Critics always said the advent of the talkies set cinematography and the movies back years, if not decades. The art of the silent film had reached an apex with the utterly dreamlike “Sunrise,” but it would be years before the camera would be liberated again to float and glide in the way it once did.
And yet in 1930, “All Quiet On the Western Front” defines itself as the first great war movie with sound, even setting the stage for modern war movies to come. The director Lewis Milestone came to be known as the American Eisenstein, allowing his fluid camera to dominate over the content in most of his movies later in his career.
But “All Quiet on the Western Front,” his first great talkie and second Academy Award after “Two Arabian Nights” shows the harsh reality of war on screen for the first time. The kinetic intensity of the war scenes combined with the film’s bleak beauty and even surreal chills makes the film a unique installment in the genre worthy of being remembered today. Continue reading “Rapid Response: All Quiet On the Western Front (1930)”