Oscars 2023: “All Quiet on the Western Front” earns nine nominations

Kicking off Edward Berger’s awards season No news from the western front was a ban on International, but few could have predicted just how far it would go. In addition to this nomination, the German film now also has a shot at Best Picture after being shortlisted in the Sound, Original Score, Adapted Screenplay, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design, Visual Effects and Cinematography categories.

This great success follows his performance at the Baftas, where he received 14 nominations in almost every major category. The film therefore joins that of Ang Lee Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2002) only after Richard Attenborough Gandhi (1981), which at 16 still holds the Bafta nomination record. It’s a double whammy that’s sure to get Netflix thinking: In a year that saw the streamer invest in some of cinema’s biggest names, one of its biggest critical hits is a starless foreign-language remake of a director which was previously best known for serial television.

Based on the true experiences of author Erich Maria Remarque as an 18-year-old conscript during the last six months of the First World War. No news from the western front was first published as a novel in late 1928. Universal’s Carl Laemmle Jr., son of a German-born Jewish immigrant who co-founded the studio, quickly moved onto the premises, and less than two years later a $1.2 million adaptation hit American screens. This short lead time was not a blessing; Director Lewis Milestone had 2,000 extras at his disposal, although a greater challenge presented itself when dealing with Frank Sinatra. ocean 11 1960, at the height of the singer’s power.

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The film achieved a number of firsts and was the first talkie era war film to score at the Academy. It was also the first adaptation of a book to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as the first Academy Award winner for Best Picture to also win Best Director. Outside of America, the premiere was such an event that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party banned the film a week later, prompting Remarque to flee to Switzerland soon after. Back in the US, the film’s reputation has endured, even surviving the transition to color, and has since been reviewed many times, most notably by Steven Spielberg as an influence on the 1998 film. Private James Ryan. But as an IP it has remained largely untouched, with the exception of a 1979 version best known for starring Richard Thomas (The WaltonsJohn-Boy), despite having a stellar cast including Ian Holm, Donald Pleasence and Ernest Borgnine, and surprisingly rough for a TV movie.

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That’s not to say there haven’t been attempts, and rumors of a remake first started swirling in 2010. Initially there were suggestions that a postHarry Potter Daniel Radcliffe may be on the list to play war-torn innocent Paul Bäumer in the film, but more concrete reports followed a year later that director Mimi Leder would be treating it as her first film since 2000. To pay in advance. However, the serious road to Netflix began almost exactly three years ago: Shortly before the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, producer Malte Grunert contacted Edward Berger, a Berlin director who made his breakthrough in 2015 with the hit series Cold War. Germany 83 and television work in the United States on AMCs followed The Terror and match times Patrick Melrose.

As a German, Berger is undeterred by comparisons to Milestone’s 1930s classic: “For me,” he said, “the main reason for a remake is to go back to the German novel and make a German film out of it. ” In theory, no British or American filmmaker can do that because they don’t have that legacy.” Interestingly, the film’s only major festival play was at TIFF, where it had its world premiere. Berger’s film did not even appear in the audience awards at the festival, which was considered a major Oscar supporter, and was left behind The Fables, glass onion and women talk.