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Filming All Quiet on the Western Front: 'brutal cutting, stupid censors, bigoted politicos' ANDREW KELLY, 1998
London, I.B. Tauris
pp. 256, Illus.; $39.50/L25.00 (cloth)
Andrew Kelly has written a compelling account of the making of a compelling motion picture. Here, for the first time, is the full story behind the first great masterpiece of the sound cinema; its origin in the imagination of Erich Maria Remarque and its realisation under the able direction of Lewis Milestone and flair of its producer Carl Laemmle Jr. Kelly goes on to chart the film's impact on the world of 1930 and its subsequent near destruction at the hands of a succession of censors, propagandists and studio hacks in the years following its release. He also discusses Universal Studio's films of Remarque's two forgotten sequels: The Road Back (1937) and Three Comrades (1938).
Kelly's book opens with a useful survey of the treatment of the Great War before All Quiet on the Western Front in film and literature, but it is in his account of the production history that this work really shines. Kelly has unearthed a wealth of detail, sometimes funny, sometimes moving, but always illuminating. It is, for example, noticeable that, from the outset, the film was planned by Laemmle...