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A classroom line continues across a trench landscape and a soldier's helmet.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

War

All Quiet on the Western Front

BleakTense Approachable · Moderate War

German schoolboys enlist with patriotic excitement and encounter a trench war that steadily dismantles every promised meaning.

Year
1930
Director
Lewis Milestone
Country
United States
Length
152 min
Language
English

What to expect

Lewis Milestone combines fluid battlefield staging with close attention to waiting, hunger, fear, and interrupted youth. Its early sound design refuses heroic distance, making machinery and silence equally important to its anti-war force.

How to ease in

Learn Paul and Kat first; the wider company will become clearer through repeated routines. The named 152-minute record represents a full-length form, not every sound, silent, or reissue version that has circulated.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes sustained battlefield violence, death, severe injury, amputation, psychological trauma, animal distress, and dehumanising military authority.
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I am most shaken when the noise stops. A hand, a boot, or a butterfly can suddenly hold more weight than the speeches that sent the boys away. The quiet makes the lost scale of each life impossible for me to ignore.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Version map

AFI full-length presentation record152 min152 minutes is attached only to this named presentation. No edition, score, territory, cut, frame rate, source element, or restoration detail is inferred. Sound, silent and reissue forms circulate; 152 minutes is attached only to the named AFI full-length record.Source: AFI Catalog — All Quiet on the Western FrontRuntime reference · Checked 2026-08-20

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