The war in literature and film The post-war years also produced a cultural backlash against war and the attitudes which had caused it. The best known of these was Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (German, In Westen nichts Neues) which was published in Germany in 1928. Remarque was himself a conscript and a veteran of several Western Front battles, until he was wounded and invalided out of action in mid-1918. All Quiet on the Western Front is told through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young soldier who is cajoled into enlisting by the patriotic speeches of his schoolteacher. Thrust into battle with minimal training or preparation, Baumer finds himself overwhelmed by the violence of war and the random nature of death. Other anti-war tracts include Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), loosely based on the author’s experiences fighting with the Italians in 1917. Hemingway’s account of the war is bleak, confronting and pointless. The men fighting it do not wish to be there and do not believe in its causes, while the civilians displaced and affected by the war simply wish it to end. C. S. Forester’s The General (1936) contained a commentary on military leadership during World War I; his main character Curzon was an honest and loyal general but given to inflexibility, adherence to routine and lack of initiative. Less well known book is The Good Soldier Svejk, an illustrated novel created by Czech socialist Jaroslav Hasek. It satirises and ridicules the war through the actions of its title character, an Austro-Hungarian soldier who manages to survive by virtue of his incompetence and his misunderstanding of orders, perhaps deliberately. A scene from the iconic movie depiction of All Quiet on the Western Front World War I was quickly explored in film too. French director Abel Gance began work on J’accuse in 1918, weeks before the war had even ended (in fact some of Gance’s ‘battle scenes’ contained authentic footage of Western Front charges). Gance’s message in J’accuse is anti-war and pacifist. In one memorable scene, a platoon of dead soldiers returns to life and marches back to their village, confronting survivors with questions about their patriotism and support for the war. Such was the impact of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front that an American film version – starring Lew Ayres as Paul Baumer – went into production barely a year after its publication. To this day it remains one of the most significant anti-war movies in history. In one memorable scene Baumer is trapped in a shell crater overnight with a dying French soldier, where he is confronted by the reality that there is little difference between him and his ‘enemy’. A film version of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was also hurriedly produced, just a year or two after the release of the book. - See more at: alphahistory/worldwar1/human-cost/#sthash.oub4O0uR.dpuf (L) Erich Maria Remarque (R) A scene from All Quiet on the Western Front, with Remarques protagonist, Paul Baumer, a young German soldier sharing the shelter of a shell crater with a French soldier he has killed.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 04:47:10 +0000
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