Class of 1916

By Gerald Clarke

All Quiet on the Western Front, Nov. 14, CBS, 8 p.m. E.S.T.

It has been followed by wars, revolutions, holocausts and terrors of all description, but World War I is the original horror of the 20th century, from which most of the others have sprung. Though the armistice was signed 61 years ago this week, the memory of what used to be called the Great War remains forever embedded in Western consciousness. It is just as well that it is, and fitting too that to mark that grim anniversary CBS will present a new version of Erich Maria Remarque's classic antiwar novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Shot in Czechoslovakia last summer, this three-hour film is remarkably exact in mood, feeling and physical trappings.

More surprising still, considering that it will be shown opposite such fluff as Charlies Angels, is the harrowing portrayal of life and death in the trenches. CBS deserves praise for showing it, particularly during a sweeps week, and it seems almost harsh to add that the result, though often good, does not measure up to that primitive Lew Ayres talkie of nearly half a century ago.

Though Remarque came to the plot early, his scenario is now familiar from too many other war movies: a group of boys go from school to training camp to the front lines, becoming men only to die. "You are our iron youth," their high school instructor (Donald Pleasence) tells them, with proper Germanic pride. "Iron youth be comes iron heroes." They are sent to the Western Front, where they find that iron, like everything else, quickly disintegrates in the trenches. A veteran, Katczinsky (Ernest Borgnine), teaches them the two essentials of staying alive -- stealing food and killing Frenchies. Never use a bayonet, he says; while you are pulling it out of a man's stomach, his comrade will get you. A shovel, on the other hand, can take your enemy's head off in one quick motion, leaving you free to defend yourself. The veteran and Paul Baumer, the youthful narrator (Richard Thomas), grow together, like father and son; but in the end none of Katczinsky's advice can save either himself or the doomed class of 1916.

The production is often strikingly effective, and Paul Monash has written a script that conveys pity without mawkishness. What either he or Director Delbert Mann, who has chosen a flat, documentary style, has not managed to evoke, however, is the passion of Remarque's book or the intensity of that creaky but wonderful 1930 movie. This All Quiet is so dutifully, ploddingly good, indeed, that it might almost be shown on PBS,

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