All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American pre-Code epic anti-war film based on the 1929 novel of the same name by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque. Directed by Lewis Milestone, it stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Slim Summerville, and William Bakewell.
The film opened to wide acclaim in the United States. Considered a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I, it made the American Film Institute's first 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1997. A decade later, after the same organization polled over 1,501 workers in the creative community, All Quiet on the Western Front was ranked the seventh-best American epic film.
In 1990, it was selected and preserved by the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was the first to win the Academy Awards for both Outstanding Production and Best Director at the 3rd Academy Awards Ceremony.
Despite its acclaim, the film's subject matter also drew controversy. Due to its anti-war and perceived anti-German messages, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party opposed the film. Nazi brownshirts under the command of Joseph Goebbels disrupted screenings as they repeatedly yelled out "Judenfilm!". Between 1930 and 1941, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of many films to be banned in Victoria, Australia, on the grounds of "pacifism" by chief censor Walter Cresswell O'Reilly