The war film has been one of the staples of Hollywood cinema throughout the 20th century. From The Great Escape to Saving Private Ryan, there has been countless retellings of the horrors of war that can be at once highly entertaining and poignantly harrowing.
Last month, Netflix released a gripping new film recounting the horrors of war told through the eyes of a young German soldier on the Western Front - one of the main areas of battle during World War I. Starring Felix Kammerer and Daniel Brühl, All Quiet on the Western Front currently sits at number two in Netflix’s top 10 films, behind true crime-thriller The Good Nurse.
But is the film based on a true story? In simple terms, yes and no.
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The film is based on Erich Maria Remarque’s world-renowned bestseller of the same name which was published in Germany in 1929, where it was titled Im Westen nichts Neues – which translates as In the West Nothing New. The book is based on Remarque’s experiences in the German Army, with which he served from age 18 until being injured and eventually discharged.
Remarque prefaces his book with the following statement: “This book is to be 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.”
Although the book on which the film is based is classed as a work of fiction, it is based on true events that occurred during World War I and the experiences of the soldiers that fought in it. The events and the characters in the book have been fictionalised by the author, but as Remarque himself fought on the Western Front, he based much of its story and its themes on his first-hand experience.
The book – and therefore the film – centres on young German soldier Paul Bäumer, who is not based on a real soldier but is intended to be an ‘everyman’ representing the many young soldiers that fought and died in the war. There was in fact a real Paul Bäumer who was a German fighter pilot in World War I, but he is not the basis for the character and it is unclear if the shared name is purely coincidental.
In literary critic Harold Bloom’s book of interpretations of the novel, he describes All Quiet on the Western Front as “a period piece and a historical document,” labelling it as an “effective antiwar tract.” When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the books the party burnt as it was classed as “degenerate art” and an insult to Germany.
This is also not the first time All Quiet on the Western Front has been adapted for the screen, having first been made into an American film released in 1930 which won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director in Lewis Milestone.
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