Best Pictures #28: 1929-30 (3rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Winner, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #28: 1929-30 (3^rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Winner

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front was not the first big budget war film to be nominated for or win Best Picture—that would be Wings (1927)—but it is the first antiwar film to be recognized by the Academy. This film opens with a title card explaining that it is “neither an accusation or a confession… least of all an adventure… It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war…” Wings was an adventure film about young men that dreamed of flying airplanes. In 7^th Heaven (1927) war was a fact of life that interrupts a couple’s romance. All Quiet on the Western Front has its main character telling a classroom full of boys eager to enlist in the army and go the frontlines, “It’s dirty and painful to die for your country.” The boys and their teacher call him a coward.

At the beginning of the film The Great War has just broken out and young Paul (Lew Ayers) jumps up from his desk at school to declare that he is enlisting in the army after his teacher gives an ultra-patriotic speech about the glory of war. The other young men in class follow suit and jump up and declare they will go off to war too. They all hope to go to the front and they all expect to come home in one piece. Their first experience as soldiers is the petty tyranny of the local postman turned drill sergeant. He makes sure the boys get plenty muddy and miss their leave, but that is just another school experience that in no way prepares them for real combat. The harsh realities of modern warfare overwhelm Paul and the rest of the new recruits almost immediately and their experiences only get worse and worse as the war goes on and on.

All Quiet on the Western Front had the large budget of $1.4 million (the equivalent of nearly $21 million in 2016 dollars). With the then recent stock market crash and ensuing depression less a year before, it was quite a risk for Universal and its studio head, Carl Laemlle, Jr. The risk turned out to be worthwhile. All Quiet on the Western Front was a hit at the box office and won Universal its first Best Picture Oscar. The film was less well received abroad however, most notably in Germany. Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, inspired by his own experiences at the front, this is one of the few films about World War I to portray Germans as the main characters. Laemmle himself was a German immigrant and he and director Lewis Milestone felt they made a film that was antiwar, not anti-German. The film caused riots in Germany, most notably Berlin, where the disruptions of screenings—mice were released into theaters showing the film—and subsequent riots—the beating of projectionists and anyone that looked Jewish—were led by Joseph Goebbels and Nazi thugs. The film was ultimately banned by the German government, though the Nazi party had yet to take power. Laemmle agreed to make cuts to the film and even took out an ad in a Berlin newspaper explaining that the film was not anti-German, it just objectively showed the experience of war. The film was rereleased but memories of the Nazi riots kept audiences away. It would be banned again by the Nazi government a few years later. Interestingly, it was banned in Poland for being pro-German.

There are several shots and sequences that keep All Quiet on the Western Front visually interesting; a stark contrast to the visually dull The Racket (1928), also directed by Milestone. Milestone won Best Director, his second Oscar, making him the first person to win more than one Oscar and All Quiet on the Western Front the first film to win awards for Best Picture and Best Director. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is an extended tracking shot that shows enemy soldiers running toward machinegun fire and being mowed down and tumbling into barbed wire. A bomb goes off in front of one enemy soldier and when the smoke clears we see a brief shot of his severed hands clutching the barbed wire. The rest of him is nowhere to be found.

I think this would have been a violent film for its time. Though there is very little blood, there are many, many dead bodies. There are explosions galore, bursting bombs, and hand to hand combat, but none of it is exciting in an adventurous way. One of the early battle scenes has the soldiers hunkered down under a prolonged bombardment. The shelling goes on and on and the roof of their bunker cracks dumping dirt on them. It is not the glorious adventure they imagined as schoolboys.

Perhaps because the characters, even the main characters, are all basic, thin archetypes, I was never fully engaged with this movie. They serve the plot just fine, but All Quiet on the Western Front feels like it is lacking full-fledged characters. The performances of Louis Wolheim and Lew Ayers may have been fine for the time that this film was released, but they do not hold up as well as the technical aspects. The heightened, exaggerated acting style of time feels at odds with the gritty realism All Quiet on the Western Front was aiming to achieve. 

All Quiet on the Western Front is impressive technically for its battle scenes and sound quality. Even more impressive is the fact that it was a big Hollywood movie that dared to acknowledge the many horrors of war at a time when sentimentality and happy endings were the order of the day. It is hard not to hold all of the antiwar film beats and clichés against All Quiet on the Western Front, however, as with its fellow Outstanding Production nominee, The Big House and its genre clichés, it must be kept in mind that this film is the source of those familiar beats and plot points. All Quiet on the Western Front is notable for being the first Best Picture winner that was more than pure escapist entertainment. Unfortunately it has not aged well.

Nominee: Universal

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Director: Lewis Milestone

Screenplay: George Abbott, adaptation & dialogue by Maxwell Anderson, adaptation by Del Andrews, based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque

Cast: Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayers, John Wray

Release Date: August 24^th, 1930

Total Nominations: 4, including Outstanding Production

Win(s): Outstanding Production, Director-Lewis Milestone

Other Nominations: Writing-George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews, Cinematography-Arthur Edeson

Best Pictures #6: 1927-28 (1st) Academy Awards: Outstanding Picture Nominee, The Racket (1928)

by A.J.

1927-28 (1^st) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Nominee

The Racket (1928)

The silent crime film The Racket was based on a popular Broadway play which starred Edward G Robinson as a mob boss. Robinson was subsequently brought to Hollywood by Warner Brothers to star in several of their gangster pictures, while the rights to the play were purchased by Howard Hughes. The film was produced for the Caddo Company and Paramount Famous-Lasky under the direction of Lewis Milestone, but without Robinson. The story centers upon honest policeman captain McQuigg and his clash with the powerful gangster Scarsi, who is protected by corrupt politicians. The implied setting of the film is Chicago, though the city is not named, and mob boss Nicholas Scarsi is a reference to real life Chicago gangster Al Capone, who was nicknamed “Scarface.” Both the play and film portray Chicago’s politicians as corrupt and police force as ineffective, as well as corrupt. The Racket was a hit with audiences and critics, but it was banned in Chicago (the play had also been banned by the city).

Though The Racket was a hit at the time, I think that this film stands out among all the nominees as being least worthy of a nomination – in either of the “best picture” categories. Straight away the movie has a conventional look and feel that lacks the artistic flair of the Unique and Artistic nominees, or even the other two Outstanding Picture nominees. There is one interesting visual effect in a scene set at a gangster’s funeral: as Scarsi looks at all of the other gangsters holding hats on their laps, the hats dissolve away to reveal that the men are all holding guns under their hats, ready to shoot. Aside from that moment, and a quick shot using silhouettes of police officers in the station, the cinematography is not noteworthy. In a film as dialogue and plot-heavy as this one, a degree of visual style is essential for keeping the viewer engaged.   

The film begins with Captain McQuigg and Scarsi not-so-casually meeting after McQuigg has been involved in a shooting. The two have obviously met before and they refer to each other by their nicknames: Mac (for McQuigg) and Nick (for Nicholas Scarsi). Scarsi makes a few gestures to try to charm McQuigg. He tells the policeman to stay clear of a street corner where Scarsi’s men plan to rob a rival gang and also invites McQuigg to his kid brother’s birthday party. We then see each man go to his office where it is clear each one is the boss of his respective racket. Scarsi’s office is in a brewery with bootleg barrels of alcohol. McQuigg’s office is, naturally, the police station. McQuigg later shows up to the street corner he was warned about where there is a shootout and he arrests one of Scarsi’s men. McQuigg eventually arrests Scarsi, but the gangster uses his political connections to get himself and his men freed from jail and to get McQuigg transferred.

As soon as there are reports of a shootout, the press arrive and they offer good comic relief. There is a humorous scene of reporters from rival newspapers sizing each other up, all of them trying to get the scoop on McQuigg’s sudden transfer. The reporters are all hoping for something to spark another fight between Scarsi and McQuigg, even if they have to start it themselves.

The Racket is a top-heavy film; the scenes on the streets and in night clubs, as well as the shootouts and car chases are all in the first half of the film. Once the arrests are made, McQuigg hatches a plan to put Scarsi away once and for all before his transfer, but the action and pace of the film go into low gear. The film begins to resemble a stage play with the plot advancing through dialogue, rather than action, and the characters are confined to a couple of different rooms making the film visually uninteresting. Throughout, the film uses mostly medium and wide shots, which sometimes makes it difficult to tell which characters are speaking, especially since the policemen all wear uniforms and the reporters and gangsters are dressed in similar-looking suits and hats. Since there are few to no close ups, it is difficult to distinguish the faces of minor characters. This is all very unfortunate since the story in the last half of the film depends so heavily upon the dialogue.

It was very difficult to find a copy of The Racket. For many years it was considered a lost film, but after Howard Hughes’s death the only existing print was found in his film collection along with another film he produced, Two Arabian Nights (also directed by Milestone in a more interesting style). It was restored by the film department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and occasionally airs on TCM. The only copy I could track down is part of a DVD collection of early Best Picture nominees called Academy Collection: The Envelope Please Vol. 1. I could find no other legitimate sources for watching The Racket, aside from catching it on TCM whenever it happens to air. The picture quality is not very clean, but it is acceptable; however, there is a DVD distributor watermark in the lower left hand corner of the film, which, while unobtrusive, is still annoying.

I wonder what about this film struck a chord with audiences and critics of the time? Perhaps it was The Racket’s portrayal of the ubiquitous crime and corruption caused by Prohibition, which was then in effect. Because the story was inspired by news and events of the day, it probably felt unfortunately true-to-life and had an immediate resonance. It shows an honest man’s struggle against seemingly insurmountable corruption and how trying to change just one part of the system means taking on the whole machine. But it’s all in a day’s work for good policemen like McQuigg.

Nominee: The Caddo Company, Paramount Famous-Lasky

Producer: Howard Hughes

Director: Lewis Milestone

Screenplay: Bartlett Cormack, based on his stage play; scenario by Del Andrews

Cast: Thomas Meighan, Louis Wolheim, Marie Prevost

Release Date: November 1^st, 1928

Total Nominations: 1, including Outstanding Picture