Jeff's Reviews

Thoughts on every movie I've ever seen.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Directed by Lewis Milestone

Starring Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy

Author

Decent story, but it dragged. Long and boring. Exactly what was he trying to say with this film?

Sound and 24 fps marked a huge step in the advancement of film. Being one of the first sound films, the name of the film is kind of ironic. Parts of the film shot at 16 fps, marking the transition from silent film but kinda cheesy in this film. I didn’t realize the concept of off-screen sound had been developed this early, less than a year after the advent of sound. An awful lot of moving camera shots. A few parts with some pretty cool war footage. It would have really been cool with better sound (bass) and vibrant colors. Nice night-to-day transition in the hospital, copied in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Terminator 2. Time passage was also shown very effectively with subtle changes in uniform costuming.

The version I saw is supposedly missing about 30 minutes of footage.

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