14 All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
Banned: France, Germany, Italy Widely regarded as one of the best films about World War One, one of the best anti-war films and a classic movie all round, All Quiet on the Western Front was based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque. It details the horrors of trench warfare and the dreadful effect war has upon its participants physically and psychologically. An American film directed by Lewis Milestone, it has a running time of well over two hours. The Nazis, unsurprisingly, detested the film. Even before they were in power, Nazis would go to German cinema screenings of All Quiet on the Western Front in the early 1930s and let off stink bombs and release mice in the theatres. As soon as the Nazis came to power, the film was banned outright throughout the 1930s and 1940s. It was a huge hit and critically acclaimed in America but it was banned in Austria in 1931 and remarkably that ban was in place until the 1980s. France banned the film until 1963 and Australia and Italy were similarly censorious. Partial inspiration for Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan.