplay: Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell; based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque

Cast: Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl

Production Companies: Amusement Park

Distributor: Netflix

Release Date: October 28th, 2022

Total Nominations: 9, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: International Feature Film-Germany; Adapted Screenplay-Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell; Cinematography-James Friend; Production Design-Christian M. Goldbeck, Ernestine Hipper; Makeup and Hairstyling-Heike Merker, Linda Eisenhamerova; Original Score-Volker Bertelmann; Sound- Viktor Prasil, Frank Kruse, Markus Stemler, Lars Ginzel, Stefan Korte; Visual Effects-Frank Petzold, Viktor Muller, Markus Frank, Kamil Jaffar

Best Pictures #58: 2019 (92nd) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: 1917

by A.J.

Best Pictures #58
 2019 (92^nd) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

1917

“Come back to us.”

There are not many films about World War I. The most well-known ones are anti-war dramas: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Grand Illusion (1938), Paths of Glory (1957), Gallipoli (1981). On the surface 1917 is a well-done, thrilling action-war movie. It is also such an immersive and intense experience that without making any overt political statement it is firmly an antiwar film. It may be a good, thrilling movie but it is never exciting in the way an adventure movie is exciting. Even in the quiet moments 1917 makes you want to be as far away from this war as possible and hope another one like it never happens.

The plot is simple and very straightforward. Two young British soldiers are selected to deliver a message to a distant regiment calling off an attack the next morning. If the attack goes forward 1,600 soldiers, including the brother of one of the messengers, will charge into a trap. The encounters Corporals Blake and Schofield (Dean-Charles Chapman and Georgy MacKay) have as they make their journey across enemy territory are what you might expect from a story about soldiers on a mission: attacks from the enemy, crossing paths with another group of soldiers, finding shelter that is actually dangerous, even stumbling across a villager trying to care for a child. 1917 isn’t a total onslaught to the senses for two hours though. There are respites here and there that allow us to get to know Blake and Schofield. There are some surprising cameos by well-known British actors along the way too (or unsurprising if you’ve seen the trailer or the cast list on IMDb). Fortunately, none of these cameos take you out of the movie (Andrew Scott and Mark Strong could slip comfortably into just about any movie).

Director Sam Mendes employs long takes and expert, precise cinematography by Roger Deakins and stealthy editing by Lee Smith to make the film look and feel as though it exists in one long unbroken shot. This gimmick works well for the movie when it is not distracting. In its successful moments the one-shot effect is largely responsible for the film’s frantic, immersive effect. The climatic sequence of Schofield running like mad across the top of a trench as a battle begins to find the colonel to call off the attack makes excellent use of the one shot effect; it had me gripping the armrests of my seat. Also, the nighttime sequence in a bombed-out village where flairs illuminate the night with a bright, eerie white light and a fire rages in the distance is surreal and terrifying. Other scenes, however, like when a group of soldiers (and the camera) climb into the back of a truck, then get out to push the truck, then climb back in again feel like they are straining to keep the shot unbroken. Though I think there’s nothing in 1917 that couldn’t have been achieved with conventional editing, I understand why Mendes chose to present his film as a single unbroken shot. It puts us right there with the two soldiers and we are as unsure as they are of what will happen next.      

There are two consequences of using the one-shot/single-take gimmick in a war film. 1) Whether intentional or not, the one-shot effect, which keeps the camera right behind, or in front of, or over the shoulder of the characters, along with the nature of the story makes the film feel like a video game at certain times. This is not really a fault against the film. It is more likely due to video games being influenced by movies and then filtering back into the culture, but the comparison comes to mind nonetheless. 2) I think all of the focus and talk surrounding the one-shot effect actually diverts attention away from the harrowing experience of the characters in the film. 1917 has already won several awards and praise as a technical achievement (which it certainly is). I just hope people can get past the film’s style to fully appreciate and experience the events on screen.

1917 only tangentially touches on the larger scale of the war. One character makes a background comment on the unimpressive patch of land they’ve been fighting the Germans over for years. Mendes chose not to focus on the politics of the war but instead tell the story of the enlisted men that fought in the trenches and in open fields. This movie is based in part on the experiences of Lance Corporal Alfred Mendes, Sam Mendes’s grandfather, to whom the film is dedicated. Mends co-wrote the screenplay, his only writing credit. For all the unrelenting action in 1917, the final shot makes this an emotional and affecting movie.

Nominees: Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, Jayne-Ann Tenggren, Callum McDougall

Director: Sam Mendes

Screenplay: Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Cast: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman

Production Companies: DreamWorks Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, New Republic Pictures, Mogambo, Neal Street Productions, Amblin Partners

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release Date: December 25^th, 2019

Total Nominations: 10, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Director-Sam Mendes; Original Screenplay- Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns; Cinematography-Roger Deakins; Makeup and Hairstyling-Naomi Donne, Tristan Versluis, Rebecca Cole; Production Design-Dennis Gassner, Lee Sandales; Original Score-Thomas Newman; Visual Effects-Guillaume Rocheron, Greg Butler, Dominic Tuohy; Sound Mixing-Mark Taylor, Stuart Wilson; Sound Editing-Oliver Tarney, Rachael Tate

Best Pictures #28: 1929-30 (3rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Winner, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #28: 1929-30 (3^rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Winner

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front was not the first big budget war film to be nominated for or win Best Picture—that would be Wings (1927)—but it is the first antiwar film to be recognized by the Academy. This film opens with a title card explaining that it is “neither an accusation or a confession… least of all an adventure… It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war…” Wings was an adventure film about young men that dreamed of flying airplanes. In 7^th Heaven (1927) war was a fact of life that interrupts a couple’s romance. All Quiet on the Western Front has its main character telling a classroom full of boys eager to enlist in the army and go the frontlines, “It’s dirty and painful to die for your country.” The boys and their teacher call him a coward.

At the beginning of the film The Great War has just broken out and young Paul (Lew Ayers) jumps up from his desk at school to declare that he is enlisting in the army after his teacher gives an ultra-patriotic speech about the glory of war. The other young men in class follow suit and jump up and declare they will go off to war too. They all hope to go to the front and they all expect to come home in one piece. Their first experience as soldiers is the petty tyranny of the local postman turned drill sergeant. He makes sure the boys get plenty muddy and miss their leave, but that is just another school experience that in no way prepares them for real combat. The harsh realities of modern warfare overwhelm Paul and the rest of the new recruits almost immediately and their experiences only get worse and worse as the war goes on and on.

All Quiet on the Western Front had the large budget of $1.4 million (the equivalent of nearly $21 million in 2016 dollars). With the then recent stock market crash and ensuing depression less a year before, it was quite a risk for Universal and its studio head, Carl Laemlle, Jr. The risk turned out to be worthwhile. All Quiet on the Western Front was a hit at the box office and won Universal its first Best Picture Oscar. The film was less well received abroad however, most notably in Germany. Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, inspired by his own experiences at the front, this is one of the few films about World War I to portray Germans as the main characters. Laemmle himself was a German immigrant and he and director Lewis Milestone felt they made a film that was antiwar, not anti-German. The film caused riots in Germany, most notably Berlin, where the disruptions of screenings—mice were released into theaters showing the film—and subsequent riots—the beating of projectionists and anyone that looked Jewish—were led by Joseph Goebbels and Nazi thugs. The film was ultimately banned by the German government, though the Nazi party had yet to take power. Laemmle agreed to make cuts to the film and even took out an ad in a Berlin newspaper explaining that the film was not anti-German, it just objectively showed the experience of war. The film was rereleased but memories of the Nazi riots kept audiences away. It would be banned again by the Nazi government a few years later. Interestingly, it was banned in Poland for being pro-German.

There are several shots and sequences that keep All Quiet on the Western Front visually interesting; a stark contrast to the visually dull The Racket (1928), also directed by Milestone. Milestone won Best Director, his second Oscar, making him the first person to win more than one Oscar and All Quiet on the Western Front the first film to win awards for Best Picture and Best Director. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is an extended tracking shot that shows enemy soldiers running toward machinegun fire and being mowed down and tumbling into barbed wire. A bomb goes off in front of one enemy soldier and when the smoke clears we see a brief shot of his severed hands clutching the barbed wire. The rest of him is nowhere to be found.

I think this would have been a violent film for its time. Though there is very little blood, there are many, many dead bodies. There are explosions galore, bursting bombs, and hand to hand combat, but none of it is exciting in an adventurous way. One of the early battle scenes has the soldiers hunkered down under a prolonged bombardment. The shelling goes on and on and the roof of their bunker cracks dumping dirt on them. It is not the glorious adventure they imagined as schoolboys.

Perhaps because the characters, even the main characters, are all basic, thin archetypes, I was never fully engaged with this movie. They serve the plot just fine, but All Quiet on the Western Front feels like it is lacking full-fledged characters. The performances of Louis Wolheim and Lew Ayers may have been fine for the time that this film was released, but they do not hold up as well as the technical aspects. The heightened, exaggerated acting style of time feels at odds with the gritty realism All Quiet on the Western Front was aiming to achieve. 

All Quiet on the Western Front is impressive technically for its battle scenes and sound quality. Even more impressive is the fact that it was a big Hollywood movie that dared to acknowledge the many horrors of war at a time when sentimentality and happy endings were the order of the day. It is hard not to hold all of the antiwar film beats and clichés against All Quiet on the Western Front, however, as with its fellow Outstanding Production nominee, The Big House and its genre clichés, it must be kept in mind that this film is the source of those familiar beats and plot points. All Quiet on the Western Front is notable for being the first Best Picture winner that was more than pure escapist entertainment. Unfortunately it has not aged well.

Nominee: Universal

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Director: Lewis Milestone

Screenplay: George Abbott, adaptation & dialogue by Maxwell Anderson, adaptation by Del Andrews, based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque

Cast: Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayers, John Wray

Release Date: August 24^th, 1930

Total Nominations: 4, including Outstanding Production

Win(s): Outstanding Production, Director-Lewis Milestone

Other Nominations: Writing-George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews, Cinematography-Arthur Edeson

Best Pictures #7: 1927-28 (1st) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Winner, Wings

by A.J.

1927-28 (1^st) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Winner

Wings

Wings, a romance and adventure epic set among WWI pilots, is the pinnacle of silent era spectacle and storytelling. Paramount executives were skeptical about hiring William Wellman to direct what would be the studio’s big road show picture for 1927. Wellman had been a flier during World War I and had seen combat, but he was younger and less experienced than the other directors in Paramount’s stable. In the end, he was able to convince Paramount producer and executive, Jesse Lasky, that he was the right man for the job. According to Welllman’s son, his father said to Lasky, “I’ll make this the best goddamn picture this studio’s ever had.” “Wild Bill” Wellman did just that and made one of the last great films of the silent era.

What sets Wings apart from any other war film, then or now, is its astonishing aerial sequences. For the close ups in the cockpits, actors Charles “Buddy” Rodgers and Richard Arlen actually flew their own airplanes. Arlen had flying experience from WWI, but Buddy Rodgers had to learn how to fly. A number of adventurous stunt pilots flew planes for the dogfight scenes. The planes fly very close to each other and dive straight towards each other and towards the ground. The fire from plane explosions and machine gun barrels are in color, which was painted in later. The shots of planes crashing to the ground are as real as they can be. In one shot, a stunt pilot broke his neck when the plane did not hit the ground in the way intended. The pilot survived and returned to the shoot six weeks later. The U.S. Army cooperated in the production by supplying hundreds of planes, tanks, pilots, and soldiers to be extras. A field was bombarded with real artillery to give it the right look of a battlefield. Perhaps most important of all, Wellman knew that the planes would only appear to whiz and zip through the air at incredible speeds if the sky was filled with big puffy white clouds to provide perspective for the audience. He halted production for 33 days waiting for clouds to appear over Kelly Field outside of San Antonio, TX to shoot the aerial combat scenes, much to the chagrin of Paramount executives. The wait proved to be a wise decision. The scenes in the air are thrilling and beautiful and you feel that the sky is full of peril. The final air battle sequence is incredibly elaborate; everything on screen looks hectic and dangerous.

The plot of the movie is about the friendship of Jack (Rodgers) and David (Arlen), two young men from the same town that dream of flying. Unbeknownst to each other, they are in love with the same girl from back home, Sylvia. Clara Bow plays Mary, Jack’s neighbor who harbors an unrequited affection for him. She enlists as an ambulance driver and crosses paths with Jack again in Europe. The romance in Wings is its weakest element, probably because it was added into the script last, to give Paramount’s biggest star, Clara Bow, a role in their big-budget roadshow production. Bow receives top billing and is appealing as the sweet girl-next-door Mary, but she did not like her role. She thought her character was merely a decoration and said Wings was “a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie." She still gave a good performance along with the rest of the cast, both major and minor players. One notable standout is Gary Cooper, as Cadet White. He only has one scene early in the movie, but it demonstrated his considerable screen presence and launched his career.

Wings has a few cinematic “firsts” aside from its Outstanding Picture/Best Picture win. Wings was the first widely released film to feature, albeit very briefly, nudity—nude men are briefly seen from behind in a medical exam room at the recruitment office. Later in the film, a pair of military policemen walk in on Clara Bow changing and she is topless for a second. Wings is also the first of only four films to win Best Picture without also having its director nominated (the other films are: Grand Hotel, Driving Miss Daisy, and Argo).

For years Wings was thought to be a lost film until a print was found in the archives of the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris. It was selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1997. In 2012, it was restored by Paramount Pictures. I am so glad that Wings was not lost and is readily available to watch on DVD because this is a film that everyone should see not only because of its place in film history, but also because it is an exciting and thrilling movie. It showed audiences something they had never seen before and presents flying as a dazzling adventure and also a seriously dangerous adventure. Wings leans heavily on spectacle and melodrama, but it is not an outdated antique. The story is simple, but when combined with technical mastery Wings becomes a film that would influence numerous great war films yet to come.

Nominee: Paramount Famous-Lasky

Producer: Lucien Hubbard
Director: William Wellman

Screenplay: Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton, story by John Monk Saunders

Cast: Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Richard Arliss

Release Date: August 12^th, 1927

Total Nominations: 2, including Outstanding Picture

Wins: Outstanding Picture, Engineering Effects-Roy Pomeroy