Lewis Milestone

Some directors, like some stars, become associated with a particular genre over all others.  One of America’s cinematic poets used to introduce himself with the self-deprecating statement “I’m John Ford and I make westerns”, knowing full well that his reputation rested more on prestige ‘artistic’ productions like “The Grapes of Wrath” and “How Green Was My Valley”.  Director Lewis Milestone’s name was equally linked with a specific genre, one that unlike the western had a measure of critical respect.  Milestone specialised in the war film.

Milestone’s masterpiece is “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930).  Initially shot without sound, the fluid camerawork and revolutionary editing style belong more to the period that climaxed the silent era than the static, transitional years of the late 1920s.  While the dialogue and acting betrays the inexperience of some cast members and the pacifist mood of the times there has never been a more powerful evocation of why boys go to war and what the human cost of combat is.  Milestone’s celebrated battle scenes capture the full horror of trench warfare as perhaps a veteran only could: an aviator in the Great War, his grasp of the geography of the battlefield is as crucial to the set pieces as a montage technique that powerfully intercuts images of falling soldiers with machine gun fire.

“All Quiet on the Western Front” was a contentious anti-war classic from first release, winning the Oscar for Best Picture but being banned by Hitler in Germany, as well as by nominally more democratic administrations in France, Austria and even Australia.  What’s interesting is that Milestone employed essentially the same stylistic devices in his World War II films, pieces of propaganda whose message was diametrically opposed to the humanistic spirit of “Western Front”.  “Edge of Darkness” (1943), for example, an Errol Flynn vehicle about the fall of Norway, has remarkably similar tracking shots and quick edits.

It was only once World War II had effectively been won that Milestone was able to return to the infantryman perspective of his best work.  “A Walk in the Sun” (1945) is a simple, effective story of a platoon going about its business, full of wry observations on the banality of armed conflict.  “Pork Chop Hill” (1959), Milestone’s last entry in genre, a bleak account of the Korean war, demonstrates that his insights and techniques could be adapted to any conflict, even three decades after his prime.