Published/Performed: 1929
Author: Erich Maria Remarque
Born: Jun 22, 1898 Osnabrück, Germany
Passed: Sep 25, 1970 Locarno, Switzerland
Film: All Quiet on the Western Front
Released: 1930
All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues) is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.
The novel was first published in November and December 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung and in book form in late January 1929. The book and its sequel, The Road Back, were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany. It sold 2.5 million copies in twenty-five languages in its first eighteen months in print.
In 1930, the book was adapted as an Oscar-winning film of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone. The screenplay was by Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews, C. Gardner Sullivan, with uncredited work by Walter Anthony and Milestone. It stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 for its producer Carl Laemmle Jr., and an Academy Award for Directing for Lewis Milestone. It was the first all-talking non-musical film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It also received two further nominations: Best Cinematography, for Arthur Edeson, and Best Writing Achievement for Abbott, Anderson and Andrews.
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