Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT 123 than did Remarque in his book. Not only is the novel there on the screen, incident for incident, but there is something more, something culled, possibly, from the smallest paragraphs in the story. Universal have not only resisted the temptation to embellish the narrative but because of their fidelity to the printed page, the film is over-long and inclined to be repetitive. After seeing Milestone's picture through three or four times, the predominating reaction that was left on my mind — apart, that is, from its propagandist drive which to me was effective only on the first performance— was the painstaking manner in which the thousand and one incidents of the novel have been skilfully incorporated with the onward march of the film. The scenario-writers, Maxwell Anderson and George Abbott, have done their difficult task of adaptation extremely well. It is not easy to adapt a book of this kind, written in a graphic and somewhat impulsive style, especially when the action is episodic rather than continuous. On reading the novel again after seeing the film, I have nothing but admiration for the continuity woven by the scenarists, and in particular for the skill with which they have shrewdly selected the most interesting detail from a pictorial point of view and entwined it with the main events. The timing of the first attack is masterly. All through the opening sequences, from the cleverly matched-up tracking shots in the schoolroom, the gradual quietening of the blaring military band into the schoolmaster's voice, the eagerness of the young recruits, the grim irony of the parade-ground scenes, up till the scene in the dug-out, we are waiting for