As this is a Film Study, this section will be brief, but it shows where the film came from.
The film 'All Quiet On The Western Front' can have it's origins traced back to a 1929 novel of the same name that was written by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel quickly became
known as a brilliant anti-war novel, with the first film adaption arriving one year later in 1930. The novel also bought a bit of controversy about it, with the Remarque soon being exiled from Nazi Germany. It seems Hitler feared the thought of an anti-war novel roaming the streets of Germany and as a result the books were banned by the Nazis and then burnt.
Remarque wrote the book based on his own experiences of being a German Trench Soldier in WW1 and as a result, the novel carries many of the emotions and feelings that the soldiers who were there would have felt. When reading the book, it is easy to visualise what the story is showing, with "Only the mist is chilly, that ghastly mist that creeps across the dead men in front of us and sucks out their last concealed scraps of life (page 88-89)" and "The scrap of churned-up earth where we are has been held against superior forces, and we have only had to give up a few hundred yards. But for every one of those yards there is a dead man." being examples of such writing. There is much banter between the characters, which adds to the effect the novel has on the reader. I must admit that the first time I read the novel, I thought that it was a true story- it was only until I got two thirds of the way that I realised that it was a fictional novel, based on truth.
There are a couple of key differences between the novel and the film, the main one is that while Paul Baumer narrates the novel, he does not do so in the film. The other is that the film let out some little sections from the novel, which makes it hard if you are following by reading the novel. These differences do not add or take much, but they are noticeable.
The film 'All Quiet On The Western Front' can have it's origins traced back to a 1929 novel of the same name that was written by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel quickly became
known as a brilliant anti-war novel, with the first film adaption arriving one year later in 1930. The novel also bought a bit of controversy about it, with the Remarque soon being exiled from Nazi Germany. It seems Hitler feared the thought of an anti-war novel roaming the streets of Germany and as a result the books were banned by the Nazis and then burnt.
Remarque wrote the book based on his own experiences of being a German Trench Soldier in WW1 and as a result, the novel carries many of the emotions and feelings that the soldiers who were there would have felt. When reading the book, it is easy to visualise what the story is showing, with "Only the mist is chilly, that ghastly mist that creeps across the dead men in front of us and sucks out their last concealed scraps of life (page 88-89)" and "The scrap of churned-up earth where we are has been held against superior forces, and we have only had to give up a few hundred yards. But for every one of those yards there is a dead man." being examples of such writing. There is much banter between the characters, which adds to the effect the novel has on the reader. I must admit that the first time I read the novel, I thought that it was a true story- it was only until I got two thirds of the way that I realised that it was a fictional novel, based on truth.
There are a couple of key differences between the novel and the film, the main one is that while Paul Baumer narrates the novel, he does not do so in the film. The other is that the film let out some little sections from the novel, which makes it hard if you are following by reading the novel. These differences do not add or take much, but they are noticeable.