Hacker Cinema
All Quiet on the Western Front
1930 · Film · 133 min
Part of All Quiet On The Western Front Collection
Directed by Lewis Milestone
When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.
3 positive5 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
It sucks that the copyright period in the US is so ridiculously long, but it still makes me happy to see stuff finally entering the public domain again.
I don't care much about Betty Boop and I don't really care about Pluto and Mickey all that much, but I'm very excited for The Maltese Falcon's novel being available, since I think that that one could actually be adapted into something pretty modern.
Also, All Quiet on the Western Front is very arguably one of the very best movies ever made, and certainly one of the very best of the 30's if nothing else, so I am very much looking forward to fan restorations.
There wasn't easy hover text or other way to reveal what's coming "this month" on their advent calendar. So spoilers for the impatient:
1 William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying 2 Arthur Ransome – Swallows and Amazons 3 Albert Einstein 4 Nan Shepherd – The Weatherhouse 5 Langston Hughes – Not Without Laughter 6 Wallace Stevens 7 Hermann Hesse – Narcissus and Goldmund 8 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film) 9 Barbara Hepworth 10 Evelyn Waugh – Vile Bodies 11 Geoffrey Dennis – The End of the World 12 Charlie Parker 13 Margaret Ayer Barnes – Years of Grace 14 Hellbound Train 15 Hannah Arendt 16 Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities 17 T. S. Eliot – Ash Wednesday 18 Thomas Mann 19 Agatha Christie – The Murder at the Vicarage 20 Franz Kafka – The Castle (English translation) 21 Walker Evans 22 Sigmund Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents 23 Stella Benson – The Far-Away Bride 24 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 25 E. H. Young – Miss Mole 26 P. G. Wodehouse 27 Vladimir Nabokov – The Defense 28 Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon 29 Roger Mais 30 Saadat Hasan Manto 31 Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – Insatiability
I agree for reading. The example of Cinderella's sisters chopping her feet isn't too much for a child to read about, but nobody wants to watch that in an animated film.
There's also a point where books become unsuitable for children. "All Quiet on the Western Front" with its gruesome WWI details probably wouldn't have been a good idea before 5th grade, and it was a good thing we were older reading "Cupid and Psyche" in Latin where the main character gets r---d within the first 3 pages.
How about these, instead?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front#Films
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishers_Weekly_list_of_bestselling_novels_in_the_United_States_in_the_1920s
Sinclair Lewis has multiple titles listed - best-selling author of the 1920s - later a Nobel Prize winner in literature.
I'm not familiar with a lot of those books, admittedly. But most books in the top 10 for those years are notable enough, that they have their own Wikipedia article. "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in particular are highly influential works. They've had movies etc. made and are surely familiar titles to the average American, even if they may not have read them.
The 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front is one of my favorites. The author should have listened to the Millstone who directed the movie. That and having a good script. If he had a good script Brando or another star would have been interested.
It looks like most of the political censorship in NZ was to suppress anti-war publications, which has been less of an issue since that particular law was passed. Other censorship laws blocked movies like All Quiet on the Western Front as well as communist publications.
The only political point of view I've noticed that was censored under that particular act (based on 5 minutes of perusing Wikipedia) was supporting euthanasia, which is illegal in NZ
I don't know that it's a correct reply for this comment, but it sparked in my mind the memory of "All Quiet on the Western Front" [1]
The initial premise of which is that the townsfolk talk war up as a glamorous and noble thing, so all the boys enlist at the outbreak of WWI, only to find what absolute hell it is.
Actually makes me want to go back and read the book. Or maybe re-read? I don't remember if we read it before we watched the film.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/355697.All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front