Lewis Milestone

No doubt you recognize the names of great directors when you hear them: Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Francis Ford Coppola. These guys are household names, but who's this Lewis Milestone guy?

Only the best director you've never heard of.

Lewis Milestone was born in Russia as Lev Milstein before immigrating to the United States in 1913. He served in the Army during WWI, making training films as an assistant director (source).

But his greatest contribution to "the war to end all wars" wouldn't be showing troops the intricacies of left-left-left-right-left. It would come a full decade later when he directed his anti-war masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Milestone began his Hollywood career during the silent film era. Other than a couple of shorts, his directorial debut was Seven Sinners (1925). Quick to rise to prominence, he won an Academy Award for the silent comedy Two Arabian Knights in 1927, and by 1929 he was directing his first talkie picture, New York Nights.

A mere five years after his debut, he directed the film that would ensure his place in the cinematic canon—yup, All Quiet on the Western Front.

For All Quiet, Milestone captured the spirit of the novel by showing the war from the muddied-and-bloodied perspective of a German grunt. He decided not to use background music, using only the sounds of machine guns and shellfire to punctuate the scenes. He didn't hold back on the violence either.

As one story goes, when the studio worried about the downbeat story, Milestone responded: "I just found a way to get you a happy ending. The Germans win" (source).

Despite directing movies for another three decades, All Quiet would largely be considered his best movie and the one held in the highest critical regard (source).

This isn't to say he peaked early or struggled to find meaningful work. His career was storied; he just happened to make such an amazing film that viewers have enjoyed it these past eighty years.

After All Quiet

As his career continued, Milestone showed a love and talent for adapting literature to the silver screen. Among his many adaptations are Rain (1932), based on a W. Somerset Maugham short story; Of Mice and Men (1939), based on the John Steinbeck novel; and Les Miserables (1952), based on Victor Hugo's novel.

Oh, and lest we forget, he also directed the original Ocean's Eleven (1960) with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford.