ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT at Film Forum

Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim in All Quiet on the Western Front

The silent version of the best picture Academy Award winner All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), in my view the greatest war movie ever made, will be screened at New York City’s Film Forum on Monday, August 3. Showtimes are at 3:20, 6:50, and 9:20.
Having been restored and preserved by the Library of Congress, and featuring two reels cut from the original talkie print following the film’s East and West Coast premieres, this silent version — edited from the foreign negative — comes with musical accompaniment intended for foreign markets where theaters hadn’t yet been equipped to sound. (I should add that in the silent [...]

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON Screening

A newly restored print of Frank Capra’s 1939 Best Picture nominee Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Claude Rains, will be screened tonight, July 20, as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939.” The screening will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will begin at 7 p.m., with the tenth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the Columbia animated short Scrappy’s Added Attraction.
By the time Mr. Smith Goes to Washington came out in 1939, [...]

Best Films – 1930

Made at the dawn of the sound era, All Quiet on the Western Front remains the best war film ever made. Despite some brave (and not so brave) attempts by other filmmakers ever since, no other motion picture I’ve seen has captured the horrors of war with the honesty and the poignancy of Lewis Milestone’s rendition of Erich Maria Remarque’s pacifist novel. Lew Ayres plays the young, idealistic soldier who soon discovers that war has nothing to do with either honor or glory.
 
FILM
All Quiet on the Western Front
d: Lewis Milestone; scr: Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews, George Abbott
The Bishop Murder Case
d: Nick Grindé, David Burton; scr: Lenore J. Coffee
Going Wild
d: William [...]