Lewis Milestone
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1917 (2019)
Directed by Sam Mendes
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), A Walk in the Sun (1945)
Themes Plot
With the exception of All Quiet on the Western Front , stand-outs about the first conflict of machine warfare are sparse.
Most of the acclaimed films about World War I - from "Lawrence of Arabia" and "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "War Horse" and first Academy Award winner "Wings" - are sprawling epics.
The list of great films about World War I in Europe is surprisingly short: After the acknowledged masterpieces All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Paths of Glory (1957), there aren’t many more worth discussing.
But its inherent devotion to life and beauty is part of its power, in the same way that Lewis Milestone’s quietly wrenching 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front —a story not about the experience of English soldiers but of German ones, adapted from Erich Maria Remarque’s novel—stressed that individual moments of life, grasped and held tight, are the only real protection we have against the pointlessness of war.
Reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan in its concept and All Quiet on the Western Front in its display of the battle grounds, 1917 pulls in tight on the storyline.
That exclusive list includes All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), La Grande Illusion (1937), 1960’s Paths of Glory, Wings (1927), and War Horse (2015).
For another, Nick Marshall's character is such an anachronistic Rat Pack knockoff, down to the lipstick kiss on his face, his love of Frank Sinatra and his willingness to break into a Gene Kelly-influenced soft shoe at the slightest provocation, that you'll think at times you've wandered into the long-delayed remake of "Ocean's 11."
Unfortunately the film overall can’t match wits with “Ocean’s 11”…the schemes here are ridiculous and not that fun, and thus “Focus” leans heavily on Smith to charm us solo for two hours.
The Fabelmans (2022)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Themes
The most influential war movie since Lewis Milestone‘s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), which director Spielberg cites as a key inspiration, Saving Private Ryan is one of the great directorial accomplishments in cinema.
Based on William Wellman's 1942 crime-comedy movie "Roxie Hart"--in which Ginger Rogers played doll-faced Roxie and Adolphe Menjou was the duplicitous Flynn--the story carries us back to the high-spirited, violent gangland Chicago of "The Front Page" or "Some Like It Hot."
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Directed by Terrence Malick
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
There is still the chance for a single moment to crystalise; and this is represented by the film's most indelible image, a butterfly flapping past the running soldiers, blithely indifferent to what they do; the kind of single moment that catches your eye and holds your attention for just a second, and moves on (it could also, arguably, be a reference to the other famous butterfly in war cinema, from All Quiet on the Western Front , but that's a bit of a stretch).
Starship Troopers (1997)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Themes
In a scene reminiscent of All Quiet on the Western Front, high-school student Johnny (Casper Van Dien), his pal Carl (former Doogie Hauser Neil Patrick Harris), Johnny's girlfriend Carmen (Denise Richards), and tomboyish Dizzy (Dina Meyer, the only character with any flesh and blood) listen in boredom to a lecture on citizenship from their instructor, one-armed veteran Jean (Michael Ironside).
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced by A Walk in the Sun (1945), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Themes Plot Visuals
Here the film establishes the kind of group camaraderie found in other war films, most notably in one of my favorites, Lewis Milestone's 1945 classic, "A Walk in the Sun."
Like the motley crew in Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun (1945), Miller's squad roam through the chaos of no man's land, bumping into anecdotes ranging from the poignant and heartstopping to the predictable and pat.
Spielberg clearly had in mind to emulate some of the best war movies ever made - "All Quiet on the Western Front,"…
Ultimately, it lacks the resonance of such classics as All Quiet on the Western Front, but (apart from its corny bookend sequences) this is still well-meaning, strongly acted and slickly mounted, and ranks among the director's very best films.
I was reminded of "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Milestone's battle scenes were uncommonly graphic for that era and have been cited by Steven Spielberg as an influence on the beginning of Saving Private Ryan .
(See the original-original Sinatra-starring “Ocean’s 11” from 1960.)
Frank Sinatra didn’t have to worry about computerized vault locks and high-definition surveillance cameras when he played master conman Danny Ocean in the original Ocean’s 11 in 1960.
While Debbie and Lou stand in a Subway waiting for Constance (a scene-stealing Awkwafina) to get a sandwich, you can hear Sammy Davis Jr. singing “Love is All Around” — a nod to the Rat Packer who starred in the franchise original, 1960’s “Ocean’s 11,” and TV’s feminist icon Mary Tyler Moore.
More importantly, a lot of the film mirrors Soderbergh’s 2001 remake of the original Ocean’s 11.
Paths of Glory (1957)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Themes
Kubrick was a movie buff who echoed classics like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Howard Hughes' "Hell's Angels," and directors like Max Ophuls and Ingmar Bergman, in his work here.
Exemplary of most of the battles in WWI, and also clearly illustrated in All Quiet on the Western Front, the territory gained was often only a few hundred yards at a time.
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), A Walk in the Sun (1945)
Themes
It's a familiar situation, popularized in Erich Maria Remarque's antiwar novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" a half a century earlier, but it continues to carry a punch.
This is a film that can be listed with heavy-hitters like Johnny Got His Gun, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket as one of the defining war pictures this nation has yet produced.
In this regard, Kubrick's slant on the events of war is more akin to Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" than it is to more traditional things like "Saving Private Ryan," "The Sands of Iwo Jima," "A Walk in the Sun," or even "The Thin Red Line" or "Platoon."
An improvement on the Boris Karloff-starrer, it's still no The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone's pre-serial artifact noir), and Industrial Light & Magic's computer manipulations are neither realistic enough nor stylized enough to transcend.
If he isn’t quite as odd as Marlon Brando playing Fletcher Christian as a shrill fop in the remake of “Mutiny on the Bounty,” he comes close.
In “The Gentlemen,” a film that has a lot in common with the original “Ocean’s 11” (1960) and its early 2000 reboots by Steven Soderbergh, a group of shady men and outright gangsters shoot, bash and chase each other in circles until the music or the movie stops.
As with Frank Sinatra, he built a manic-depressive career, and like Sinatra (who used to tell the director of the original Ocean’s 11 when it was time to wrap things up so the boys could go ring-a-dinging), he doesn’t necessarily take cinema as seriously as, say, Paul Thomas Anderson.
But, then, it was never meant to be.Instead, "Ocean's Twelve" is meant to be more of a throwback to the old 1960 Sinatra/rat-pack film, "Ocean's 11," that inspired both of the newer films.
The original original "Ocean's 11," made in 1960 by the Rat Pack, was a send-up of 1950s caper movies (it was inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville's French classic "Bob le Flambeur").
If Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and the rest of the Rat Pack that starred in the original "Ocean's 11" saw the remake, they probably would have been proud.
The King's Man (2021)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Plot
Indeed, Vaughn seems to have made two movies at the same time: a slick franchise-friendly prequel and a gnarly riff on Sam Mendes’ 1917, or maybe even Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
Dunkirk (2017)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Themes
The symbolic, existential dimension was also present in some of the better war movies, beginning with Lewis Milestone’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 1930 and on through David Lean’s “Bridge on the River Kwai” from 1957 (both won Oscars), and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), which earned Steven Spielberg an Oscar for best director.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
influenced by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Themes
The ambivalence and perspective and distinctive vision we get in all memorable films about war and espionage and violence, from All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) to The Battle of Algiers (1965) to Waltz with Bashir (2008), is totally absent, leaving only the procession of facts (and unmarked prevarications), from the harrowing 9/11 emergency phone-call recordings to the final dead-body shots.
Stir in Psycho, Rashomon, John Huston's Key Largo, a whiff of Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, and a smidgeon of Huston's Beat the Devil and assorted other what-the-hell buddy pics, notably Rat Pack items such as the original Ocean's 11 or Robin and the 7 Hoods.