Entre Bäumer, Remarque e Milestone: Apontamentos acerca de Nada de Novo no Front

Abstract

This research intends to investigate the narrative and aesthetic constructions in All Quiet in the Western Front (1929), a book by Erich Maria Remarque, and the film of the same name (1930), directed by Lewis Milestone. These works picture a group of young German soldiers that enlist in the army of the “fatherland” to serve in the First World War at the instigation of their teacher, Kantorek, to then understand that the war is not what they were promised. From an initial reading, I analyze the works through varied concepts and specific theoretical references that arise from this reading — always trying to put the novel and the film first, so that the discussion here takes place based on them, and not despite them (as it is commonly done in other studies regarding All Quiet in the Western Front). In the first stage, I discuss elementary questions regarding the adaptation of a written production to a cinematographic one, considering, mainly, the social, historical and cultural context that constitute them and that also constitute the means in which they manifest. Then, based on the previous reflections, I propose to analyze passages from the book and movie that dialogue with specific issues of narrative — especially, of the report — and experience, focusing on the question of the possibility [or not] of the trench soldier narrating and transmitting their experiences of the war while considering, above all, social and relational issues, and how this is presented in the different narratives. I also propose to think on how All Quiet in the Western Front, in its time, approached or distanced itself from the archetypes of “war books/films” and, also, how it influenced other literary and cinematographic works that followed. Finally, I propose to analyze how the identities of the characters are constituted and how the memory of the Great War, individual and collective, is laid out to be the foundation of this construction from a perspective that disconnects the soldiers from the ideal of the hero as it is commonly established and that meets them as individuals, as humans: as “just […] a generation of men”.