The Road Back

It's basically a sequel to ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, with only Slim Summerville left from the original cast. The screenplay is ambitious, covering four subplots, and I should note that Andy Devine gives a fine performance; it's also nice to watch a camera travel over the slightly redressed exteriors from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

That said,there's one minor flaw and one major one. The minor one: it's too glossy. ALL QUIET in an exercise in chaos and despair and the battered, crazy shots are part of what make it so good. The world the vets return to is just as chaotic, but everything is glossy, well orchestrated in camerawork and that fights the inherent message.

I could live with that, but the dealbreaker is John "Dusty King. Those of you have seen the Coen brothers' HAIL CAESAR will recall the cowboy star from that movie. He can ride a horse upside down and backwards and rope three steers at the same time. What he can't do is speak two words together, and somehow the New York office wants him to star in a sophisticated comedy. So he does.

Well, that's John "Dusty" King. In what was essentially the Lew Ayres role from ALL QUIET, Mr. King must be the central observer and moral center of the movie. He must speak long speeches. He must tell his leading lady -- an Andrea Leeds type who sounds just like him -- that she can't help him figure out these things, little lady. He stinks up the joint. Within a couple of years he would retreat to B westerns in which he would occasionally sing, and good riddance to him.

A pleasant woman who likes to sit in the front row was telling me that the consideration of what was Remarque's writings on PTSD make it a good film. There's no doubting the intentions, but if intentions were all that mattered, Ed Wood Jr. Would have been a great film maker.

When Universal Pictures bought the rights to Erich Maria Remarque's follow-up book to his blockbuster classic, 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' the film studio felt the story of German soldiers returning to their homeland after World War One was a surefire hit in its June 1937 "The Road Back." Combining a great story with James Whale, director of the studio's biggest hits such as 1931's "Frankenstein," 1933's "The Invisible Man," and 1935's "Frankenstein and His Bride," Universal's new ownership felt the movie was guaranteed to be a money-making machine.

Trouble was Germany's Nazi government was steaming about the possibilities of a film made from Remarque's sequel, which was banned there. The Nazis' Hollywood conduit, German ambassador Georg Gyssling, was a strong influence in the movie industry because of Germany's lucrative film theater market. Chief film censor for the United States, Joseph Breen, had reformulated the Hay's Office movie production code to stress no film studio could criticize the functions of any foreign government. Germany was particularly sensitive to any international criticism of its increasingly repressive restrictions to its Jewish citizenry. The Remarque book was critical of the Nazi regime, and director Whale, a former British WW1 prisoner, was relishing following the novel to a tee.

Gyssling knew any movie under Germany's Article 15 law could enact a lifelong ban of any company or individual, foreign or domestic, if they were critical of the Nazis. Remarque's first book-to-film, 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' met scorn in Germany even before the Nazis took power. Sympathizers threw stink bombs in the theaters playing the 1930 film as well as tossing rats into the audience. Its sequel, "The Road Back," was equally anti-war, which Gyssling felt when he approached Breen, gave an "untrue and distorted picture of the German people." Head of Universal, Charles Rogers, told Breen and Gyssling the studio had already spent a considerable amount of money on "The Road Back" and assured the two the director would tone down the Nazi criticisms. Whale told them they would be pleased once they saw the movie's rough edit.

Gyssling's eyes popped out when he viewed the rough copy. He sent sixty members who were working on "The Road Back," from wardrobe assistants on up, informing them they would be prohibited from entering Germany if the movie wasn't revised. Whale was adamant that he was not cutting any of the requested anti-Nazi scenes. Rogers, wanting "to cultivate the good will of Germany," ordered the studio's film editors, without Whale's input, to excise 21 scenes, and inject new comedy scenes into the war movie. Whale angrily stomped out of the studio while director Edward Sloman filmed the humorous additions.

"What's left contains a few fleeting moments of what this film could have been," wrote film reviewer Paul Evennett, reflecting the consensus of critics who felt the revisions ruined Whale's original movie. "If the Nazis had kept their noses out, if the studio execs had had the gaul to stand up for their creatives, if Whale had retained the freedom to do justice to the work of Remarque," it would have have been a great movie. Universal destroyed all the cut footage. What's left has some of Whale's signature touches, including the opening salvo showing the last hours of combat before the armistice ends the war.

Despite all the alternations demanded by Gyssling and followed by Universal, Germany and several of its allies still banned "The Road Back." With the exception of Warner Brothers, Universal and the other major Hollywood studios continued to bow to the pressure of the Nazis, kowtowing to their demands. Because of Whale's obstinance, Universal relegated him to Grade B low budgeted movies, except for 1939's "The Man With the Iron Mask." The deliverer of early horror classics saw his career gradually end with all the drama surrounding this anti-war movie.

The first part of the film is definitely a masterpiece, with extremely touching scenes from the trenches and unforgettable sequences of the armistice, how it happened and how it was experienced by the soldiers. I never read the book, but naturally the soldiers encounter problems when they are obliged to readjust to peace time life at home among gross political disturbances, introducing new conflicts galore, and here obviously the director had some difficulties keeping up the intensity of the film, as some ladies in action caused some disturbance both to the soldiers and to the film. Nevertheless, the end riot scenes of the film are magnificent and impressing, and the final court proceedings provide a sad finale to the destiny of these soldiers alienated from normal reality, so habituated to handle constant slaughter at war, and so incapable of handling banal crises at home. The spirit of Remarque nevertheless sustains the entire movie, all his stories made as great films as novels, and although this is not the best Remarque film and novel, it certainly is important and ranks as such in the canon. This film is extra added to in quality by Dimitri Tiomkin's very approppriate and inspired music.

In the film Gods and Monsters, Ian McKellen wonderfully plays Whale recalling his hatred of making this film, the film Whale intended to be the crowning achievement of his career.

The first world war was still close to Whale as he made this film nearly 20 years after it ended. Whale intended the film end with a more sarcastic touch of showing the Nazis as war mongers, warping the minds of youths, but the final cut of this film was taken out of his hands.

The Road Back has some signature Whale touches. Yes, the camera dollies through a wall from outside on a street to the inside of a building, following a character entering it. Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan, Lionel Atwill and a few other Whale favorites play minor characters with character. He had his usual crew of Ted Kent editing, John Mescall shooting, John Fulton with special effects and the great Charles D. Hall as set designer. You would expect a horror film with all these names. Yet the film does not stand up next to his horror films, nor to Show Boat, Kiss Before the Mirror or Waterloo Bridge. It is a notch below.

It's hard to tell how much of it has to do with the editing. There were also completely unnecessary comedy scenes that did not belong that I understand were re-shot by the orders of studio head Charles D. Rogers, a man who clearly knew nothing of the studio he had taken over from the Laemmles.

Even if Whale had final cut, this film seems like its' story somewhat misses the mark. It works and is an admirable picture, but it seems to lack the scope that would have given it more power. The characters talk about how the war changes them, but we are shown very little of HOW they changed. They seem unhappy, but there is no real emotion. They too often seem like mouthpieces for Whale's beliefs and not like real people. It would have been a better film if it expanded on the souls of the characters and been a half hour longer or so. It probably would have actually moved faster than it does. We go from the war to the classroom to the bars and to the courtroom and it just seems to want to become an epic, but it can't.

Still, this film is worth watching, especially for Whale fans who want to see his last solid, good film. He was never again to be as creative or interested in his stories.

Remarque's novel (which I haven't read) Der Weg zurück/The Road Back is a sequel to his All Quiet on the Western Front. Whale's (or rather Universal's) The Road Back has Slim Summerville as Tjaden again and mentions the names of Kat, Detering and Paul Bäumer in order to directly tie on the preceding film's success. Without success. Surely, The Road Back has a great first half, but, alas, a second half which does not hold up very well. Whale's excellent talent in directing is apparent, but as soon as the German soldiers arrive at home after World War I, it drifts too much into sentiment and pathos, without holding back the one or the other really powerful scene, (especially the one in the mental hospital) and some truly wonderful performances by Slim Summerville and Andy Devine. The choreography of the mass scene towards the end is impressive as well (which resembles Eisenstein's famous Odessa shots a lot). So, it's not really forgettable, but slight disappointment nonetheless.