War Films often acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting or conflict provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. Typical elements in the action-oriented war plots include POW camp experiences and escapes, espionage, personal heroism, “war is hell” brutalities… tough trench/infantry experiences, or male-bonding buddy adventures during wartime. Themes explored in war films include combat, survivor and escape stories, tales of gallant sacrifice and struggle, studies of the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and intelligent and profound explorations of the moral and human issues.
Whenever I post diaries like this — What is Your Fav TV Sitcom of All-Time? and Snowy TGIF: What is Your Favorite Classic Rock Song — some of you with dial-up, older pc’s, slower processors, not enough RAM, and the like complain that you could not easily scroll through the comments as way too many videos had been posted. If you’d like to post a few favorite videos of movie scenes, feel free to do so but just don’t go overboard. Embed one YouTube video and post links to the others.
Example: This is a YouTube link to a scene from the German movie Stalingrad (1993).
It is often said that the victors of a war — any war — write its history. This is largely true with perhaps one exception. Prior to World War II becoming known as the “Good War” for much of the Western world, the 1930’s civil conflict in Spain was known as a war fought for a worthy and just cause, even though it was not won by the good guys.
The Spanish Civil War was the prelude to and trial run leading up to World War II. If you have read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, he described the leftist groups aligned with the Republican Spanish government — consisting of Communists, socialists, Trotskyists, trade unionists, and other sympathizers from around the world — as poorly organized, with conflicting goals, and often at odds with each other. The United States was not only in the midst of the Great Depression but also in political isolationist mode at the time, though hundreds of Americans volunteered in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The other major European countries, particularly Stalin’s Soviet Union, made half-hearted efforts of behalf of Republican forces. General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces were actively aided and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. That help proved critical in the Nationalists ultimately prevailing over the Republicans. Franco would rule Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
One of the best-known movies about this conflict was based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls
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Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era — like Ernest Hemingway and his friends — has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a bridge in a cave. Pilar, who is in charge there, has an ability to foretell the future. And so that night she encourages Maria, a young girl ravaged by enemy soldiers, to join Jordan who has decided to spend the night under the stars.
Here are a few more war movies considered to be among some of the best ever made about the horrors and devastation of war
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Francis Ford Coppola’s harrowing epic vision of the madness of the war in Vietnam, Apocalypse Now (1979) was an exceptionally spectacular war movie loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s 1911 novel Heart of Darkness. An American military assassin, a socially-dysfunctional loner named Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen), was commissioned to journey upriver into Cambodia to ‘terminate without prejudice’ an insane, renegade colonel named Kurtz (Marlon Brando). The film featured Robert Duvall as megalomaniac bad-ass Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, noted for loving the smell of napalm, tossing playing cards on each dead enemy body to serve as calling cards, and surfing and hosting steak BBQs amidst war.
All Quiet On The Western Front (1930) is an English language film (made in America) adapted from a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque. The film follows a group of German schoolboys, talked into enlisting at the beginning of World War 1 by their jingoistic teacher. The story is told entirely through the experiences of the young German recruits and highlights the tragedy of war through the eyes of individuals. As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceptions about “the enemy” and the “rights and wrongs” of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and bewildered. This is highlighted in the scene where Paul mortally wounds a French soldier and then weeps bitterly as he fights to save his life while trapped in a shell crater with the body. The film is not about heroism but about drudgery and futility and the gulf between the concept of war and the actuality.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is a story that was loosely based on a true World War II incident, and the real-life character of Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. One of a number of Allied POW’s, the senior British officer Toosey was in charge of his men from late 1942 through May 1943 when they were ordered to build two Kwai River bridges in Burma (first a temporary one made of wood completed in February 1943 and a permanent one of steel/concrete completed a few months later), to help move Japanese supplies and troops from Bangkok to Rangoon.
The Battleship Potemkin, (1925) is a silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime.
Schindler’s List (1993) is an American epic drama film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.
Gone With the Wind (1939) traced the South’s tragic history during the war and the Reconstruction period. Set against this sweeping historical backdrop, the film followed a melodramatic romance between an indomitable, fiery Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) and a slyly-dashing war profiteer Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), tangled by her emotional love affair with a married Southern gentleman (Ashley Wilkes). She struggled to protect her family and her beloved plantation, Tara, from the ravages of the Civil War.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is Stanley Kubrick’s classic, nihilistic, cynical Cold War, satirical black comedy, had scathing humor and timeless performances, based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George and a script by Terry Southern. A crazed, psychotic US general Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), paranoid about his own potency and the Communists, sparked a nuclear crisis with a pre-emptive strike against “the Commies.” The American President Muffley (Peter Sellers in one of three roles) must deal with gung ho military brass Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), bureaucratic bumbling, a drunken Soviet Premier and a twisted, black-gloved German rocket scientist, Dr. Strangelove himself (Sellers again). Ended with the memorable bucking broncho image of Major Kong (Slim Pickens) riding the fatal bomb.
How realistically is war portrayed in movies? It depends on your perspective
Some war films do balance the soul-searching, tragic consequences and inner turmoil of combatants or characters with action-packed, dramatic spectacles, enthusiastically illustrating the excitement and turmoil of warfare. And some ‘war’ films concentrate on the homefront rather than on the conflict at the military war-front. But many of them provide decisive criticism of senseless warfare.
War films have often been used as ‘flag-waving’ propaganda to inspire national pride and morale, and to display the nobility of one’s own forces while harshly displaying and criticizing the villainy of the enemy, especially during war or in post-war periods. Jingoistic-type war films usually do not represent war realistically in their support of nationalistic interests, while avoiding the reality of the horrors of war. The good guys are portrayed as clashing against the bad guys (often with stereotyped labels such as ‘krauts,’ ‘commies,’ ‘Huns,’ or ‘nips’). These revisionistic, politically-correct and historically inaccurate films, in such diverse examples as Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and The Alamo (1960), would often redefine the facts.
As usual, the diary poll excludes many worthy candidates. You may want to check this list of great war movies — 100 Greatest War Movies — to find more of your favorite ones.
“Captain Newman, M.D.” is a 1963 film starring Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall, Eddie Albert and Bobby Darin. It was directed by David Miller and filmed on location at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
The movie is based on the 1963 novel by Leo Rosten. It was loosely based on the experiences of Rosten’s close friend Ralph Greenson M.D., a medical officer (captain) stationed at Yuma, Arizona. Greenson is well known for his work on “empathy” and was one of the first in his field to seriously associate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with wartime experiences. He was a director of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute and was a practicing Freudian. Greenson is perhaps best known for his patients, who included Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Vivien Leigh.
“Mister Roberts” (1955 film)is a 1955 CinemaScope comedy-drama film directed by John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Henry Fonda as Mister Roberts. Based on the 1946 novel and 1948 Broadway play, the film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Sound, Recording Oscars; Jack Lemmon received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Also featured were James Cagney as Captain Morton, William Powell (in his last feature film) as “Doc”, Jack Lemmon as Ensign Pulver (for which he won his first Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor), Betsy Palmer, Ward Bond, Philip Carey, Nick Adams, Ken Curtis, Harry Carey, Jr. and Martin Milner. The screenplay was written by Joshua Logan and Frank S. Nugent.
Catch-22 is a 1970 war film adapted from the book of the same name by Joseph Heller. Considered a black comedy revolving around the “lunatic characters” of Heller’s satirical novel, it was the work of a talented production team which included director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry(who also acted in the film). They worked on the film for two years, and accomplished the complex task of recreating a World War II bomber base and translating an anti-war satire. Besides Henry, the cast included Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Italian actress Olimpia Carlisi, French comedian Marcel Dalio, Art Garfunkel, Jack Gilford, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight and Orson Welles.
Captain Yossarian (Alan Arkin), a fictional U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier is stationed on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa during World War II. Along with other members of his squadron, Yossarian is committed to flying dangerous missions and after watching his friends die, he seeks a means of escape. Futilely appealing to his commanding officer, Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam), he finds that even a mental breakdown is no release when “Doc” Daneeka (Jack Gilford) invokes the “Catch-22” that the US Army employs. As explained, an airman “would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he’d have to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t, he was sane and had to.”
Of course my all time favorite War Movie is “Casablanca”.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb aka Dr. Strangelove. Many of the other films that you mentioned are outstanding, but this one for me stands out for several reasons. Perhaps I should explicate it in Popular Culture some evening.
There are scores of reasons that I really love this motion picture (it is actually my favorite of ALL, let alone war films), but in a nutshell it is because of a unique blend of excellent writing (Terry Southern, who also wrote Candy), excellent direction (Kubrick, need I say more?), excellent cinematography (filming it in black and white was brilliant), and excellent acting (Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Hayden Sterling, Slim Pickins, Keenen Wynn, Peter Bull, and a very young James Earl Jones).
It would not be fair to leave out Peter George, who had the nucleus of the idea in one of his rather forgettable books. Fair is fair.
This film has a combination of comedy, pathos, deep thought, excellent production, and the sense of the ridiculous to make it as classic as classic can be. Put me down as its biggest fan.
By the way, JekllnHyde, if ek had not promoted your wonderful, obviously very well researched at the cost of lots of your time, post, I would have if I had seen it first. Please keep contributing!
My favorite line in the whole film is when General Turidson (George C. Scott’s character) caught Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadesky (Peter Bull’s character) taking pictures of “the big board” at the Pentagon. Turidson attacked him, exposing his camera. As they were struggling, President Muffley (Peter Sellers) scolded them, “Gentlemen, YOU CAN NOT FIGHT in here. This is the WAR ROOM!!!” I love that kind of humor.
I have scores of other insights into this most wonderful of films, and shall post them someday. Thanks for including it in you list.
I haven’t actually watched all that many of them. One of the most disturbing I have seen was Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Private Pyle: I am… in a world… of shit…
…This is my rifle. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy, who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my rifle and myself are defenders of my country, we are the masters of our enemy, we are the saviors of my life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen.
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Reality Check, Comics.com
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Tips and the like here. Thanks.
Of course my all time favorite War Movie is “Casablanca”.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb aka Dr. Strangelove. Many of the other films that you mentioned are outstanding, but this one for me stands out for several reasons. Perhaps I should explicate it in Popular Culture some evening.
There are scores of reasons that I really love this motion picture (it is actually my favorite of ALL, let alone war films), but in a nutshell it is because of a unique blend of excellent writing (Terry Southern, who also wrote Candy), excellent direction (Kubrick, need I say more?), excellent cinematography (filming it in black and white was brilliant), and excellent acting (Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Hayden Sterling, Slim Pickins, Keenen Wynn, Peter Bull, and a very young James Earl Jones).
It would not be fair to leave out Peter George, who had the nucleus of the idea in one of his rather forgettable books. Fair is fair.
This film has a combination of comedy, pathos, deep thought, excellent production, and the sense of the ridiculous to make it as classic as classic can be. Put me down as its biggest fan.
By the way, JekllnHyde, if ek had not promoted your wonderful, obviously very well researched at the cost of lots of your time, post, I would have if I had seen it first. Please keep contributing!
My favorite line in the whole film is when General Turidson (George C. Scott’s character) caught Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadesky (Peter Bull’s character) taking pictures of “the big board” at the Pentagon. Turidson attacked him, exposing his camera. As they were struggling, President Muffley (Peter Sellers) scolded them, “Gentlemen, YOU CAN NOT FIGHT in here. This is the WAR ROOM!!!” I love that kind of humor.
I have scores of other insights into this most wonderful of films, and shall post them someday. Thanks for including it in you list.
Warmest regards,
Doc
You guys are so morbid.
excellent war movie. It may still be pertinent to some extent.
I was quite taken by this movie.
I haven’t actually watched all that many of them. One of the most disturbing I have seen was Full Metal Jacket (1987)