The Music of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’.
A philosophical and aesthetic defense.
The German war film has a dark past in which the medium of music plays a role as crucial as editing and camera work. An essential study on this topic for German film history is the appendix on propaganda and Nazi war movies from Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler. Siegfried Kracauer looks at primarily two things, on the one hand, the newsreel material and on the other hand, the two films Feuertaufe and Sieg im Westen. Both films have a documentary style that is distorted from today’s perspective, which is why they consist mainly of newly edited newsreel material (see SK1, p. 331f.). In the following, this essay will focus primarily on Siegfried Kracauer’s analysis of the film music in these propaganda films and less on the cinematography itself.
According to Kracauer’s analysis, by strictly following the recordings and the ideological statements, the music intensifies these two medial levels in order to simultaneously use them as alienation and to contradict both medial levels (see SK1, p. 338). Thus, according to Kracauer, it is not the footage but the music that turns war machines into “a toy” (SK1, p. 338) and it is also the music that frees the worn-out soldiers from their lassitude (see SK1, p. 339). Thus, in this case, the film music occupies an essential position in the bending of the actual reality towards the ideologically desired reality and thus itself exhibits a propagandistic function. The documentary image, which is often created on the real battlefield and thus is as real as it can be (see SK1, p. 337), can, according to Kracauer, be turned against itself in its message with the help of music. The authentic cruelty on the side of the image thus becomes manipulable (see SK1, p. 339).
This fact, however, implies the closeness of All Quiet on the Western Front and the propaganda film, since it, too, becomes fundamentally susceptible to the same alienation, not with real footage from the battlefield, but with hyperrealistic staged shots. Furthermore, despite all the brutality of the images, there is no denying that there is a certain appeal to these very images. And this brings me to my thesis: without its soundtrack, All Quiet on the Western Front would be just another war movie, but by no means an anti-war film. It is the soundtrack that not only prevents but counteracts ideological appropriation through pathos and sacrifice.
At this point, a connection arises to Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, which deals, among other things, with the mass-media of film, radio, and television and states in its analysis that the enlightening potential associated with these media turns into mythology (see TWA1, p. 6). What Adorno and Horkheimer mean is precisely what Kracauer describes in his text. Although inherent in both of these mediums is the possibility of showing things as they are, they instead prefer to rely on maintaining the illusion that the images show things as they are, even though they never actually show the things as they are (see TWA1, p. 134).
According to Adorno and Horkheimer, however, this is a central feature of the culture industry, which tries to make its products seem as visually genuine and real as possible, when in fact they represent the exact opposite (see TWA1, p. 134), the Platonic shadows on the wall. Thus, if music, as Kracauer describes, turns detached shots of moving tanks into an army that pushes forward (see SK1, p. 339), then the potential for precisely this displacement of reality also resides in it. In this specific case, it is, in fact, the music that creates the distinction between the reality actually captured by the camera and its subsequent effect in the film. An immediate connection to Sam Mendes’ film Jarhead (2005) arises as soon as we look at the scene in the movie theater. The film shows a similar phenomenon there, and just as described by Kracauer, the music plays a crucial role. Whenever the orchestra becomes lively (while we watch death machines at work), the marines in the movie theater go berserk in ecstasy.
This reflection becomes provocative when we look at the film Saving Private Ryan (1998) without music, in particular the opening sequence. What we see are gray colors; a gray flag; a man rushing down a path, people coming towards him; he is followed by a family shown by several close-ups. His gaze purposefully forward. The camera operates calmly. Only discreet cuts are deliberately used. Then, in a crane shot slightly from above, the full extent of the war is revealed to us. We see numerous graves, row upon row, each one exactly identical to the one before.
Now we watch the scene a second time, but this time with music. The image changes, it shifts. Suddenly, the American flag in the wind no longer seems as colorless as before. The music retrogradely changes the image. Now, all of a sudden, it feels as if what is shown is sad, but nonetheless not without meaning. By meaning, I mean the particular lie to justify a war, be it an offended national character, be it the fight to keep democracy or simply the desire to carry a gun and be somebody, as suggested in Fight Club, for example. A wonderful song by Buffy Saint-Marie appropriately says, “He’s the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war / And without him all this killing can’t go on” (Universal Soldier). According to Buffy Saint-Marie, the soldier is both the executive hand of the war and the weapon by which he dies.
There is no soundtrack to a war film that illustrates this better than Volker Bertelmann’s All Quiet on the Western Front. While film composers such as John Williams attempt to underscore the image in the case of Saving Private Ryan, Volker Bertelmann recognizes that the image itself faces a task it cannot overcome on its own. No matter how brutal the depiction of war, the images on the screen always have an affirmative effect. His way out is radical minimalism. At this point, radical minimalism does not mean the number of different instruments; in fact, if you listen closely, it becomes clear how diverse and magnificently arranged the entire soundtrack is. However, this brilliance is not something that pushes itself to the forefront, as it does with John Williams. Instead, it remains in the background of the composition due to the high dynamics and quiet mixing, except for the three bass notes. The way it is presented tells us what is truly important. There is little room for humanism in war.
At the same time, however, this fact is precisely what is at the core of the criticism for many, the clumsy simplicity of the composition. The soundtrack is considered boring and doesn’t lead anywhere. Furthermore, it supposedly lacks complexity. This criticism overlooks several crucial points. First, the soundtrack is not about showing the beauty of war; there is nothing beautiful in war. Second, the soundtrack is also not about conveying an emotion or connecting to the scene, just the opposite. Volker Bertelmann’s soundtrack could also be described as a journalistic composition, that is, a composition that maintains a critical distance from its counterpart, the image.
The criticism of the lack of complexity misses its target in that it fails to recognize film music as a work of art in its own right. This is an essential characteristic of film, namely to represent not only one medium, but to unite many different mediums. Furthermore, this kind of criticism ignores a crucial fact: fewer notes also means no notes without intention. The simplicity of the composition at the same time means that there is no escape from it. While with John Williams’ soundtrack we can confidently engage with the admittedly beautifully composed brass section and sink into it, the soundtrack of All Quiet on the Western Front leaves us no choice but to hear (there is a difference between listening and hearing).
Siegfried Kracauer describes something similar in his Theory of Film when he writes about the sudden onset of silence. According to Kracauer, the contrast created by the sudden omission of the music reinforces the image presented in the silence (see SK2, p. 188). As a cause, Kracauer states that the notes of the music, even if they can no longer be heard auditory, still seem to be present in our minds and subsequently continue to have their effect on us (see SK2, p. 189). In our case, this means that the memory of the broken harmony of the presented image and the music, reinforces the newly formed harmony in its statement. This is why the criticism that the soundtrack does not tell its own story is so misplaced. The music does tell its own story, but it does not necessarily follow the same beat (see TWA2, p. 42) as the film does, no, it breaks away from it and emancipates itself. In this case, it overcomes the invariant of time (see TWA2, p. 42) and consequently also the invariant of film music as such.
But what story does the music tell? In fact, it is an elementary one and all the more brutal in its expressiveness. The first title of the album does not carry the title ‘Remains’ without a reason. Because the only thing that remains the same in war is also the leitmotif of the soundtrack itself. The death of mostly young men in the mud, who are then stripped to clean the uniforms, to be repaired so that they can then be passed on to the next young man and so the circle continues, it remains. The soundtrack makes us realize, much like Buffy Saint-Marie, that there is no beginning and no end to war as long as there are justifications. It is always young people who lose their lives in the battle, which is ideologized as honorable. Even beautifully arranged brass and a massive orchestra can’t change that, maybe they even confirm it.
Therefore, in the case of this soundtrack, we are in no way dealing with an alienation effect, as in the case of the Nazi war movie analyzed by Kracauer. And also not, as in the heroizing case of John Williams. In fact, it is the three bass notes that constantly remind us of the falling men on the battlefield, while the commanders are enraged over old croissants. The music and the narrative complement each other beautifully, just not on the level of obviousness, but instead on the level of abstraction. It is only through our subsequent reflection that we find ourselves able to unite music and image in their message.
But why then the criticism (some of which even speaks of a devaluation of the film by the music)? One possible explanation is provided by our expectations. We are used to pathetic music playing while people sacrifice their lives for a higher good (whatever that is). The film adaptation of Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson provides us with a very familiar example. At all times, the music tells us how to feel. At no point, we are left alone with the story and our thoughts. Everything is clear as day. These are the good guys, these are the bad guys. This is friendship, this is camaraderie, this is heroism, this is good. The actually much more daring act would be to leave the viewer to his own thoughts, and not to drag him patronizingly through the already linear and obvious story. All Quiet on the Western Front defies the dogma of film scores and thus breaks our expectations. Many may not like that, but it’s exactly right.
In a very interesting aphorism from Adorno’s Minima Moralia, he describes another unique feature of this soundtrack. According to Adorno, the sheer length of a text has no value, to refer to it is simply trivial and naive (see TWA3, p. 95). The same applies, in my opinion, to the composition of film music. What use has an abundance of themes if they contradict the actual message? Three notes, that’s all it takes to describe the bestiality of war and its return. That is art, everything else is simply kitsch in the guise of sentimentality. The score to All Quiet on the Western Front contains no note too much. The criticism that the music is not appropriate for the film stems from the fact that we are used to inappropriate film music. We are simply no longer used to the omission, the appeal to the absolute minimum, the pure message. And yet, we used to be, if we think back, for example, to the art of classical modernism (Theo van Doesburg, Mondrian, Sophie Tauber-Arp, etc.). Volker Bertelmann’s soundtrack, like much of the art of that time, can certainly be described as avant-garde (avant-garde comes from the military language and means something like vanguard) and it’s nice to see that the Academy sees it the same way.
All too often, film music is denied its own potential when critics and consumers demand that it must completely subordinate itself to the film image. But it is precisely in the critical discrepancy between the music and what is depicted where a new space opens up for an independent work of art that exists far from plump beauty and ultimately grants complete creativity. Only through a critical distance towards the rest of the work, it can grow into a work of its own. Music itself, precisely through its emancipation from the film image, generates the possibility of a dialectic that in the end, precisely through its separation, becomes one with the image; they synthesize. Similar to Hegel’s preface from the Phenomenology of Spirit, we reach a thing precisely when, instead of staying with it, we leave the thing itself, we separate from it so that we can reach it (see HE, p. 11).
Good film music is not characterized by transferring the film’s image into the form of notes or simply underscoring it. Good film music is created precisely when we begin to question its intention because only then we can speak of it as an independent work of art in the first place. Because only then it provides an expansion of the medium itself. Precisely for this reason, in criticism there is always also the confirmation of an artistic character. Only when music conflicts with the listening habits, it can resolve the conflict between the competing mediums for our attention. By initially contradicting what is shown, it underlines and affirms all the more clearly the moments in which image and music meet. Only then the music can become truly pacifistic.
Bibliography:
HE: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Hamburg: Nikol Verlag 2021.
SK1: Siegfried Kracauer, Von Caligari zu Hitler. Eine psychologische Geschichte des Films, Hg. von Inka Mülder-Bach und Ingrid Belke, Band 2.1: Werke, Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2012, S. 329–377.
SK2: Siegfried Kracauer, Theorie des Films. Die Errettung der äußeren Wirklichkeit, Hg. von Karsten Witte, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1993.
TWA1: Theodor W. Adorno und Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente (E-Book), Frankfurt am Main: Fischer E-Books 2010.
TWA2: Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, Hg. von Rolf Tiedemann, Band 7: Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1997.
TWA3: Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, Hg. von Rolf Tiedemann, Band 4: Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 2021.
