All Quiet

The transcript discusses the Oscars winners for Best Picture from worst to best. It mentions the movie "All Quiet on the Western Front" from 1930, which was a frontrunner and had the second most Oscars on the night. The conversation then moves on to discuss other movies from 1930, including "The Big House," "Disraeli," "The Divorcee," and "The Love Parade." The transcript also talks about the early sound era and the challenges faced with acting and camera technology at the time. Finally, it provides a brief summary of "All Quiet on the Western Front," which follows a group of young German men during World War I and portrays the horrors and realities of trench warfare. Overall, the speaker enjoyed the movie and found it to be a substantive portrayal of war. And we are here counting down the Oscar winners for Best Picture from Worst to Best. And we are now all the way up to number 25. That's a good, well, it's not an even number, but it's a good round number. Yeah, we've been at this for a while. Yeah. So what are we talking about today? Today, we're talking about All Quiet on the Western Front. Yes. From 1930, because there was another one recently. I don't know if you knew this. Yeah. One of the losers. Everything, everywhere, all at once. But it was a frontrunner. I mean, it wasn't the frontrunner. It was. It was one of the, yeah, one of the second most Oscars on the night. Yeah, see, there you go. Yeah. It was more of a frontrunner, more. It was at least a possibility of an upset winner. Yeah, yeah. What's that? Oh, she's great. Can I answer it? Of course. Do you remember 1930? Hello, you're on the air. Oh, I'm on the air. Hi, Juliana. Hello, Juliana. Hi. We're talking about the year 1930. I don't remember it. OK, do you have anything? Have you ever seen All Quiet on the Western Front? No. No. OK. I have nothing further to add. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. She's great. Yeah, so what's your history with the 1930 version? No, I have no history with it. I didn't know it. I couldn't have told you. I don't know. I didn't know anything about it. OK. All Quiet on the Western Front, I'd probably heard of it, thought of it as a war movie. Wouldn't have known which war. Are you familiar at all with the books? I do. I've never read the book. OK. OK, well, yeah, this is probably my third time seeing it. OK. I've watched it. So let's get into the Losers. I'll be shocked if you've ever heard of any. Going back to 1930, this is so long ago. 1930? This is the third. It's almost 100 years ago. This is the third Oscars. I meant to send it to you. You can watch the entire Oscars ceremony on YouTube. Really? All seven and a half minutes of it. Wow. What do you mean? That's how long it lasted. It lasted for seven and a half minutes? Or that's just how much of the video? There were no. Well, so it was at this point it was given out in a banquet and then they did a for not for television, but they did a film version like for newsreels and stuff. So they went through only eight categories. All right. Because in 1930, people didn't have television. What? Yeah, right. So they had like exception speeches from the winners that were there. And I think half the winners weren't there. And they just said, OK, here's another four categories. Wow. Yeah. So very different. Yeah, very different. But, yeah, let's start with the big house, which is a prison drama starring Wallace Beery. Kind of an interesting, you know, it does kind of show its age, but it has some interesting moments that is surprisingly adroit as far as the there are parts of the movie where it really does kind of come to terms with the fact that the prison system is kind of broken. And it's not about rehabilitation, but just kind of getting these people that society doesn't want to deal with, like putting them away. There's a big prison fight scene. Yeah, that's the big house. So the image that you put up here in the movie poster, it looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. Yeah, well, it's a still from the movie, the still is colorized, the movie, of course, it's in black and white. Oh, I don't know that. Yeah. Is it a still from the movie? Looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. Yeah, it's not a good resolution for that. OK. Yeah, I mean, that's the big house. Disraeli was a biographical movie about Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British prime minister. OK. The actor George Arbus kind of made a career out of playing Disraeli. Yeah, he had a long running stage show where he would do, I don't know if it was a one man show or he played Disraeli. There was a much earlier, actually, silent film version that went to a different actor he considered a personal slight. So then he started his own silent film version, bought up all of the prints of the earlier ones with a different actor and destroyed them. And then, of course, he made this one where it's really the only point of seeing it is for homework. It kind of doesn't age particularly well. It's the movie is most concerned with the purchasing of the Suez Canal and it's almost the villains of the piece or his antagonists or the politicians that are skeptical of British imperialism. So we're rooting for George Arbus and really this canal is important so that they can maintain control of India. So some of its themes haven't aged particularly well. Really, people should have... Interesting that this is the same year that Gandhi wins Man of the Year. Yeah, Gandhi was the Times Man of the Year for this year. So, yeah, I don't... It is just different times. Yeah. Joan Bennet, I've heard of her. Yeah, famous actress of the early sound age. I should note that this is the very, very beginning of the sound era. It's really an era. I love the 30s and a lot of the early sound movies, but at the very beginning, there's a lot of growing pain, particularly with the acting, because people just didn't know then that the camera picks up on a lot more than is on the stage. So you don't have to project as much. And it took a while to learn that. And also, they tend to have very static, the moving cameras would cause a lot of noise just because of the early part of the technology. So you kind of have very static shots in a lot of these movies. Interesting. Yeah. Also, the divorcee is very synonymous here. It's... Yeah, I think it will be very controversial for 1930. Yeah, this is before the production code was implemented. So it's a lot saucier than movies that would come out 10, even 20 years later. Norma Shearer plays this kind of high society woman whose her husband is having an affair. So she dumps him, gets a divorce, and then has a few affairs of her own. A lot of the movie is about kind of that double standard between the divorce stigma that a woman experiences versus the man. OK. Yeah, so it's kind of a progressive movie in its ways. Pretty interesting early movie. Robert Montgomery is one of her lovers. Yeah, we've heard of him. Yeah. Yeah, his daughter was bewitched. Oh, Elizabeth Montgomery. Mm-hmm. She passed away. She did, yeah. Yeah, so clearly everybody in all these movies have, unfortunately. Yeah. Awkward. Otherwise, they'd be like 130 or something. Yeah. And then finally, we have The Love Parade, which is a musical comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who's one of the great comic directors of the early Hollywood era. He really came into his own when his peak is kind of in the early 40s with movies like To Be or Not To Be and The Shop Around the Corner, which are really some of the best comedies ever made. This is a musical comedy with Ray Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald. And he's kind of like a Paris playboy who, for whatever reason, is commissioned to be the husband of...he has to marry the queen. From a fictitious European nation. Okay, so he's like... And comedy as well. He's a philosopher. Yeah. Yeah, actually. Well, who wasn't? This is well before his time, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's true. Weird. Yeah, I might have seen this when I was a little boy. That's right. Yeah, but that's it. I don't want to spend all of this time on the box office, because really, I don't think anybody's heard of any of these movies, except for Our Winner is the third biggest hit of the year, right on the Western front, and The Big House, which we talked about earlier, is number five. But really, aside from those two, I don't think...I haven't really heard of any. Who's... Well, Whoopi is an Al Jolson movie. Okay. It's where that song, Whoopi, is from. I don't know that song. You'd know it if you heard it. Would I know? Mm-hmm. Okay. At any rate, what is All Quiet on the Western front about? So, this is World War I, and it follows this group of young men. They were all like high school mates. So, at the beginning...and they're German. Mm-hmm. So, it's from the point of view of young, idealistic Germans who are in their classroom. They have this teacher who... Talk again, but... Yes, right. Like, this is...he gets them all riled up on...all liquored up on... Exactly. ...just nationalism and, you know... Defending the fatherland. Defending the fatherland and being...you know, this is your way to...they imagine all these being the heroes, being the...it's just all these glory images of this. Mm-hmm. So, just a group of them decide that they're going to go fight in the war. We follow them through the war. And then it's a very...we follow this group as...I think some live, some die, definitely. And, anyway, just the reality... I don't know if any of them... Yeah. Spoiler alert. Yeah, right. I thought we were going to talk about... I was going to say some live and some die, but I don't remember if any of them live. I don't think any of the characters we follow... Yeah. But, anyway, it just follows them through the realities of trench warfare from the young German soldier point of view. Yeah. Don't even know what they're fighting for. Right. And, anyway, so that's the basic plot. Okay. Yeah. Well, what did you think of it? I, personally, I really liked it. Yeah. I thought it was a really substantive movie. It's so intriguing that in the... Yeah. Anyway, just an early war movie that just shows the horrors and just the... Haunting... Why are we doing this kind of thing? No, exactly. And it's interesting, those opening scenes with the teacher and his pleas to the fatherland. It's tempting to think, oh, this is kind of foreshadowing the rise of Hitler. But it's 1930. I mean, he was on the scene, but it's not like it's foreshadowing that the Nazis are going to take over that country with similar nationalistic messages. They don't even know at this point. This is 1930. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Set in the... Well, 1914 through 1918. Right. And you just had a few images up a little, a few minutes ago, as we were starting. Oh, yeah. Of some headlines from... Or from images from 1930. And one of the headlines was, you know, Hitler faces defeat. You know, his dreams of ruling Germany are over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had a setback in the elections in 1930, or his party did. But he didn't last. Yeah. Yeah. I think this movie is really remarkable. It... There are... What I find fascinating about it is there are definitely parts of the movie that show its age. And the other... But there are other parts that are extraordinarily ahead of its time. And the parts that show its age are, you know, understandable. But the parts that are ahead of its time are just incredible. And, you know, I said earlier that one of the problems with early sound movies is that you're afraid to move the camera, because the technology, which... Given that, it's extraordinary, some of the shots that even the director, Louis Smilestone, even attempts to make. Yes. Particularly in that... Of that trench warfare. It's stunning. I mean, it looks like... You know, aside from the kind of black and white and the graininess, I mean, it looks like it could have been filmed recently, today. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just... It's really... I don't know what else to say about it. It's stunning, and it really shows the brutality, which is kind of shocking from the time. There's one shot where there's an explosion, and then it shows two severed hands clutching the barbed wire, which is before the code. A few years later, they wouldn't be able to show that. But, I mean, it's shockingly effective. And it's so eye-opening as far as... Because, you know, we've seen a lot of war movies, and even... Some World War I movies, but just to be... Get the perspective of kind of being in the trench. It's such a different... It's almost the last war of an older... Right. From an older era. Right. It's trench warfare, and it's stunning, and it's not that long ago. And it's really the worst of all worlds, because it was the last of an old era of this trench warfare, but it has all... It's the first with all these modern weapons. Yeah. The bomber planes, and, you know, kind of like what we saw in Wings. Right. This is only a couple years later. Yeah. Tanks and, you know, other... I don't know if they're considered machine guns, but rapid, high-capacity, I guess. Right. Like, all these things are new at this point. So just the level... I mean, it really depicts this level of destruction, and it also has such timeless themes of what are we... You know, you just... We're picking a side, and... Yeah. Oh, this was a great dialogue scene where they're talking about what is... Like, we're fighting for the Kaiser. Yeah. It's like, you know, Germany is mad at France. Yeah. What is there, a mountain in Germany that's upset at a field in France? Right, what does that mean? It's like, no, the people are mad at each other, and they're like, I don't know, but it's... Yeah, it's... In some ways, there's a lot of parallels with Platoon. Yeah, definitely. You know, 50 years later. Yeah, I'm sure Oliver Stone's seen this. I do think there's a lot of restraint in... It's very sophisticated... It has a lot of sophisticated filmmaking, which... I think it was an unusual choice for its time to not have a score, a musical score, particularly over the ending, just to have the confidence to... It kind of ends with just kind of a close-up of Paul, our hero, or our protagonist. He's reaching out for, like, a butterfly, and he gets shot by a sniper, and we just can't go limp, and it shows, I think, a lot of restraint to not punctuate that with a sound cue, but just kind of go, just silently show the previous scene of them marching off to their first combat. Right, you see the scene earlier in the movie where they're marching on and kind of looking back as they're going towards war, and it kind of overlays that over a... Over a cemetery of thousands of graves. But it's all silent, and it's remarkably effective in how it shows the devastation, and then you see the faces of these people. Yeah. The other thing that I thought was effective was how they... It would be, like, intense scene, and then they'd be quiet. They'd be, like, a respite scene. So it's this... You're kind of constantly going back and forth between these intense battles, and they're back in their bunker in between, you know, having conversations and building relationships and... Skinny-dipping. Various things, so I don't know. It's like you're... You know, it kind of puts you in their... I don't know what it does, but... Well, I think... You're anticipating the battle scenes more. I don't know. It builds tension and releases tension and builds it. Yeah, it does. It shows how accustomed or how much the violence becomes just a part of their lives. Yeah. It's almost like... Like, when it starts up again, it's like, okay, we're going to work again. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It becomes kind of part of their routine, and I think that's what kind of comes across with these quieter scenes. Something really well done. I mean, there's a... I guess you'd call it a sex scene, but when they go off with these French women, they can't even talk to each other because they don't know each other's languages. But I think it really, again, a very sophisticated how this scene is shot, Paul talking to this woman. She's talking in French. He's talking in... Well, he's talking in English in the movie, presumably in German. But we're just kind of... The cameras just focus on the shadow of the bed stand against the wall, so we don't really see anything. It's really well done, and it's almost like this... It's not... These moments of respite just kind of have this air of desperation or fleetingness to them. I mean, it's almost like it kind of, in a way, reminded me a little bit of Hartlocker as far as getting addicted to war. Yeah. Especially when he goes back on leave and just can't readapt or re-acclimate to his home. It was a brief time period where he's on leave. Anyway, it's just the sheer horrors, and you just watch them become... You know, it infects them. This changes them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and in somewhat subtle ways. Again, a lot of the dialogue is kind of on the nose, and it's kind of... The acting is just a very, very early version of screen acting. Which... Where was I going with that? Yeah, but I think that it's a lot of... It's still kind of subtly done the way they get disillusioned. Yeah, right. Because those cut scenes are not just a summary of the lessons that they learn. They're just kind of ordinary scenes. There's one scene of two soldiers admiring a woman in a poster. Yeah. And really kind of cleverly done, because the poster's next to a mirror, so we can see them and what they're looking at at the same time. And they're just like normal guys. Yeah. But they're just being turned by the war. Yeah. So when he does have to go back, he has... The hometown is still infected with the propaganda. Yeah. I mean, there's an effect just seen in the bar, where he's the one that was facing battle, and he ends up being called a... Or he's called a coward in the school. But there is a conflict, I think, in the bar, where the patrons are guys who spend their days at the bar, and none of them are on the front line, or kind of like chicken hawks, talking about how you need to dumbly confront your death. But yeah, pretty powerful. I thought it was powerful. And I'm not even a big... It's interesting. I don't like war movies, but I have found... I prefer this one to Platoon, but I did not expect to like Platoon, and I did. But they have so many good messages without it being a message movie. Yeah. And I guess what I hadn't known before this was that this was written... It's based on a book that was written by a German soldier, so... Erich Meriam Remarque. Yeah. So, yeah, it just rings true. And in that way, it's kind of similar to... The director was in World War I. Okay. Yeah, I know. Which, yeah, it doesn't pull a lot of punches. Yeah. And we never see... I can't remember another movie that I've seen where we're seeing it through the eyes of the Germans. Yeah. Yeah. They're always like, keep looking at your bad guys, right? Yeah, right. And we're one, they're not Nazis, but still, the Americans were definitely on the side of the French. And this was only 15 years. Or less, later. And people probably knew people that had family members that were killed by Germans. Yeah. It is a... You would almost expect that a Hollywood studio buys the book and then, like, okay, let's have... There are Americans over there, let's make this about the Americans. Right, yeah. Or even the French or the British. Yeah. With them as Germans. Yeah. The scene with the rationing of the food. Mm-hmm. It's kind of like the first scene where you see the movie's perspective on that there's, like, a mess. I don't know what you'd call a mess. Are they gonna mess all their out? The guy was serving them food, but he's like, yeah, I can't serve you until you all get here. Yeah. And just the... Yeah, it's a great scene. Yeah. Really, kind of a comic scene, but a bigger irony that, you know, half of the troop has been killed. Yeah. And at one point, Paul says, well, it's only half of us or less, but it's our luck. Yeah. Because, I mean, it means, at that moment, it means they get double rations. Right. And the guy's like, well, that's not fair. Right. Because I made for this many, and you're half that many. And it also speaks to, you know, you get that feeling like you're in the DMV or some sort of other... Yeah, I mean, you have to get like a captain or someone that came out and... Yeah, and say, you know, what's your... Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was... I thought it was... Poignant. Poignant, and subtle messaging, and, you know, I really liked it. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting that two of the first three Best Picture winners were from World War I. Yeah. With wings. Yeah. The broader analogy is in between the two of us finished at 93rd. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I... And I've seen... Yeah. Yeah. Anything else on Off-White on the Western Front? I don't think so. Okay. Yeah, so this is the chat. GPT's would like for Off-White on the Western Front. Yes. 1930. Yes. 1930. I said, yeah, so I did... I asked them this one, and they gave it to me, and then I was like, yeah, I think you can do better because I know Dennis is going to do better. And then they did give me a better... It's a really operative one about an intense war movie. So here's the first chat, GPT. Okay. In 30, a film did debut All Quiet on the Western Front. It's true. A war's brutal tale and black and white set to sale in history books whose impact still grew. So they kept to the limerick things, but it's like, yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. So I was like, okay, that's fine, but give me another one. So here's their... I think this one is better. Okay. In 30, a classic was born where horrors from black and white were worn. From trenches they roam young soldiers far from home a poignant tale of battles forlorn. Okay, that's good. That is... Yeah. Yeah, that one's better. Yeah. Yeah, but yours is definitely better. Yeah. I struggled with this one. No, this is a hard one, but this is okay. So this is Genesis. They enlisted to battle the French. Dreams of valor snuffed out in a trench. Endless bullets and bombs left these comrades in arms wishing they'd never left their school bench. I didn't get the cadence right on that. Oh, that's fine. But really good. Thank you. Yeah. Because I think that's the... That's really what it is about. Yeah. The disillusionment really, yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting with Chad GPT, maybe AI in general, is that it becomes a little slavish to the slavish, what do you say? To certain things that you put. Like, I wanted to differentiate it between the 1930 version from the 19... from the 2022 version. Yeah, or the novel, right? Yeah. Or the novel, right? Or the 70s. But it's like they had to keep the 30. I know, yeah. Like, I don't need the 30. I just want I just wanted to distinguish between... Oh, one point I wanted to bring up, Lou Ayers, who played Poff, the main character, was considered for our last movie, Rocky, as Mickey. Oh, interesting. Yeah. He's actually in his 70s, Rocky Lizbeth. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Ah, so I thought that was interesting. Yeah. I'll point a motion punk up for nominations. Okay, go on. I mean, there were eight categories. Okay. All right. Pretty good. They got half of them. Best Picture winners did not get any acting nominations. Okay, wow. Um, you know, I mean, this was at a time when there were only two acting categories. Actor and actress. Yeah, and there's no women in the movies, right? Yeah. Uh, less than their options there. So, but they did win the top two prizes. Okay. Uh, such an outstanding production was what they called it at the time. Yeah, and it was nominated for writing and cinematography. Yes. Yeah. All good. All right, so that was every, um, that was all part of the Western Front. Yep. Yes. The, um, version that did not lose to, um, Everything Everywhere All Once. Or one of the versions that didn't because there's a 76 version too. So, let's see what's coming up next. Well, I have been on the same five for, I don't know, a year and a half now. No Country for Old Men, Amadeus, which I've seen, uh, Parasite, Moonlight, and The Best Years of Our Lives. Okay. I watched Amadeus when it came out and I really liked it. Oh, okay, good. I thought it was before you really haven't heard much about it. Yeah, they've got to come up eventually. They do, right? Yeah, only got 24 movies left. I think, uh, I think Rebecca should be coming up at some point. Um, The Deer Hunter, Unforgiven, Left Side Story, and, I've got to add another one. Because you had All Quiet on the Western Front? Because I had All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm going to add The Silence of the Lambs. What? I think I've seen that maybe. Okay. The Silence of the Lambs. What do we say? I think it's going to be mine. I think it's going to be the best series of Our Lives. Is it going to be that? Okay. Um, I think we go, oh, see this stuff before we get chopped up? Who knows? That's been in a box I didn't see coming. Yeah, but you were actually wrong. Okay, so, The Silence of the Lambs. Oh, okay, wow. Wow. Wow. I'm surprised. I did not have time. I did not, well, well, the answer is The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. Okay, yeah, I thought I had time to read the books, but I don't have time to read the books because this is not The Return of what? The Return of the King. The Return of the King. Uh, yeah, I was not expecting this at all, but, yeah, there we go. Yeah, it's Slant's fault. Yeah, well, we'll get into that next time. So, Wow, Lord of the Rings. Okay. Okay. Wow, yeah. It'll be fun. Oh, snap. Oh, snap. That's not good. Well, we're not recording until the 15th. Oh, snap. I don't have time for that. All right. Well, we'll see. We'll do our best. We'll do our best. All right. So, until next time, signing off. Bye. Bye. Bye.