all quiet on the western front
i believe this remake of the black and white film of the 1930's is the superior of the two. The Richard Thomas version is less preachy than the Lew Ayers version. Also, the ending is not "telegraphed" to the viewer as was done in the black and white film. In the Richard Thomas film the end is sudden, a shot from nowhere! I believe thiss adds considerable dramatic impact to the main theme of this story.

Quality DVD
I had been using an old VHS version of this movie but it had been worn out after all of the years of viewing...the DVD is good quality considering this was a made-for-tv movie to begin with. Very pleased.

Quality of DVD
The movie was great. Very detailed. The story is developed well. It does take creative detours from the book, but that is to be expected. Very touching. However, the quality of the DVD was poor. There were scratches on the DVD and although it played pretty well the first time, it could not play through certain parts of the movie the next few times.

Greatest War Novel Ever Written
This movie is drawn from the classic World War I anti-war novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Originally written in German and published in Germany as "Im Westen nichts Neues", it was banned by the Nazis and Remarque was forced to flee Germany. It has been called the greatest war novel ever written, an assesment I would agree with though I might call it more of an anti-war novel.
Remarque knew where-of he wrote. He was in some of the fiercest fighting of World War I and was wounded five times, the last time very severely.
The movie follows the book about as well as any movie can follow a book.

A fine adaptation on its own merits
Although often dismissed - usually by those who haven't seen it - the1979 version of All Quiet On the Western Front is surprisingly impressive and well worth a look. Originally made for American television as one of a slew of superior adaptations of classic novels by producer Norman Rosemont that also included The Man in the Iron Mask, The Count of Monte Cristo, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, this earned a theatrical release outside the US and certainly stood up admirably on the bigger screen.

Unlike the 1931 version, this version follows the flashback structure of Remarque's novel much more closely and provides a slightly different ending (because it was a new adaptation of the novel rather than a remake of the Universal film, they couldn't use the butterfly ending invented for the 1930 film), but still retains much of its power. The cast is starrier but good - Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, Patricia Neal and Ian Holm are all memorable - the attack sequences are well staged and the ugliness and daily horrors of life in rat-infested trenches are portrayed with more discomforting realism than you'd expect for 70s US TV. Indeed, footage from them has even crept into historical documentaries over the years. It may not be as great and enduring a piece of filmmaking at Lewis Milestone's version, but it's still a forceful and worthwhile adaptation.

The version currently available on DVD is the theatrical release, which is slightly shorter than the US TV version.