The Movie
Hailed by many as the greatest anti-war movie ever made, 1930's All Quiet on the Western Front was the first Universal Studios film to win the Academy Award for "Outstanding Production" (Best Picture). The timing of this lavish adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's bestselling book did bring some controversy however, telling its story from the losing side of World War I, in the years before Germany would rise again for World War II.
We meet a bunch of volunteers when they are mere schoolboys, buying into their teacher's romantic notions of war and expecting glory and adventure to await them. The rigors of training soon set them straight, but this is nothing compared to what they experience up at the front lines of the war with France.
All Quiet on the Western Front's power lies not in negative exaggerations but in its honest, realistic depiction of war and how it affects those touched by it. Trench warfare in particular is quite ugly, and messy, a deplorable combination of dirt and blood and rats that few could imagine. The images are occasionally quite graphic, no wonder the movie was banned in some countries.
Beyond feelings of loss and fear, we explore our protagonist Paul's (Lew Ayres) guilt as he gets to know the enemy, with a growing inner conflict that makes his return home difficult, even for a few days. And the film's final moments, back in the trenches on the front lines, are among the most stark and disturbing ever caught on film.
The Picture
This is the latest release in Universal's highly touted series of new digital restorations of their prized catalog titles, and the improvements certainly show. The 4:3 black-and-white image is remarkably clean, with plenty of intrinsic grain preserved but not distractingly so. Details are precise in every scene, down to individual raindrops, and we can plainly read a dead soldier's documents (assuming we know French). There is some frame-to-frame inconsistency and flicker, scratches and negative dirt left behind by the cleanup, a bit of edge enhancement, and the skies can be noisy, particularly when full of smoke. But many shots achieve a tricky balance of light and shadow, with deep, inky blacks throughout.
The Sound
Refreshingly, the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 dual-mono presentation is missing the audible strain in dynamic range common to soundtracks of this advanced age. The volume can dip in places, leaving the dialogue in particular hard to hear, but the bass presence is quite effective considering the mono mix and the lack of a dedicated LFE ".1." The track itself is also surprisingly, appropriately busy for an 82-year-old single channel, notably during the prolonged battle scenes when the artillery is in full swing.
The only aspect that troubled me was the almost-omnipresent hiss accompanying the restored video: Didn't Ray Dolby figure out how to fix that?
The Extras
The movie is introduced on-camera by Turner Classic Movies host/film historian Robert Osborne, and adding further perspective is the presence of the rarely-seen Silent Version, supplied by The Library of Congress. It features some music and incidental effects but no dialogue, which has been replaced by cards, created for venues unprepared for talkies. This version predates the restoration and so provides a handy reference for comparison.
Two recent, relevant "100 Years of Universal" featurettes are also included, as they were and will be on other 2012 studio releases: "Restoring the Classics" and "Academy Award Winners." This disc is also BD-Live-enabled, and supports the pocket BLU app for mobile devices with enhanced control and some modest content-to-go.
Disc Two is a DVD of the movie with the two featurettes and the trailer. Also included is a unique a code for a downloadable Digital Copy of All Quiet on the Western Front for iTunes. Both discs arrived packaged inside a lovely digi-book case full of rare photos, artwork and more.
Final Thoughts
A sober and sobering look at man's penchant for war, All Quiet on the Western Front still forces the viewer to think about the truths lying beneath the lofty platitudes and rhetoric. The careful restoration significantly rejuvenates it for modern audiences as well.
Product Details
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