An Antiwar War Movie

This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war...

So reads the title card of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), a timeless and powerful statement about the absurdity of war, and of the collectivist mass-mind that produces it.

Here is an exchange between two soldiers during a lull in the fighting:

Well, how do they start a war?

Well, one country offends another...

How could one country offend another? You mean there's a mountain in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?

Well, stupid, one people offends another.

Oh, if that's it, I shouldn't be here at all. I don't feel offended.

The film, based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, is exceptional not only for its message and story, but also for its technical achievements. Its battle-scenes are every bit as horrific and convincing as those of Saving Private Ryan (1998) or We Were Soldiers (2002), perhaps even more so, but without the now requisite blood-on-the-camera-lens gore.

At the beginning of the film, a German professor urges his students to fight for their fatherland with this line from anicent Rome: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. "You still think it's beautiful to die for your country," says the main character meeting his professor years later. "The first bombardment taught us better. When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all."

The English apparently used this line to rouse their boys to the War to End All Wars as well, as evidenced by this poem by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), who died seven days before the Armistice:

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Below is a must-listen from the above site of Owens Poetry:

Click this sound icon to hear an extract from a letter written in July 1918 by Wilfred Owen to Sir Osbert Sitwell. In the letter he reflects on his duties as an officer and compares his soldiers to Christ as he prepares them for battle.