All Quiet on the Western Front, while it had its interesting moments, was overall a little hard to follow, especially at the beginning. Everything that it portrays (war=hell, the bitter irony of war, an entire generation permanently emotionally scarred, the mass deaths, people at home having no way of understanding unless they were there, the romantic nationalistic jingoism that sent so many young dreamers to cruel, pointless deaths), Wings does better. So if you're looking for a WWI movie, Wings is still the more compelling choice in my opinion. Even if the extras sometimes don't quite know how to fake-die.
I don't need to say that All Quiet was far superior to Broadway Melody, however, in nearly every way it is possible to be. We weren't longing for it to be over in the first five minutes.
Next up is Cimarron, the first Western to win Best Picture. Westerns are not my thing and this one is kinda lengthy, so we'll see how well I manage.
Watched: March 5, 2017
Addendum, looking back from 2019: If you're interested in some of the early inspiration for what eventually became Poppies and Roses, be sure to check out both Wings and All Quiet. You'll recognize a lot of small details that (I hope) gave Poppies the right World War I "feel." The germs of the idea came from watching these two movies practically back-to-back.
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