 And we're back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel and we're at Goodman's Garage. And we're talking about a movie that is really a classic, all quiet on the Western front. This is really interesting with Steve Goodman. We'll be right back. Steve, Steve Goodman, thank you for joining us. This is a very important movie. You've done a lot of examination of this movie and the two predecessors of this movie and the book, right? Wow, this is like a college course, at least three points, maybe six. So did you dive into it the way I think you did? Well, as to the book, that was a long time ago that I read it and I'll admit that if we had to do a review on as to the book only, this might be a much shorter discussion, but the movie is really, I mean, it's fascinating the differences in the movies. They're basically telling the same story and it's an anti-war story, but one is much more clearer about that fact than the other two. And that's really the original film. It was kind of fascinating to see how they differ. Well, I was fascinated with the write-up in the Smithsonian. So this film played, the book came out by Eric Maria Remarque, who Remarque, 1929, and it was an instant bestseller. And it's still a good book. People have the nicest things to say about it. It was a classic. Now he wrote two sequels, by the way, to that book and made two movies, but they're not as famous as All Quiet on the Western Front, which was the name of the movie. And just to clarify, the Western Front is the German Western Front. They were pushing West. So this is from the geographical vantage point of the German army in World War I in 1917, et cetera. So what I found interesting in the Smithsonian write-up and in other write-ups, too, is this movie has itself, it has historical context. Because after it came out, it was played in Germany. I guess that was in December of 1930. And Hitler and Goebbels didn't like the movie because it was an American movie and it was made from the American point of view, not the German point of view. It was, as you say, it was an anti-war movie and Hitler didn't want to have an anti-war movie. He wanted to have a little war. Obviously, that came to pass a few years later. And Goebbels was his propaganda guy. So when it played in early December in Germany, they sabotaged it. They used a sneezing powder, Goebbels did. To make people in the audience sneeze. They had shills there calling out anti-semitic remarks about the movie, saying it was a Jewish movie. And the audience responded and cat called the same anti-semitic remarks. They put white mice on the floor of the movie theater and people were horrified with the white mice running around. And they did all kinds of things to scuttle the movie. And they effectively used it as Nazi propaganda. And it's quite something when you read the story of how this debuted in Germany. It's dead that Hitler used it. And what's interesting, by the way, is that the book was very popular in Germany. It was the movie that Hitler attacked and that Goebbels attacked. And it was outlawed. In fact, how about this one Steve? Later on, it was a crime to possess the book. You were required to turn your copy of all, all quiet on the Western front into the Gestapo. Later in the- I hadn't heard that. And if you didn't do that, they would come and arrest you. This is part of that same mentality where they were burning, Goebbels was burning books in the city square and so forth. So it was a crime, a serious crime to even possess this book later on. So it took on a historical meaning for sure. Meanwhile, the critics who reviewed this movie, the 1930 version of the movie, even today feel that it was the best of the three movies that were made about this book. Certainly, if you're from the political standpoint of the underlying theory of war as feudal and doing war is not a productive use of humankind. The 1930 version is by far in the way getting that message across. The war scenes in the current version are really up to Sergeant Ryan's standard. I mean, the battle scenes and so forth are the cinematography is of extremely high quality. I don't think they had the camera equipment to do what the current version did back in 1930. So you get some of the traffic back and forth and the fact that people basically for the length of the World War II, in most cases, the troops really were in the same position at the end of the war then where they were right at the beginning of the war. You don't have any really advancement but you have this massive amount of killing that went on. That trench warfare and running from one trench to another is just suicide missions. And that comes across in the current version but the 1930 version really has a storyline more in terms of the back of the war, in terms of what was happening back in the German community itself where they could thought right to the very end that it was a winnable war and they were gonna march on Paris. And I mean, that never was to be and it never was. It's just an incredible difference in the whole attitude that's being shown. Yeah, one element was the propaganda around the movie. Even while World War I was happening, the Germans in Germany believed they would win. Absolutely. Just as you say, they would march on Paris but in fact that was not so easy because French warfare was really a man killer. So many people died. I think the number of people who died in World War I in only three years was something along the lines of 27, make that 37 million people. That was a substantial percentage of the whole population of Europe. Yes it was. We don't know because the history of war is told through the survivors. Those who died are not in a position to tell us. But one interesting thing about the 1930 movie is that a lot of the people in the movie were in fact, World War I veterans and they were wearing army surplus outfits. They were using army surplus equipment in the movie. So it was very authentic and they understood what it meant to be involved in French warfare. The movie has been complimented for the emotional accuracy largely because the people in the movie were the people in the trenches, the same people. Yeah, and it really focused on four individuals, all of which died during the course of the movie. And that's what the book did too. I mean, that there really is nobody that really survives who you get to know in the movie. What's interesting, the last one, Paul dies a little bit differently in all three versions of the movie. It's all in the last day at the last hour. But they did not do it exactly in the same way. And I quite frankly don't remember what the book did in terms of which version was, if any of them directly followed from the book. Well, I'll tell you what was there originally. Paul Bauer was his last name, German name. He was the most prominent character in the movie and the book. He's alone, all his friends have been killed and this course really bothers him. And she's a butterfly. A butterfly on a battlefield So the 1930 version was the book version. Yes. It was a little bit different in the current version and that there's no butterfly scene in the current version. Right, right. And there's a little bit different in the 70s version. I think it's a little bit closer to the current version. So tell the people what the butterfly ending was. Well, he's sitting there, he's looking out and suddenly there's an actual plant and the butterfly's on the plant and he's reaching out to the butterfly and then there's a sharpshooter from the Western forces and they actually, he gets killed by the sharpshooter and at that point, the armistice had already been signed but it was delayed in terms of the start and that's one of the more interesting things about the current version in terms of the fact that it emphasized the fact that even though the armistice had been signed they right to the very end, the fertility of the killing just kept going on and on and on. Well, then I saw the 2022 version which is really interesting because there were parts of it at the end which were not in the earlier, when in the book or the earlier version and two of them I would mention to you. One is the negotiations for the armistice. We all knew that was conducted in a railway car. Right. And later on Hitler criticized those discussions and of course the people in Germany knew about how these discussions went and that was so aggravating to them. So they made, they were very angry about what happened in the railway car and you see the railway car in the most recent version, the 2022. You have, I think it was Marshal Foch was it on the French side? He had a kind of, I guess he was a public official of some kind of a politician on the German side and the German guy is at the moral high ground. He is saying, look, we have to stop killing here. Let's do an armistice right now. And Foch says, no, I have my conditions. You can't just, after this war and all these people died, you can't just come here and tell me that you wanna surrender. You have to accept my conditions. And I don't remember what the conditions were or even if they discussed them in the movie, but- They didn't discuss it in the movie. Yeah, so what happens is- That would be a different movie really. It would be. Yeah, but what happens is the conditions were impossible for the German guy. He didn't, I guess he didn't have authority to agree to those conditions. And so it held up the armistice and the French were being completely unreasonable. And now, of course, we have to take this into account. The first movie was made in the US, 1930. The second movie was made in the US, 1979, which wasn't as good as either of the other two in my opinion. Well, that's clearly the, yeah, it's not a, you could skip that movie. Yeah, you could. But the one that was made last year, now that was made in Germany by, from the German point of view, that doesn't mean it's less powerful in many ways, it's more powerful. And you have to look through the lens of the German soldier. And so in this railway car, it seems to me that they portray, the French has really been unreasonable. I mean, here we have the possibility of closing down this killing machine and people dying on both sides. And the French guy doesn't wanna do that. But the other incident, which has to be discussed here, is the German general. Yes. Who doesn't, who believes that Germany has not, not realized the glory. And he hears about the armistice, which is not effective immediately. It's a couple of hours away. And then he calls all his troops, thousands of them into a square on the German side of the line, the lines. And he tells them that Germany has to realize it's honor. It has to go out and kill some more French troops. And he wants them all to go out there. But he tells them that the armistice will be effective at whatever, 12 noon, they have to go out right now at 11 o'clock and they have to kill the French right now. And there are some people in the German army who say, are you kidding me? You want us to go to war when you know that at 12 noon, there is no war? We settled this, we have an armistice. You want us to go and fight and kill some more people? And he says, look, you'll either go or I'll shoot you. And there are some of these German groups who don't wanna go. And so this general, boy, this is really bad. He calls some of his special troops and they shoot the German troops who don't wanna go out and continue the war. That is a remarkable scene, remarkable. Yeah, and you have a similar thing going on right now in Ukraine. I don't know if you saw the news clip, but in terms of some of the Russian soldiers who are being forced to go in and those that are not really willing are actually being shot in front of the new troops to make sure that they actually go fight. So a lot has happened, but a lot has not been learned despite the obvious message that is being conveyed in terms of war, just as I said, being feudal. Yeah, this thing about Insta-Board Nation also appeared in a movie called The Combatant, which is the French women in the war. And it was about the battleground at the Vosges Mountains, which are in the southeast of France on the German border there. And the same thing was happening. If you were resisted, if you demonstrated a lack of willingness to listen to your senior officer, they would shoot you dead right there. And this of course motivated all the troops. And we forget this. I mean, our view, the American view, maybe the view in the world today is that, no, no, this never happened. It did happen. And in World War I, and you were in some way, if you failed to follow orders and subordinate in any way, they shoot you right there, kill you right there. And so the rest of the troops would stand around and say, gee, I think we got to listen to them because if we don't listen to them, everybody, you know, we'll all get shot. That's what happened with the general in the square in the movie. Yeah, yeah. And then the movie goes on to see them do one more run from the trench out in the open field. And that was just, it was a suicide. It's, but that's why I kind of prefer the 1930 version because it was getting the same message across without all the killing occurring. One, the interesting though, those scenes that's in both the 1930 version and the current version was when Paul did the killing of the one wrenched soldier and then had regrets about having stabbed the fellow and then that whole sequence, those were powerful scenes in both the original movie and in the current movie. Oh, you bet. And that was key, I tell you, in the current movie that was pretty powerful because he stabbed him many times. He kept stabbing him and you really wondered whether the guy would survive. And he was terrible shape. He'd been stabbed in his torso, his chest and neck and he was dying. And that's what we call it. Yeah, we kept him alive more in the current movie longer than they did in the 1930 movie. But both scenes, both actors, both who played Paul just to simply did a superb job, especially in that sequence. I mean, it's one thing just to have a gun and you're just shooting out into space not knowing if you're gonna hit something or not. It's another thing to be one-on-one and on a personal level with the knife. And that point was really made very clear in both movies. He apologizes. We quote him. Yes, he does. Very powerful for that reason. The man is dying or about to die and he apologizes to a very emotional scene, a very powerful statement in support of this whole anti-war thing. And you know what? I don't know if you remember, but in Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg, the Spielberg statement on the bar, he has a German soldier and an American soldier in a building and they're having a life and death fight. And the German soldier prevails and he, again, with a knife, he stabs the American soldier and the American soldier is dying. And the German soldier, he holds them, he cradles them as if he's sorry, as if he loves him. It's a statement of humanity between these warring soldiers and it's the same thing in the sense that it's up close, it's personal. He's touching, holding. He's embracing him in his moment of death. It's the same thing in that spectacular scene and all quiet on the Western front. Yes, it is. It is. It is one of the more powerful scenes in the whole movie. Also in the current version, the score, the musical score, is of extremely high quality. I mean, you could tell exactly where the movie was going just by listening to the sound. The score, I mean, it's nominated for nine Oscars and one of them is a musical score. And I mean, I haven't seen the other movies that were nominated, but this one really was powerful in terms of connecting up the music to what was happening on the screen. Interesting that in the first one, in the 1930s one, I forget his name exactly, it was something like Milestone was the filmmaker. And he put a certain kind of music on that 1930s version and they changed it. They redid the movie and it was very controversial. They wouldn't listen to him. But finally, after some years, they changed the score back to the original score in that movie. And you're right. The score in a movie like this is really important. It's an emotional thing and it defines the action. Yes, it is. There's so many things that you could talk about in terms of the current film, in just in terms of how it relates to what's going on in Ukraine and the fighting and then the fact that you just don't have a learning experience going on that you got people making decisions that are not on the front line and are not the ones that are being killed. And what's also interesting, there's only in the current version, just a couple of remarks about the fact that the Americans were just coming in. At that point, I think both the French and the Germans were so tired. Americans have come in on the French side. You've had the same result. But I mean, if you come in on the German side, I mean, the Germans would have won just because they were fresh troops. Both these countries had really had destroyed their own population on a very feudal war. And Germany was kind of ahead in some ways and it had bigger supplies of poison gas. Its artillery was more advanced than the French. I think it had planes too when the French did not really have planes. So Germany had some advantages. And as you said, the trenches stayed that stationary for years. They didn't move, you know, but on foot. And they were a tremendous investment of labor to dig them and build them and fortify them. The bottom line though is they were killing pits because it was one scene in the 2022 movie where there's a tank coming on top of the trench and the sides of the trench are falling in on the men who are in the trench. I mean, terribly bloody, brutal experience. By the way, I wanna mention one other thing. In the 1930s movie, the character Cat who ultimately dies, they all die. You know, has a moment with his friends where he has, it makes this really profound statement. He says, if these politicians in generals really want us to go to war and kill each other, why don't we put them all in a box and have them fight it out without us? And whoever wins, wins. Right, right, right. That's what I was saying. The 30 version is much more blunt about the attitude it's a little more subtle in terms of the current version. One thing is clear though, from both versions, you as the viewer, you tend to associate and sympathize with these poor guys on the ground who are probably gonna get killed. Oh, absolutely. The stats were so bad. If you went into this war, however optimistic you were, the chances were you were gonna get killed or at best maimed. And in both movies, my experience anyway, was my God, I wouldn't wanna be there. This is hell, not only for me, but for my friends. And in fact, there was this incredible part of the 2020 movie where he says, I miss my comrades. I miss my buddies and he's torn. He's so upset about that. And you realize that they form these bonds and then they're torn apart. And that's the last thing they have is their friends in the trenches. But you don't wanna be there. This is the most awful experience imaginable. And that's what both of these versions of the movie tell us. Yeah, in both films, you really have the, just how bad it was in the trench for the soldiers. I mean, all the rain, all the water that's down there. I mean, you could die of disease separate from the bullets. It's just, it's nasty, very nasty. But they're both worthwhile to see. Both worthwhile to see, both leave you, it lives in you, you know, thinking about it after it and you say to yourself, gee, I didn't know that. I didn't know it was like that. For both sides. Both sides. Both the Germans and the French. Indeed, I'm thinking of the Barbara Tuckman book called, what was it? The Guns of August. The Guns of August. Oh, right. Where she ties, this is Columbia history professor. He tries to make you understand how this war, World War I got started. It's very hard because they were all, they were all spending their time completely invested in making war plans. And the war plans were like a chess game. And if this happens, then this happens. And you have these alliances and agreements and defense arrangements. So, you know, the killing of the Archduke of Serbia was really not too consequential, but it triggered all kinds of other moves. And before you know it, all of Europe is in a conflagration and they don't realize, they don't know why. And then they're sending their best and brightest by the tens of millions into the meat grinder and being killed. I mean, it was so stupid. That's the story of World War I. Absolutely, absolutely. And the movies get that point across. So. They do. Yeah. There's a lot to be said about this. I mean, in terms of the quality of the film, the acting, of course, the book was written by a veteran of World War I, Erik Reymarke. He was a veteran of World War I. He was in those trenches though. He knows what he's talking about. And so, you know, that and the screenplay, very, very powerful. The question is, and this one, the 2022 is going to win or has won? You may follow it more closely than me. An Academy Award or multiple Academy Awards for the quality of the film. Well, it's nominate. We'll have to see what it actually wins, but it has won a number of international awards. There's no question about that. At a minimum, I'm sure it's going to win the international film Oscar. That one, it's a clear favorite to be the winner on. Were you troubled by the fact that it was made by the Germans about the Germans? Mind you, the book was written by a German. No, I wasn't troubled at all. You know, one of my all-time favorite war movies, did you ever see a movie called The Boat? The Boat? The Basta submarine? The Basta Boat, yeah. Basta Boat? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's an incredible film. And made made by the Germans about warfare than being in a submarine. No, I mean, you could have done a similar movie from the French side, but it was a German author and Germany had the ability to, you could at least understand why they felt they had the military might to win. But what's so sad is that once it became clear that it was a no-win situation, nobody back in terms of political power was willing to basically say, time out, we really need to bring this to a halt and do so. And a little more honorable way before it got to the point of where it was with the armistice, which only helped lead us to World War II. I mean, that the terms were so one-sided that it wasn't necessarily a Hitler, though that you could have had a World War II even without Hitler based on those terms. Yeah, that's the problem and there are many problems about war, but the problem about war is if you don't have an end game in mind, if you don't have an exit strategy, it tends to go on way, way longer. I mean, World War I was supposed to be over in a month. It was over 37 million people later and it was three years and it required the US to come in. If we hadn't come in, it would have gone on longer. Oh yeah. Yeah, that was what was motivating the German fella. I mean, there was new troops, fresh blood. I mean, he could see where it was going. It was just gonna get uglier and more death. Pretty ugly and the rule about it goes on forever if you don't have an exit strategy, that seems to be the case in Ukraine. And as it was the case in Vietnam and in other wars you can think of. Right. So I mean, war has to be looked at more scientifically and avoided. I think the assuming that Ukraine comes out on the side of Ukraine, that may be the end of invasion of your neighbor, kind of war. You can only hope. We can only hope. So I mean, I've seen reviews of this movie, this one and for that matter, the 1931, because they seem to be reviewed together. Well, you know, you always hear the reviewer talk about the comparison between the two. And there's some very good comparison videos showing this event in the 1930 movie as against the same event in the 2022 movies. Interesting. And the same screen at the same time, you see these comparisons. So a lot of these reviews have been 10 plus. And they run out of numbers when they try to review the movie. What's your review, Steve? No, yeah, this one, you've asked me in each one of these, but this is the one that does get the 10. They both get the 10 for a little different reasons, but the quality is absolutely superb. We gotta learn from movies because we know that when other people watch them, it changes their sensibilities about the way they think about the world. You can, you know, you can teach people to be violent in a movie. And a lot of our American movies do that right now on Netflix and Prime, or you can teach them that violence is not so good. And the message here for most of these movies is a really, really important message. That violence is bad for you and war is bad for you. And so I would also give it a 10. If I could give it more, I would. Right, right, thank you, Steve. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for coming around. Thanks for this discussion. We'll see you in a couple of weeks for more. You know what I'm saying? Goodman's Garage, I love the name of that. Goodman's Garage. Stay tuned. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.