Three Friends Director Frank Borzega, USA, 1938. In the roles of Robert Taylor, Margaret Sallavan, Franco Ton, Robert Young and others.
The novel «The Three Comrades», which covers the trilogy of the «lost generation» (also includes the novels «On the Western Front Without Change» and «Return», by the German writer Erich Maria Remark, wrote for four years. It was released in 1936 — not in Germany’s home, but in Denmark.
And that’s understandable. The author, who had been promoted to the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, was actively poisoned and persecuted by both military associations and Nazis who raised their heads; both accused the author of vilifying the German army, Remarka was referred to as a «trader of the people» and a «sale writer». The attempt to disrupt the premiere in Germany of the American filming of the novel «On the Western Front without Change» was personally led by Joseph Goebbels. The day after Hitler Remark came to power, he left Germany. Soon his novels were publicly exposed to fire.
The film has deviations from the letter of the novel; it’s made for the timing and pace of the film story, and it’s not that many. One such exception is the name of the main hero (in honour of the author of the novel Borzega renamed him Erich), another in which the surviving heroes are going to travel to South America and the ghosts of their dead friends accompany them on the way from the cemetery. By the way, the film was co-written by Frank Scott Fitzgerald, author of the Great Gatsby and pre-war Hollywood screenwriter Edward Paramore Jr.