[30] The Racket, a "taut and realistic" depiction of a mobster-controlled police department, distinguished Milestone as a capable director of the genre but its reception was lessened by a flood of inferior gangster films in the late 1920s.

[35][36] According to Strago (2017): When he was preparing to shoot his wrenching anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front from the point of view of German schoolboys who become soldiers, Universal co-founder and president Carl Laemmle pleaded with him for a "happy ending."

According to Thompson (2015), Milestone—who was uncredited—together with screenwriters Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews and George Abbott, wrote a script that "reproduces the terse, tough dialogue" of Remarque's novel to "expose war for what it is, and not glorify it".

[45] The Front Page (1931), in which Milestone depicted backroom denizens of Chicago newspaper tabloids, is considered one of the most influential films of 1931 and introduced the Hollywood archetype of the experienced, fast-talking reporter.

The picture has a vividness not matched in a newspaper subject until Citizen Kane"[49] According to Joseph Millichap: Milestone employs "several framing devices, a quick cross-cutting between scenes, a moving camera intercut with close-ups, juxtaposition of angles and distances, and a number of trick shots ...

[62][63] Milestone was not yet affected by the Production Code, and his portrayal of the overwrought Puritan missionary Reverend Davidson (Walter Huston); his rape of Thompson blends violence with sexual and religious symbolism using swift cutting.

[68] The film is based on a Ben Hecht story, with a score by Rodgers and Hart featuring "rhythmic dialogue" delivered in song-song; its sentimental, romantic theme of a New York City tramp was received with indifference and dismay by moviegoers.

[84][85] Following his two lackluster musicals, Milestone returned to form in 1936 with The General Died at Dawn, which is reminiscent in theme, setting and style of director Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Express (1932).

Madeleine Carroll is cast as the young missionary Judy Perrie, who is "trapped between divided social forces" and struggles to overcome her diffidence, and ultimately joins O"Hara in supporting a peasant revolt against Yang.

Milestone was served by cinematographer Victor Milner, art directors Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegté, and composer Werner Janssen in, according to Baxter (1970), creating "his most exquisite and exciting if not most meaningful examination of social friction in a human context".

[92][93] After completing The General Died at Dawn, Milestone experienced a series of professional setbacks, including lawsuits, failed projects and broken contracts, that stalled his film career for three years.

[109] Milestone, who preferred to cast "relative unknowns"—in this case influenced by budgetary restraints—cast Lon Chaney Jr. to play the childlike Lennie Small and Burgess Meredith as his keeper George Milton.

[114] Milestone was provided with his own production unit, and quickly satisfied his contractual obligations, directing Ginger Rogers in Lucky Partners (1940) and Anna Lee in the "totally disarming frolic" My Life with Caroline (1941).

[117] Film curator Charles Silver noted Milestone's "facility for capturing battle's intrinsic spectacle ... there is an inevitable pageantry to cinematic warfare that works against whatever pacifist intentions the filmmaker may have".

"[118] Responding to the "general climate of opinion in wartime Hollywood", Milestone abandoned any reservations about his commitments to the US war effort and offered his services to the film industry's propaganda units.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt dispatched Lowell Mellett, chief of the Bureau of Motion Pictures of the Office of War Information to enlist producer Sam Goldwyn to make a film celebrating America's wartime alliance with Russia.

Milestone's production staff included playwright-screenwriter Lillian Hellman, cinematographer James Wong Howe, set designer William Cameron Menzies, composer Aaron Copland, lyricist Ira Gershwin and a competent cast.

[133][134] In the post-war years, Sam Goldwyn's The North Star, Warner Brothers' Mission to Moscow (1943) and M-G-M's Song of Russia (1944) came under scrutiny by the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee.

[146]According to Millichap (1981), despite these limitations, Milestone avoided the "set hero and mock heroics" typical of Hollywood war movies, allowing for a measure of genuine realism reminiscent of his 1930 masterwork [All Quiet on the Western Front].

Milestone's pro-Soviet Union film The North Star (1943), which was made at the behest of the US government to encourage American support for its wartime alliance with the USSR against the Axis powers, became a target.

[156] Rossen's and Milestone's script provided the cast, which features Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and Kirk Douglas in his first screen appearance with a "taut, harsh" narrative that critiques post-war, urban America as corrupt and irredeemable.

[174] Milestone's next project, in collaboration with novelist John Steinbeck at Republic Pictures, was to direct a film version of The Red Pony (1937),[174] a short story cycle set in California's rural Salinas Valley in the early 20th century.

The story, which was written by Michael Blankfort with Milestone as uncredited co-screenwriter,[187] concerns an attack by US Marines on a Japanese-held island during World War II, and focuses on the heroic suffering experienced by one patrol in its effort to locate a Japanese rocket-launching bunker.

Fox producers provided the project with their contracted actors including Michael Rennie, Debra Paget, Robert Newton and Sylvia Sidney, and lavish production support.

[212][213] According to Millichap (1981), Pork Chop Hill (1959), which was produced by Sy Bartlett for the Melville Company, represents the third work in "an informal war trilogy", along with All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and A Walk in the Sun (1945).

[233]Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's remake of Frank Lloyd's 1935 film Mutiny on the Bounty starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton was consistent with Hollywood's resort to blockbuster productions during the late Fifties.

[234] In February 1961, the 65-year-old Milestone took over directorial duties from Carol Reed, who became disillusioned with the project due to inadequate scripting, inclement weather on location in Tahiti and disputes with leading man Marlon Brando.

[236] Millichap refers to the film as "the Brando-Milestone" Mutiny on the Bounty, noting "the story of this Hollywood disaster is long and complex, but the central figure in every sense is Marlon Brando, not Lewis Milestone".

[244] Milestone's final film work was for a multinational joint venture with American International Pictures' La Guea Seno- The Dirty Game (1965), for which he directed one episode before being replaced by Terence Young due to failing health.

[259]Film critic and biographer Richard Koszarski considers Milestone "one of the [1930s] more independent spirits ... but like many of the pioneer directors ... his relation to the studio system at the height of its [executive] powers was not a productive one".