In 1963 Andrew Sarris included Lewis Milestone amongst the “Fallen Idols” (Film Culture, n. 28) defining him as “a formalist of the Left”. Six years later when Mutiny of the Bounty was released, the magazine Films & Filming (December 1969) was not much kinder.

“In common with so many of the other Old Guard directors, Lewis Milestone’s reputation has somewhat tarnished over the last decade. His films no longer bear that stamp of individuality which distinguishes his early work.”

What is strange is that it is exactly Milestone’s first films that these critics never take into consideration (with the exception of All Quiet), as Richard Koszarski candidly admits in Hollywood Directors 1914-1940 (Oxford University Press, 1976): “His silent films were hailed for their freshness and vigor, but the best of them (The Cave Man, Two Arabian Nights, The Racket) have not been seen for many years and are difficult to assess today”.

The impression is that from Sarris downwards, no one had ever since them. Even with All Quiet, only very few people had ever seen the synchronised version we are showing as part of this tribute.

Despite Sarris’ dismissal, in an interview given in autumn 1964 and published in Film Culture, Milestone stated: “I started directing in 1925. My first film was a comedy called Seven Sinners and I did it for Warner Brothers. I came to Hollywood in 1919 as a film-editor and scenario writer until 1925 when I directed my first film. The last silent picture I made was also a comedy called Two Arabian Nights, with Louis Wolheim and Bill Boyd. It’s a favorite of mine, for which I got the first Academy Award” (Film Culture, n. 34).

In fact Milestone remembered wrongly. Before the arrival of the talkies he also made The Garden of Eden, The Racket and The Betrayal, nevertheless his evaluation still holds.

Gualtiero De Marinis