General Data:
Original: All quiet on the western front
USA 1930
Direction:Lewis Milestone
Script: Maxwell Anderson nach dem Roman von Erich Maria Remarques
Camera: Arthur Edeson
Duration: ca. 140 min.
New musical arrangement for organ, percussion, and tape by Wilfried Kaets.
Short and Sweet:
„At the front, you are either dead or alive, that’s all.” All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story of the young high school student Paul, who goes to war for Germany during World War I. His teacher persuades his entire senior class, including Paul, to enlist for military service. Shortly after, the initial enthusiasm for fighting for the fatherland wanes, and the young troops wish for nothing more than to return home. While on leave, Paul visits his family and realizes that he no longer has anything in common with them or his old teacher. Back at the front, he encounters even younger soldiers who are sent into battle as cannon fodder…
About:
In the eyes of many film critics, the two-time Oscar-winning film All Quiet on the Western Front is the ultimate anti-war film. Remarkably, the film was shot in two versions simultaneously, right at the transition from silent to sound film, which is evident in the acting and dialogues. Despite largely featuring sound (especially noises), it still follows the spirit of the fully developed and camera-technically “liberated” silent film aesthetics of its time. Apart from the marching music in the opening credits and the final scene, there is no film score in All Quiet on the Western Front, aside from the many battle noises within the film. The film was one of the first to be released in a dubbed version for the German market. The last two known surviving silent film copies (the rest were discarded as “superfluous” during the onset of the sound film era), which are stored in the Library of Congress in Washington, USA, differ little from the later sound film versions that are still in circulation today. For many actors, it was one of their first sound films, and for many of the young soldiers’ actors, it was one of their first films ever.
Musical Score:
Kaets utilizes the unique sonic capabilities of the “giant instrument” organ in a variety of ways, complementing and contrasting it with percussion and playback. In doing so, he composes a contemporary film score that respectfully allows space for the old, immensely powerful, and still influential images, while simultaneously breathing a new, distinct life into them.