Del Andrews, Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, from the novel Im Westen Nichts Neues by Erich Maria Remarque

Making

Erich Maria Remarque wrote Im Westen Nichts Neues to free himself from his memory of the Great War and from 'my thoughts and those of my companions'. Like the leading character of the novel, the author was one of a class of 18-year-olds who enlisted in the infantry and suffered the brutality of life in the trenches. The book was a best seller. Soon after it appeared in the United States, the rights were snapped up by Carl Laemmie, head of Universal. Laemmie had intended to use the story for a silent movie, and a silent version with synchronized music still exists - running a reel longer than the complete talkie copy and with ZaSu Pitts in the role of Mrs Baumer instead of Beryl Mercer, who played the part in the sound movie. (Perhaps Miss Mercer's stage experience was thought to fit better for talkies.)

Lewis Milestone set himself uncompromisingly to reproduce the realism of the novel. It is arguable that no film - whether fiction or fact - has given such a vivid account of the physical actuality of World War I; and fragments of All Quiet have frequently turned up in later compilations credited as documentary.

The battle scenes were shot on an area of almost 100 acres on the Irvine Ranch, 69 miles south-east of Los Angeles. Over 5 miles of water pipes were laid to provide the authentic water-logged appearance of the battlefields. And 2 miles of road were built for the operation of Universal's high new camera crane which was assigned to the picture. In all, 35 different sets were built for the film - those representing frontline France being destined for destruction during filming.

Unerringly, Milestone reconciled the realism of the setting with the deliberately lyrical style of the dialogue:

'Our bodies are earth and our thoughts are clay and we sleep and eat with death.'

He also blended the extreme stylization of some performances with the easy naturalism of Louis Wolheim (Katczinsky) and Slim Summerville (Tjaden).

Milestone used his facilities with incomparable flair. He brought all the fluidity of silent films to the camera - which freely tracked and panned and soared over the battlefields or the little German town from which the hero and his schoolboy friends march out to war - and to the editing. At the same time Milestone imaginatively explored the possibility of sound, from the beginning where the bellicose harangues of the schoolteacher are drowned by the noise of a band outside, to the haunting echoes of the battlefield as the cry of 'Mind the wire' goes down the line.