Entertainment

‘All Quiet’ even quieter

Oscar’s third winner of the Best Picture honors, the classic antiwar drama “All Quiet on the Western Front’’ has had an unusually long and bumpy history on its way to its superbly restored Blu-ray debut on Tuesday.

Running 140 minutes when it premiered in 1930, the film suffered politically oriented cuts around the world. Adolf Hitler, no fan, had his supporters unleash rats during the original German run and banned it outright when he came to power.

But this powerful story of a German youth (Lew Ayres) who suffers horrors in the trenches of World War I endured, even when Universal added anti-Nazi narration for a 1939 reissue — and a new closing scene where books, including the Erich Maria Remarque novel that served as the movie’s basis, are shown being burned in Germany.

By the time of the film’s 20th-anniversary reissue in 1950, the running time had shrunk to 101 minutes. Director Lewis Milestone was especially incensed that music had been added to the film’s famous final scene — the hand of Ayres’ character reaching for a butterfly, then cut down by a sniper just as the Armistice is being declared. The original US release had music only over the opening titles and first scene, showing a military parade.

This version showed for decades on TV, and it was not until 1998 that the Library of Congress reconstructed a 133-minute version without the offending climactic music.

The Blu-ray (one of a series issued for Universal’s 100th anniversary) showcases a new digital restoration of this nearly-complete version, allowing Arthur Edeson’s striking cinematography and the then state-of-the-art special effects to be more fully appreciated than in the somewhat murky DVD renditions.

The major bonus is a high-definition transfer of a very rarely-seen “silent’’ version with title cards, full orchestral score, sound effects and a few snippets of French dialogue that was apparently prepared for European showings.

As Leonard Maltin notes in his newly written introduction, “some film scholars actually prefer this smoothly-edited edition . . . to the familiar talkie because of its vigorous pacing and vigorous score.’’ I’d agree — some of the alternate camera angles are also better.

The 40-page commemorative book that the Blu-ray is packaged in (along with a DVD disc) prominently mentions the film’s forgotten 1937 sequel, “The Road Back,’’ based on another Remarque novel — and a huge flop after Universal agreed to make numerous cuts at the request of German officials.

Though it was directed by Universal’s top helmer of the 1930s, James Whale (“Frankenstein,’’ “The Invisible Man’’) and has apparently never even been shown on TV in the United States, “The Road Back’’ is inexplicably missing from this otherwise exemplary package. Too bad.