I’m aware that we’ve done this subject in the past, but I hadn’t seen this particular list mentioned previously. The aforementioned mag has a special issue out that rates the top 100 war films. The top ten are as follows:
All Quiet on the Western Front
Paths of Glory
Das Boot
Letters from Iwo Jima
Alexander Nevsky
Lawrence of Arabia
Grand Illusion
Saving Private Ryan
Platoon
Glory
Full list here. A contrasting list from Britain’s Channel Four here.
Reasonably insightful and well-written reviews accompany the rankings in the magazine. Perhaps surprisingly, given the source, the reviewers seem less concerned with historical accuracy than with insights into human behavior under conditions of war. I don’t have a problem with that, but as with all such lists there are numerous oddities in ranking, and, I think it can be argued, glaring omissions.
As an example of the former, I’ve never really thought of the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, or The Searchers, as war movies per se, but there they are, at Numbers 27 and 49 respectively. Likewise, is The Dirty Dozen (21) better than, say, Downfall (35)? Castle Keep (66) better than The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (87)?
As far as omissions go, seems like there is plenty of room for argument there. If we’re including Duck Soup, what about The Great Dictator? If Schindler’s List, why not The Pianist? And what about Three Kings and Catch-22?
I’ve only seen about half the films on the list, so I’m not confident doing a top ten ranking of my own, but I know there are some serious film students here, so feel free to have at it.
I haven’t yet had enough time to go over the list in detail but wanted to say I was struck by the positioning of The Great Escape at #44. I mean, really, everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but to put Black Hawk Down, Stalag 17, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Flags of Our Fathers ahead of The Great Escape makes the whole list suspect. Many people believe that the Great Escape is rightly considered to be a “classic” and it’s certainly held that status for almost forty years. Does anybody honestly believe that Black Hawk Down will accomplish either.
Two movies are conspicuously absent. Gallipoli (already pointed out) and one of my personal favourites (admittedly more of an adventure story) - Where Eagles Dare. And, at the risk of getting flamed, I’d also add Hamburger Hill.
Lists like this will never generate satisfactory results because you can’t just rank movies in linear fashion that easily.
I agree, though, that they’re casting the net of “War movie” a lot wider than I’d think, by including movies that involve characters touched by war, but not actually involved in war during the movie. The Best Years of Our Lives is an awfully tough movie to categorize. It’s not set in war, but it’s unambiguously about the aftermath of war. Isn’t that a meaningful avenue of exploration for films that seek to explore the reality of war? On the other hand, some of the other choices - The Manchurian Candidate, The Searchers, etc. - aren’t even that close to the theme of war.
Since it’s obligatory to complain about at least one inclusion or omission, I will say that Gettysburg is ranked amazingly high (#46) for a movie that droned on and on for longer than the actual Battle of Gettysburg, had bizarre and unforgivable production lapses given the recency of its production, and generally managed to pack a just-okay 100-minute movie into about 250 minutes. Actually, I don’t know why it’s on the list. As wonderful as Jeff Daniels’s performance is, and it is truly marvelous, the film is otherwise a bloated, unfocused mess.
The inclusion of “Midway,” an absolute peice of garbage, is also puzzling, but I’m hoping they included it by mistake. I can’t think of a lot of war movies that weren’t better than “Midway,” except “The Green Berets.”
Yeah, I can’t help thinking that maybe they meant to include Tora Tora Tora instead, which, while not exactly a classic, was better by just about any measure than Midway.
I was thinking that Band of Brothers really should have made the list as well. It appears that the list considers only theatrical releases, but Das Boot was first shown as a televised miniseries, so what the hey?
Oh yeah, and Kelly’s Heroes, which made the (viewer-voted) Channel Four list, but not this one.
But if you do that, you’ll also have to include the fourth season of Blackadder. The last episode especially is one of the finest critiques of the madness of WW1 ever made.
Somewhere in its meandering plotline The Man With No Name and That Other Guy just happen to stumble upon some Union and Confederate soldiers having a battle… and that’s about it. But-but-but Clint Eastwood!
It takes place during the Civil War, with the characters, for the most part, trying to avoid both sides equally.
Which makes me think that the list includes some sort of “coefficient of warliness” value; that a great movie with war as a minor theme would be ranked about the same as a good movie exclusively about war. If you took those 100 movies and ranked them just as films, with no regard to subject matter, the order changes a lot.
And I’m surprised Patton was as low as it was on both lists.
Just looking at the ones in the top twenty five, the only ones that I would rate, including a brilliant propaganda effort would be:
Das Boot.
Stalingrad (1992)
The Battle of Algiers (1965)
Black Hawk Down (2001)
I almost included “The Longest Day” but I was too disgusted with Zanuck’s repeated, stupid and feeble attempts at trying to be funny:
The French postman (?) hysterically rejoicing while under bombardment from 16 inch naval guns (yeah, right).
The dead German Officer with his jackboots on arsy-versy – put on very quickly – don’t-cha-know, ho-ho-ho.
The US and Wehrmacht patrol walking past each other while looking at a night sky filled with pretty lights.
A super calm Robert Mitchum smoking a foul looking cigarillo while shells were bursting around his beautiful, immortal and courageous head.
As for the other omissions from the top 25, most of these would not qualify because:
They were ahistorical travesties, (see my comments on “The Longest Day” which almost made it).
They were human orientated melodramas.
They were pure rubbish. (The Dirty Dozen, Patton, Saving Private Ryan).
I have nothing against any of this type of war movie, but they do not deserve to be classified as ‘Great’ war movies
Do they give their process anywhere for generating this list? As people have said, some of these are not what I’d consider war movies. I wonder if they just told contributors to fill out a list of their favourite war movies. That might explain why some of these are ranked lower than expected; maybe some of the contributors didn’t list them as they didn’t consider them to be war movies.
The Great Dictator didn’t have any real battles or portrayal of war, other than a shot or two of Hynkel’s forces harassing Paulette Godard and her family.
Catch-22 was a mess of a movie, so I can see why it wasn’t considered. But 3 Kings is the definitive Gulf War movie and tends to be criminally overlooked (it didn’t even get an Oscar nomination!).
MHM miss Hell In The Pacific the Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune, John Boorman directed two-hander, about two enemies who can’t speak a common language, yet somehow fashion a relationship. Bleak and unsettling. Channel 4 didn’t miss it.
There’s just got to be a better Custer movie than They Died with Their Boots On
(hijack, but since all you war movie junkies are looking in: heads up on the latest remake of Taras Bulba coming out in 08. I’ve read that Yul Brynner was disappointed in how his version turned out, and I hope this version addresses those deficiencies. One thing that looks promising in the new one’s trailer is that it doesn’t downplay how amazing the Polish cavalry looked in deference to the Cossacks)