Daily Dialogue — March 24, 2019

“C’mon, dish it out!”

— All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), by Erich Maria Remarque, adaptation by Maxwell Anderson, screen play by George Abbott, adaptation by Del Andrews, supervising story chief C. Gardner Sullivan

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: World War I.

Trivia: With the loss of limbs and gory deaths shown rather explicitly, this is undoubtedly the most violent American film of its time. This is because the Production Code was not strictly enforced until 1934, and also because Universal Pictures deemed the subject matter important enough to allow the violence to be seen. The scene where a soldier grabs a strand of barbed wire and then is blown up by an artillery shell, leaving only his hands still grabbing the barbed wire, was told to director Lewis Milestone by a former German soldier working as an extra, who saw that happen during a French attack on his position during the war. Milestone used it in the film.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Amidst the horrors of war, sometimes the annoyance of meals takes on precedence among the soldiers.