ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
Synopsis
All Quiet on the Western Front is an American Pre- Code anti- war epic based on the
famous World War I novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Adapted by Maxwell Ander-
son, George Abbott, and Del Andrews and directed by Lewis Milestone, the film
stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Arnold Lucy, and Ben Alexander. It
recounts the harrowing experiences of a German Army frontline infantry com-
pany during the First World War.
Background
A de cade after the end of World War I former German soldier Erich Maria Remarque
(1898–1970) turned his grueling frontline experiences with the 2nd Guards Reserve
Division at Hem- Lenglet, France, into Im Westen nichts Neues [Nothing New in the
West]: a searing anti- war novel first serialized in 1928 in the Berlin- based liberal
daily newspaper, Vossische Zeitung. Published in book form on 29 January 1929,
Remarque’s novel took the world by storm, selling 2.5 million copies in 22 lan-
guages in its first 18 months in print. Little, Brown & Sons published the first U.S.
edition on 1 June 1929 under the title, All Quiet on the Western Front. Soon after its
U.S. publication, Universal Pictures producer Carl Laemmle purchased the film
rights for $20,000 ($286,000 in 2017 dollars) and put his 21- year- old son, Carl
Laemmle, Jr., in charge of production— a move met with amused skepticism
throughout the film industry, but Carl Jr. proved equal to the task. He wisely hired
eminent playwrights Maxwell Anderson and George Abbott to adapt the novel to
the screen, former Signal Corps filmmaker Lewis Milestone to direct, and the dis-
tinguished German cinematographer, Arthur Edeson, to shoot the picture.
Production
Filming began on Armistice Day 1929— exactly 11 years after the end of the war
and less than two weeks after the stock market crash that precipitated the Great
Depression. As the first major epic of the talkie period, All Quiet on the Western Front
proved to be a costly and difficult undertaking involving lots of logistical hurdles.
Shooting occurred at vari ous locations in southern California. Village scenes were
shot at a set built on Universal’s backlot, but most of the filming took place at the
Irvine Ranch, 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, where trenches and a shell- pocked
battlefield were constructed. To ensure verisimilitude, hundreds of real French and
German uniforms were imported from Eu rope at great expense. Because American