Introduced by Houston Film Critics Society member Travis Leamons, Inside Pulse Movies In this Oscar-winning film based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel, a group of idealistic German soldiers face profound disillusionment as they witness conflict, death, and mutilation in the trenches and on the battlefields of World War I. “No one found it odd that an American film was being made in which all the main characters were German. ‘I don't think people thought of them as Germans or Americans – it was more about the utter futility of war, young people being exposed to it and dying and the beautiful way that Milestone finished the picture. The book had been so well received and I think, by that time, the First World War had been forgotten and Nazism was only just starting.” – actor Arthur Gardner (part of the film’s cast)