The Road Back

 

Netflix released another film adaptation of Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front. I don't really like the movie, of the three versions I've seen I think this is the one I'd put at the bottom of the list. It reminded me of the 1930 version, which then reminded me of that version's ill fated sequel that came out in 1937, The Road Back.

The Road Back is a loose version of Remarque's sequel novel of the same name. After learning about it I was intrigued I enjoyed reading All Quiet on the Western Front and liked both film versions, and this time the action is set during the German Revolution. And it was directed by James Whale, whose directorial debut was the British WWI film Journey's End, and he had directed Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Old Dark House, Bride of Frankenstein etc. So, this is a rare film. Its also notorious as an early example of Hollywood being more than willing to wreck a movie for a chance to score big in a international market, when its studio Universal tried to create an alternative version for the foreign market. That was a problem, because of the market trends in the 1930s the largest foreign consumer of Hollywood movies was Germany. And the movie was released in 1937, which meant that this film had to appease the film board set up by Joseph Goebbels.

This is why the film is barely known outside of film history trivia. As far as I can tell The Road Back never received a home release, though curiously I did find a copyright renewal for the movie in 1965, and copies of the film do show up online on occasion though are also often pulled by takedown request. Also curious for a 1937 film print the copy I saw was in pretty good shape, considering, I've seen worse conditions of films that are readily available. 

Above is a copy I managed to find online right now, I'd recommend ripping it if you want to keep it, just to be save.

Here is the time when I would like to say The Road Back is a lost classic, but honestly aside from novelty I don't think its very good. I suppose its the most substantial treatment of the German Revolution by an English language movie. Granted most of what it has to say about the revolution are jokes about how strange it is that German's with their rigid conformity and worship of procedure are trying to overthrow the established order. The Road Back is a comedy, though its an uneven one, some scenes are supposed to be dramatic and say something of importance but then the next scene will have a couple actors bumble through a comedy routine and it doesn't handle the transitions between them very well. The ending courtroom scene with its appeal for sympathy for traumatised survivors of the war and the raw disgust shown to a character whose a rich boy and son of a war profiteer should fit perfectly into a film like this, but they stick out like sore thumbs. 

And the revolution subplot doesn't really go anywhere conclusive. Most of the scenes involving it are comic, but then you have a small number of scenes involving street clashes and police firing on and killing civilians. One occasion the scene shifts from a joke about the revolution to having civilians shot dead by police with machine guns seconds after jokes were cracked at how silly this is. And then it just stops completely. 

While its depiction was very strange I did like some of the jokes in the revolution scenes, especially the part when the townspeople march on the Mayor and make him host a mass meeting. Its revealed that they do this every single night and make him host a meeting while he complains that he's old and needs to sleep. But most of the other comedy fell flat to me. Especially that provided by Willy played by Andy Devine. He has a braying voice and he sulks through all of his lines. The dialogue is also pretty poor, a lot of what he has to say seems to be on paper to be combative and cocky, but it comes across as whiny. 

Its a bizarre and uneven movie, though this seems to be down to the panic by the studio over its potential loss of investment in Germany they re-edited the film and shot new material to limit the offense caused to the German authorities. It didn't work. Which isn't remotely surprising to me. This was a film based on a book that was banned in Germany by a writer who was denounced as an enemy for his antimilitarist writing. Furthermore it depicts the German revolution, a period that was dominated by the Nazi party's domestic political enemies, Social Democrats, Anarchists, Communists etc. And to cap it off many of the actors demonstrate shell shock and the film is one of the earliest explorations of soldiers Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The finished film does undermine and weaken much of the theme's of the story, but they are still present, and of course its still attached to Remarque. It was simply doomed from the outset.

To give a flavour of how impossible appealing to the German cinema authorities was, here's a news clipping from the time.

“The movie, Typhon, based on the comedy by the Hungarian writer Lendengyel, has been banned in Germany. The censorship board justifies this decision by pointing out that in the movie the person whose behaviour is exemplary is Japanese. The white people all behave rather badly. The Japanese, with whom the heroine strikes up a friendship, is an impeccable gentleman. Moreover the movie shows French people and in fact does not deal with Germans. In short, this work is regarded as, by omission, an insult to the Aryan race, whose superiority is not even mentioned.”

From, Against the Racist Delirium by Camillo Berneri.  

 Bolding is mine.

As an added insult, the meddling over the film soured James Whale on directing, he had high expectations for the movie and fought the studio over its cuts and re-shoots. He didn't quit directing immediately after The Road Back but his career did wind down and end a few years later in 1941. 

Taking all this on board it isn't really a surprise the film has languished in the shadows. I get the embarrassment but the refusal to release the film at all and to swipe at bootleg copies nearly a hundred years later speak to some real hostility. I don't believe it'll ever escape the trivia or be held up as a classic, but I think it deserves to be shown and seen.