All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is a television movie produced by ITC Entertainment, released on November 14, 1979, starring actors Richard Thomas from The Waltons fame as Paul Baumer, and Ernest Borgnine as Katczinsky. It is based on the book of the same title by Erich Maria Remarque. The 1979 film was directed by Delbert Mann; though the acting of some of the performers was praised, the general opinion of most movie fans is it failed to equal the 1930 film directed by Lewis Milestone. Nevertheless, the film has its share of tension and death, and in the spirit of the novel, manages to convey... a sense of desolation, hardship, and waste. Late in the film, the turmoil and wretchedness of the main character, Paul Baumer, is manifest in his extreme disassociation while home on furlough. Most of the movie was filmed in Czechoslovakia in what was one of the first US/UK produced films to be shot in a Communist Bloc country. The film follows young Paul Baumer, who during World War I enlists in the Imperial German Army with many of his high school friends, after being indoctrinated by their teacher as to the glory and superiority of German culture.
more