I’m watching Dunkirk and am wondering if modern axis nations have ww2 movies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Japan does, but Germany seems like they’d probably not have movies about ww2.
Das Boot comes to mind.
Japan has anime and video games where not only do they win WW2, they’re also portrayed as being in the right.
Well, there’s *Downfall *of course.
I haven’t looked at all of these articles or these, but several of them are about World War II.
I’m mainly familiar with Japanese movies covering the effects of the war on civilians at home, not the soldiers at war. Among those are the classic animated films Graveyard of Fireflies and Barefoot Gen and the brand new classic In This Corner of the World.
Those three movies show the horror of the war pretty matter-of-factually without explicitly trying to demonize Amierica, but there is a two-part TV movie that I wish I could remember the name of that was laughably over the top. It was aired on some anniversary of the end of WWII (likely the 65th) and I saw a fansubbed version. The story followed multiple people including (doctors at a hospital) as they go about their dramatic, traumatic lives, then in the last half of the last episode the US military tracks down and kills them one by one. Really. A US fighter strafes a train, then breaks off to chase down and shoot the one guy (who had been one of the starring characters) when he got off the train. And in a different location a different plane strafes another character. And in one of the biggest overkills, two characters have just reunited on a beach when a formation of bombers heading to bomb the city drop one of their bombs on top of the couple (who were a good distance from the target area.) They did everything except have the scenes cut to views of the American pilots twirling their pencil mustaches and cackling maniacally.
Here are a couple of lists. Some of the movies I want to track down myself–for example, this one, because I like a few of Yôji Yamada’s other movies.
Germany, Pale Mother covers about ten years from before the war to the allied occupation. Needless to day, it is not a good first date movie.
When I was in high school, we saw a German movie in which two Jungen grew up between the wars. One followed Hitler, the other married a cute Danish babe and was conscripted into the army. They all survived the war, but the guy who was a Party official was eventually charged with war crimes. His problem was solved when he fell down an elevator shaft, a la Diana Muldaur in LA Law.
I don’t remember the name of the movie, but it was pretty good without being depressingly serious.
It seems from their movies that Japan didn’t learn the same lesson from the war that Germany did. At least some of the people making these movies seem to think Japan was somehow a victim in WWII rather than a particularly vicious aggressor that raped and butchered their way across most of Asia.
Kon Ichikawa’s 1959 film adaptation of shohei Ooka’s Fires On the Plain.
The German film Stalingrad is one of the most brutal and gutwrenching war films I have seen.
Germany certainly has had war movies, but of course they would be different from those made by the winners, and would reflect the expectations of the time they were made (so, not much appetite for heroics or comic capers for at least 20 years after the war, for example). Also, there’d be a difference between the imperatives governing commercial cinema and public service TV, which has produced a number of serious dramas trying to encompass the experience of the time, rather than battle spectaculars.
The only Italian-made WW2 movie I can think of is Mediterraneo, which is about the joys of skiving off.
Well, there’s of course life is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella - 1997). Remember Roberto Beningni? “I Luooove eeevr’bodeeeh!!” Won three Academy Awards
Actually, just last year, the German- Danish production *Land of Mine * (Under Sandet - 2015) was a big hit in Europe and got nominated for Best movie in a Foreign Language. Very depressing movie.
If we are talking about the *actual *war, A couple of years back a German TV series about young soldiers during the War, Generation War (Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter - 2013) was all the rage
Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises. It’s about the aircraft designer who designed the Japanese ‘Zero’ planes used in WW2.
Didn’t that guy also go on to play lead guitar in Loudness?
I saw “Die Brücke” a long time ago and liked it a lot. Be warned, it’s a bleak, bleak movie. It’s about a group of german schoolboys who gets drafted in the last months of the war. With minimal training and some panzerfausts they are ordered to defend the titular bridge. It’s on YouTube so you can see for yourself.
This link should work:
Neither link works.
The Marriage of Maria Braun
MacArthur’s Children
These are both mainly about the occupation/immediate aftermath of the war.
Depressing yes, but very good. I recommend it.