Lewis Milestone’s “All Quiet on the Western Front’’ (1930) is one of the most beloved films of the early talk♓ie period, a much-revived anti-war classic that won the third Oscar for Best Picture.
But hardly anyone has heard🦂 of James Whale’s “The Road Back’’ (1937), its star-crossed sequel that was also based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. The target of an extraordinary suppression campaign by Adolf Hitler’s representative in Hollywood, it was rarely seen after 1942 in the United States, and then only in a severely edited 1939 reissue version♓.
The Museum of Modern Art will present the US debut of a sparkling new Library of Congress restoration of the original release version of this fascinating film — funded by Martin Scorsese’s Film Found🤡ation — at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
“It’s the Holy Grail if you’re an admirer of director James Whale,’’ says film historian and film preservationiಞst David Stenn, who discovered a 35mm print of the uncut version at the UCLA Film and Television Archives and brought it to Scorsese’s attention. “He said, ‘My God, we have to do something about this right away!’ ”
Given the acclaim for “All Quiet,’’ Universa🃏l Pictures was interested in filming Remarque’s less popular follow-up novel as early as 1931, says film historian Tꦡhomas Doherty of Brandeis University, the author of “Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.’’
But even before Hitler’s rise to power, there were warnings from industry censors about potential problems in Germany, where Hitler’s brown-shirted thugs had fomented riots that forced the removal of🐟 “All Quiet’’ — which depicted disillusioned German troops during the final days of World War I — from the country’s screens.
Doherty said Production Code Authority files show the project remained on the back burner until 1936, when Universal had largely given up doing business in Hitler’s Germany. The industry ce🐭nsors at the PCA, which had urged the studios to avoid end⛄angering the Germany market by calling out Hitler, were beginning to rethink that stance.
Georg Gyssling, the Nazi counsel in Hollywood, who at one time had wielded﷽ influence with the PCA, tried hard to derail “The Road Back,’’ which powerfully depicts the demoralization and civil unrest that remobilized soldiers faced in the Fath꧃erland after the end of World War I.
The British Whale — Universal’s top director, responsible for “Frankenstein,” “The Bride of Frankenstein” and the definitive 1936 version෴ of “Show Boat,” and who was a German prisoner of war during World War I — refused to show up for a meeting with Gyssling, who demanded 21 cuts to the script.
that Universal made the cuts, Mike Mashon (of the Library of Cꦦongress), Doherty and Stenn say there’s no hard evidence the film was actually censored at Gyssling’s demand.
Rebuffed by the PCA an🧸d Universal, Gyssling tried to bully all 60 actors who were cast in “The Road Back.’’ He sent them each letters threatening that none of their films would ever be shown in Germany if they appeared in a movie deemed “detrimental to German prestige.’’
‘This isn’t a Nazi country, and there’s no reason to adopt Nazi standards.’
- A New York World-Telegram editorial
This created an international furor.
“This isn’t a Nazi country, and there’s no reason to adopt Nazi standards,’’ the New York World-Telegram wrote in one of many angry editorials, and the US 🥂State Department fired off a stern protest to Berlin over Gyssling’s strongarm tactics.
“The German ambassador has instructed the Germa🐓n counsel at Los Angeles to refrain from issuing further warnings to Am💜erican citizens,’’ the State Department wrote to one of the groups protesting Gyssling’s heavy-handed tactics.
That didn’t mean that Whale’s version reached the screen entirely intact. Universal’s founder, the German-born, vehemently anti-Nazi Carl Laemmle, lost control of the studio in 1936, and the studio’s new owners were concerned about their $1 million investment in the lavishly produced anti-war movie — shot on many of the same outdoor sets familiar from the studi🦄o’s horror classics — which seemed increasingly out-of-step with American political sentiments.
The film’s top-billed actor, John King — a sing🅘er best known for starring in the adventure serial “Ace Dru💫mmond” — has some powerful scenes, but lacks the screen presence of his predecessor in “All Quiet,’’ Lew Ayres, whose character famously dies at the end of that movie.
A writer was brought in to craft additional comedy scenes for Slim Summerville — the only per🎉former returning from “All Quiet’’ as one of the veterans — to lighten the grim tone of a film that in some ways plays like a predecesso♛r to the post-World War II Oscar winner “The Best Years of Our Lives.’’ When Whale balked, another director, Frank Tuttle, was brought in to shoot these scenes, and a disgusted Whale renounced what had been a passion project for him.
“The Road Back,’’ which originally ran 100 minutes, was greeted with respectful reviews that compared it unfavorably with “All Quiet’’ when it arrived in theaters at the end of 1937. It did strong enough business that it was reissued two years later in a drastically cut 70-minute version that added several anti-Nazi scenes, including one with an actor p💜laying Hitler making a speech in a ཧbeer hall.
For comparison’s sake, the Library of Congress also restored this shorter version of “The Road Back,’’ which will be s🔥hown at MoMA on Saturday at 4 p.m.
Stenn says that author Remarque was apparently so displeased with the adaptatio🅘n that he declined to renew Universal’s contract for the screen rights when they expired in 1942. (New York University, as sole heir to his widow, actress Paulette Goddard, now holds all his literary rights.)
The shorter version of “The Road Back’’ has been shown sporadically, and the film has never been shown on US television or had a legal video release. Stenn, who attended the world premiere of the restoration earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival — the first time the film was ever shown in Germany — says he hopes the film will 🤪become widely available thanks to the restoration.
“The futility of war was a very important theme to Whale,’’ Stenn said of the disillusioned director, who retired in 1942, died in 1957, and was played by Ian McKellen in “Gods🐽 and Monsters’’ (1998). “He wanted this 🌄to be the crowning achievement of his career — and it turns out that the long version, which is clearly mostly Whale’s vision, was hiding in plain sight at UCLA.’’