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The hero, Paul Baumer was played by Lew Ayres, and you witnessed
the horrors of war as you followed him and his schoolfriends
through their initial patriotism and adventure-seeking through
to disillusionment and then a complete disregard about death.
In 1979, a TV movie of All Quiet on the Western Front
was released and the producers courageously went for Richard
Thomas, of The Waltons fame, as the lead character.
It was a risk, but the gamble paid off in spades as Thomas
gives one of his best on-camera performances as the young
soldier.
And the story does lend itself to him as he begins as a fresh-faced
John Walton-ish lad and ends up by being a hard, cynical trooper
grieving for the losses of his friends and comrades.
To balance the youth of Thomas, a seriously good batch of
elder film statesmen also joined the cast in the likes of
Ernest Borgnine (Kat), Ian Holm (Corporal Himmelstoss) and
Donald Pleasance as the schoolmaster who encourages his class
to join up.
And among those youngsters you will see many faces of actors
who at the time were not well known but you will easily recognise
them now.
The plot is pretty brutal, but gives you a little taste of
what the poor devils in the trenches had to endure. Bombardments,
attacks into the teeth of machine gun nests, gas warfare,
friends dying ...
The video transfer of this movie is up and down with a fair
few glitches that will have some viewers pretty annoyed. There
are regular examples of artifacts and aliasing - and the images
are quite soft - although the colour is good. Sound-wise it's
fine for a made-for-TV effort.
This version of All Quiet on the Western Front is
well above average and if you haven't seen the original, then
this is well worth taking the time to look at.
Conclusion: Movie 80%, Extras 20%
Continued:
DVD details at a glance >
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