3rd Academy Awards · 1930 · 1929/30 season

All Quiet on the Western Front

1930 · 2h 13m · Drama, War

“They left for war as boys never to return as men.”

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The story

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

What critics & audiences say

Tomatometer98%Fresh#5 of 98 winners

IMDb8.173K votes#25 of 98 winners

Metacritic91/ 100#21 of 93 winners

TMDB7.8/ 10

Famous lines

…And every day a year, and every night a century. And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death.

— Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres)

…It's dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country, it's better not to die at all.

— Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres)

…when you jumped in here, you were my enemy — and I was afraid of you. But you're just a man like me, and I killed you. Forgive me, comrade.

— Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres)

This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.

— Title card

…on the big day, you should take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put them in the center dressed in their underpants and let 'em fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.

— Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim)

Soldier #1: Well, one country offends another.
Tjaden: How could one country offend another? You mean there's a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?

…Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. 'Sweet and fitting it is to die for the Fatherland.'

— Professor Kantorek (Arnold Lucy)

…I'll take the mother's milk out of you, I'll make you hard-boiled. I'll make soldiers out of you, or kill you!

— Himmelstoss (John Wray)

They never taught us anything really useful, like how to light a cigarette in the wind, or make a fire out of wet wood, or bayonet a man in the belly.

— Soldier

Soldier: But it's Behm, my friend.
Katczinsky: It's a corpse, no matter whose it is.

Quotes via Wikiquote

Fun facts

At the film's 1930 Berlin premiere, Nazi brownshirts under Joseph Goebbels disrupted screenings with stink bombs, sneezing powder and white mice. The campaign worked: German authorities banned the film on December 11, 1930.Wikipedia · Controversy and bannings
Comedic actress ZaSu Pitts originally played Paul's mother, but preview audiences laughed when she appeared, so Lewis Milestone re-shot her scenes with Beryl Mercer. Pitts can still be glimpsed for about 30 seconds in the original preview trailer.Wikipedia · Production
Paul's famous death while reaching for a butterfly isn't in the novel. It was shot during editing, when the actors were no longer available, so Lewis Milestone used his own hand in place of Lew Ayres'.Wikipedia · Production
Many German Army veterans living in Los Angeles were recruited as bit players and technical advisers. Around 2,000 extras were used, among them future director Fred Zinnemann.Wikipedia · Production
Variety's rave said the League of Nations could make no better investment than to show the film in every language 'until the word "war" is taken out of the dictionaries.'Wikipedia · Critical response
The film was banned on grounds of 'pacifism' in Victoria, Australia, from 1930 to 1941. It was also banned in Italy and Austria in 1931, with those bans officially lifted only in the 1980s, and in France until 1963.Wikipedia · Controversy and bannings
It was the first film to win the Academy Awards for both Outstanding Production and Best Director, and the first Best Picture winner based on a finished novel.Wikipedia · Introduction
The film was shot with two cameras side by side. One negative was edited as the sound film, and the other became an 'International Sound Version' for non-English-speaking markets.Wikipedia · Production
According to author Mike Mayo, Steven Spielberg credited Lewis Milestone's war-film work as partial inspiration for Saving Private Ryan.Wikipedia · Critical response
Re-releases were heavily cut and given a new score against Lewis Milestone's wishes. Before his death in 1980 he asked Universal to fully restore the film, and in 2006 the Library of Congress completed a 133-minute restoration.Wikipedia · Releases