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The film
"All Quiet on the Western Front" is a classic Hollywood adaptation
of Erich Remarque's novel. It takes a hard look at the tragedy of war using World
War I as its backdrop.
Before you watch the film find out:
1. When was the film released?
2. Who is the director?
3. What novelwas it based on? Find information about the author.
4. Is this the first version of the film?
As you watch
the film, please answer the following questions.
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1. What is
the title of this film? When was it made? Who wrote the original novel?
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2. Why did
the students join the Army?
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3. What
role did the mailman (Himmelstoess) have? Was he particularly mean to these
recruits? Give an example.
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4. How
were conditions at the Western Front different from their expectations in training
camp?
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5. What
was the impact of the shelling on the new recruits?
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6. What
happened after the bombardment?
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7. In the
attack, what did the machine gun do to the glory of war and individual
heroism?
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8. How
many of the company died in this first battle? How do you know? Why were they
able to eat so well finally?
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9. Who did
they blame for this war? Who did they omit in their list of potential
villains?
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10. What
happened to Kemmerich's boots? How did the doctors' react to Kemmerich's
plight?
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11. How
was Sgt. Himmelstoess received when he arrived at the front?
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12. What
was the pattern of a battle? What preceded the attack? What followed it?
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13. What
happened to Paul Baumer when he found himself in a shellhole in No Man's Land
with the French soldier?
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14. Why
did the French girls - ostensibly the enemy - accept the German soldiers?
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15. After
four years of war, how has the German homefront been affected? Were there
still the parades, crowded streets, and joyous sounds of going off to war?
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16. What
were the attitudes of the men in the beer hall? Were they willing to listen
to what Paul had to say?
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17. How
does Paul Baumer confront his former teacher? How do the young students react
to his vision of the war?
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18. How
has the company changed during Paul's absence?
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19. What
is ironic about Kat's and Paul's deaths? [Note: The war ended on November 11,
1918.]
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20.
Describe the attitude of this movie towards World War I and all wars.
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B O Y S´ B O O K S
AND THE GREAT WAR
Michael Paris looks at the romanticised image of war in boys´popular fiction prior to 1914, and at the sustaining appeal of the genre in spite of the realities of that event.
In September 1914, nineteen-year-old Roland Leighton wrote to his close friend Vera Brittain,
"I Feel I am meant to take some active part in this war. It is to me a very fascinating thing- something, if often horrible, yet very ennobling and very beautiful, something whose elemental reality raises it above the reach of cold theorising. You will call me a militarist, you may be right."
Leighton, like most other young men of his age, had grown to manhood under the spell of the pleasure culture of war – the experience of war transformed into romantic and chivalric stories for the entertainment of the young, and which had become increasingly common during the later nineteenth century. These fictions, however, were not only a source of exciting and escapist adventure, but promoted patriotism, manliness and a simplistic imperial worldview that emphasised duty and the need for sacrifice if the British Empire was to endure. They indoctrinated their readers with the credo that an Englishman was more than a match for any mere foreigner; that war was a game, and that battle was an exciting experience in which young men could demonstrate their loyalty to the motherland and find fame and honour. In the popular novels of F.A.Henry, Captain E.S.Brereton, Herbert Strang, Percy F. Westerman and Robert Leighton, and tin the pages of The Boy´s Own Paper, Pluck, The Boy´s Friend and countless other story papers, young men were captivated by thrilling tales of the little wars of empire such as With Spear and Assegai, Fighting the Matabele, With Kitchener in the Soudan or One of the Fighting Scouts.
Other stories related the exciting events of imaginary future wars as the Russian hordes or the legions of the Kaiser invaded Britain and were only defeated at the last possible monument by English pluck. Indeed so many of these tales appeared in the two decades before 1914, that many young readers were convinced that a great European was virtually inevitable. Yet in these tales of conflict, authors softened, sanitised and romanticised battle, disguising its brutal reality with a veneer of chivalric and sporting imagery, so that in a Henry Newbolt´s Vitai Lampada, a bloody battle in the Sudan could be transformed into little more than a hard fought match between the School and a rather unruly visitors´eleven.
In August 1914, then, young men who, like Rowland Leighton, had grown up with this romantic image of war, volunteered in their thousands for the greatest of all adventures; anxious not that they might be killed or maimed, but only that they would get to France too late to take part in the fighting. But for those too young to enlist, reading about war was the next best thing; as one veteran later recalled, “our curiosity to know what it would be like to be under fire had to be satisfied from the novels of G.A.Henty and Captain F. S. Brereton.” Thus the pleasure culture of war operating through boy´s´fiction had, during the last decades of peace, prepared young men to play their part in the next war and would now continue throughout wthe war years, to act as part of the unofficial propaganda effort to prepare younger boys for future service, by sanitising the realities of war and emphasising the exciting and romantic nature of battle.
But fighting on the Western Front was not the glamorous adventure the young had expected: the reality was brutal, bloody and terrifying. For Roland Leighton, as for many others, a few months in the trenches were enough to expose the lies of this idealised image of war, for as he wrote to Vera Brittain in September 1915:
"Let him who thinks that War is a glorious thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking Honour and Praise and Valour and Love of Country – let him but look at a little pile of sodden grey rags that cover half a skull and a shin bone and what might have its ribs – and let him realise how grand and glorious a thing it is to have distilled all youth and Joy and Life into a foetid heap of hideous putrescence… "
Leighton’s letter is particularly poignant, for his father, Robert Leighton, was a highly successful writer of boys´fiction who, in his novels had indeed taught his young readers that was a “noble and glorious thing.”
Adapted from: The Boys' War in Making History issue 48
Understanding the text
1. Why does Roland Leighton say that Vera will call him a militarist?
2. What is the difference between real war and the war depicted in fiction books?
3. How did these books work on the boys´ chauvinistic self -esteem?
4. How had fiction prepared boys to be soldiers?
5. Did war live up to their expectations?
6. How does Roland Leighton describe war?
7. What is paradoxical about Roland’s letter?
