Best World War 2 film.

There are so many great films from the World War 2 era that I would like to compile a list of everyones favourite. One, to see what comes out on top and two, to hopefully remind myself or unveil some I had forgotten about.

To start then, The Great Escape and Schindles List are two of my favourites along with The Pianist and Rating Private Ryan.

All very different films but all from that world defining era and al films showing the many different ways the war impacted on different people.l

 

hello
links below

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/books-films-tv-radio/40170-50-best-ww2-movies.html

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/books-films-tv-radio/13916-best-espionage-ww2-movies.html

 

Thanks for the links. It does date back five years though so feel free to post your favourites on this thread.

One that springs to mind post 2008 is defiance, which I quite enjoyed.

 

anything that does NOT have ANTHONY NEWLEY in the cast !

 

Instead of simply making a top ten list..better ask each one in one sentence why this or that movie is worthwhile in his/her opinion.
That way it may offer a hint to new viewers to look that movie up.

My criteria for a good movie (to see over and over again) is that it bears a great deal of realism (not meaning "based" on realistic events), that at the end there is no jubilee feeling (unnecessary lives have been lost, and the audience must feel it), and there is a special/different story.

The list is not complete, but from my memory:

Saving Private Ryan (beach landing = awesome..though further the movie there are some "unrealisitic" events.. typical for the director to put his stamp on the movie).
Thin Red Line (..I must confess, the music by H. Zimmer helped a lot).
(no ww2 , but TOPmovie) Black Hawk Down (by the fact that the US lost a lot and were embarrassed makes this an un-hollywood movie.. kudos to the director).
Bridge Too Far (for its time very well made..).

Kelly's Heroes... a bit of a comedy right ? but the characters involved are "realistic" enough (I have met similar wackos as in this movie). And given the mission, I can imagine the problems and events could happen as in the movie.

Operation Valkyrie (Original German version.. a bit better acted than Tom Cruise).

Downfall (or original Der Untergang). Note the much, much , much more convincing uniforms/dirt/facial hard characters in this movie than any of the US or BBC movies about Hitler's Bunker (Anthony Hopkins).

Oh and I almost forgot: Sam Peckinpah's Iron Cross. Of course. Also most noteworthy its starting titles documentary film. So well selected in combination with the german children's song.
If ever to explain in 2 minutes to young students how Hitler got to be Führer and why there were so many followers under normal folk...then this is it.


Well, as dutch pride..but it is actually a good movie:

Soldier of Orange. Especially for its time and budget, well done and gives a complete albeit too fast- insight in Dutch struggle/resistance/cock-ups at a time when holywood movies still showed perfect WW2 yankee missions with heroes victorious at the end..


There must be a WW1 movie that is pivotal (All silent on western front ? Blue MAx ?) ..and perhaps a Boers War movie ? but I first have to see it/them again.

 

Black Hawk Down is a great film and whilst on the subject of none world war films, Zulu is a cracker as well. A total battle against the odds all together and one for all film. Thou shall not pass!

 

Das Boot without a doubt. The characters, as well as the storyline, are so believeable that you can almost feel the fear and smell the diesel. Definitely a classic.

 

The Way Ahead.

First came across this after reading a letter by an officer in the RAF Regiment who recommended it to a female friend as a realistic portrayal of his infantry training.

The Way Ahead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Available for free download, according to the link at the foot of the wikipedia page.

 

The Way Ahead is brilliant!!

I saw "The Admiral" yesterday, a Japanese film about Admiral Yamamoto, that was superb! I also like "Went the Day Well?" Been to the village too, its beautiful (and where the vicar of Dibleys cottage is and the windmill from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, sorry, whittering on!) Non WW2 got to be "We were soldiers.."

 

Where is the village as a matter of nosiness.

 

Just been thinking of a few more on the train home.

Escape to victory - corny feel good film if you like football.
Empire of the sun - chaotic film that depicts the chaos and aftermath of war.
Mission of the shark - sounds like a bad hollywood film but actually depicts the true story of the USS Indianapolis that delivered the first a bomb. It was torpedoed on the way back and such was the secrecy of it's mission the crew spent the next four days in the water before a passing supply plane saw people in the water and called it in. Eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945

 

There are so many great films from the World War 2 era that I would like to compile a list of everyones favourite. One, to see what comes out on top and two, to hopefully remind myself or unveil some I had forgotten about.

To start then, The Great Escape and Schindles List are two of my favourites along with The Pianist and Rating Private Ryan.

All very different films but all from that world defining era and al films showing the many different ways the war impacted on different people.l

Good day and welcome to the forum.

Can I suggest you make your own list of "... great films from the World War 2 era" and see if it goes anywhere from there? I presume you are attempting to do this as an educational project for school or college?

There are a number of threads on this forum alone where you should be able to obtain the information you seek. Please note that the films you mention are not actually "... from the WW2 era" (i.e. made and released between 1939 -1945). They are films about the war made and released many years later. This is a significant point, especially if your project is centred around cinematography during the war years.

Good luck.

 

Couple of oldies I've enjoyed recently that are near the top of the list..

Their's Is the Glory 1946

Battleground 1949

 

Thanks,

I am interested in films about or involving world war two. And whilst a list would be good the point of the article was to generate some discussion. Which it has and I am grateful for all your inputs.

 

Dunkirk

 

I don't like anyone film above the others, but I have a number of favorites of different types.

1. Hell Is For Heroes, a forgotten little classic with Steve McQueen. It gives a very grim picture of just how nasty infantry combat could be and what it could do to men mentally.
2. There aren't many Western movies about the Eastern Front. Taken together and despite their romantic elements, the German Stalingrad and Enemy at the Gates give a pretty good picture of what the Verdun on the Volga was like.
3. For pure comic strip adventure, The Guns of Navarone is the best. Peck, Quinn, Irene Papas, Niven, Baker, plus tons of Germans suffering from mental retardation.
4. We all have our guilty pleasures, and I am afraid that Kelly's Heroes is one of mine. Eastwood is a hole in the screen, but the rest of the cast is wonderful: Telly Savalas, Stuart Margolin, Harry Dean Stanton, Gavin McLeod, Rickles, Sutherland...who wouldn't want to be in an outfit like that?
5. The Hill, every bit as brutal as a real military prison. Like some of these other pictures, it benefits from a great cast: Ossie Davis, Connery, and a terrifying Harry Andrews.
6. Das Boot, already mentioned here.
7. I have only seen a small bit of Fires on the Plain, which is about Japanese stragglers on Leyte, but it is clearly a classic. It is also very hard to take, even decades after it was made.
8. The Way Ahead and Went the Day Well are both far above-average wartime propaganda pictures, and the former actually tells a pretty important and still neglected story: how the British army learned from its mistakes and got better (it did, you know).
9. I like parts of a number of movies. The Omaha Beach sequence of Saving Private Ryan is brilliant, as are some things in Empire of the Sun.
10. Despite the passage of years and its basically conventional style, I still think that The Longest Day holds up pretty well. The many fine actors certainly help.
11. The Cruel Sea is simply brilliant. I think it is the finest picture about the war at sea ever made, and it is remarkably faithful to Monsarrat's tough-minded novel. I still can't forget a drunken Jack Hawkins remembering the men he ran down in his effort to sink a U-boat.
12. From Here to Eternity pulls a few more punches than Jones' novel does but along with the great performances it gives you a pretty vivid picture of the old US Regular Army in its last days, and the one sequence near the end is still the best Pearl Harbor ever done.

 

I have said it before somewhere on the forum pages, but Tora, Tora, Tora is always worth a watch. I like the political and diplomatic intrigue at the beginning of the film and that it focuses heavily on the Japanese side of things.

 

I haven't seen a film made later than about 1955 in which it seemed that they could do the accents or move correctly in the uniforms or even civilian suits.

In all honesty, three minutes of Pathé newsreel is worth two hours of feature film.

"Army Motorcycling" and "Vehicle Mastership" from the Army Kinematograph Service are really rather spiffing !