Plot: Paul Baumer (Richard Thomas), a healthy optimist, graduates during World War I and like his twenty classmates volunteers for the German Imperial Army. Their naives romantic illusion starts turning sour during training in Oldenburg under sadistic Corporal Himmelstoss (Sir Ian Holm), who later proves himself a coward at the front, yet is decorated by Kaiser Wilhelm (Denys Graham), unlike many braver boys. Sensitive Franz Kemmerich (George Winter), the friend whose mother made Paul promise to watch over his mate, is the first to perish in the hospital, where amputations and neglect abound, yet when it's Paul's turn to be treated for a wound, he survives. Many friends perish on the French battlefields or in the trenches: hellholes under shell, and toxic gas-threat, full of mud and corps-picking rats, where veteran Stanislaus "Kat" Katczinsky (Ernest Borgnine) tries to teach the ever younger recruits practical survival skills, although often too late. Even easy killing of enemies becomes gruesome when the boys meet a deadly wounded French soldier and hungry girls face to face
Alternative Plot: At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer (Richard Thomas) is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside. The film is based on the classic novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque.
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