A post WWII film that deals in a weird way with WWI is the Great Waldo Pepper. It actually begins with the end of the war. For the rest of the film, the main character, a flyerl, played by Robert Redford, tries to make up for missing the war by simulating and lying about war-time heroics in the air. The end of the movie is with him winning a dogfight with a WWI german ace during the filming of a movie like Wings or Dawn Patrol.
A more modern presentation of the Great War was a number of the Young Indiana Jones episodes which came out (I think) in the 1980s. I think there were three that specifically delt with the war.
Another 30s film about the war was Hell Below (I’ll probably be remembering 1930s films about the war all night now).
A couple of other references to the War to End All Wars was in Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. I remember one taking place in a Trench, and one more clearly about a flyer that takes off from a air field in France in 1917 and lands on another air field in England in the late 1950s.
Both excellent films pre and post WWII are based on a wonderful book by James Hilton (if I remember correctly (which today has not been the case, I might add).
In the OP you refer to WWI in popular culture, yet you don’t mention Red Baron Pizza. Around my house frozen is part of popular culture.
There’s also the novel Johnny Got His Gun, written by Dalton Trumbo, as well as the film directed and written by Trumbo. It’s not so much about the war itself as it is about the human aftermath.
If you’ve seen the Metallica video for the song “One”, you’ve seen clips from the movie. It’s pretty brutal.
The recent French movie A Very Long Engagement had a lot of WWI trench warfare scenes, although it focused mainly on the left-behind lover (Audrey Tatou) of a French soldier. Also, watch for Jodie Foster (speaking French!) in an almost unrecognizable cameo.
The great comic serial Charley’s War by Pat Mills was my first exposure to the Great War. I’ve not seen anything since, to match it. One of the greatest comic strips of all time, and well-researched, too.
Another excellent WWI novel is Flanders by Patricia Anthony (recommended by a Doper). I’ve heard that Anthony is trying to raise money to finance a movie. The book was almost too painful to read, but it was gorgeous. Guillermo del Toro (sp?) could do justice to a movie.
The Maisie Dobbs series of mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear are new (first one published in 2004). They are set in the 1920s but draw heavily on WWI and the reprecussions of it a decade or more later – the lost generation of young women left without marriage prospects, the men who came home crippled in mind or body, the families of young men who didn’t come home at all. There are extensive flashbacks to Maisie’s work in France as a nurse during the War, and the loss of her lover to a devastating combat injury (he survives but is gravely brain-injured and institutionalized). They’re pretty good books and focus more on the social aspects of war and its aftermath than the military aspects.
For nonfiction, The Great Influenza, a book about the flu pandemic of 1918 draws quite heavily on WWI history given the time and context of the outbreak. It’s a really interesting book, too.
My favourite short story in the Arrowdreams collection is about von Richthofen surviving. It has trivial significance for WW1 but devastatingly changes the outcome of WW2.
Bloody Red Baron, by Kim Newman, takes place during WWI, and explores that truly dark period when Dracula (after fleeing England) allied himself with the Germans and helped to turn Manfred von Richthofen and the rest of Jasta 11 into uber-vampires capable of fighting enemy aircraft. Thank goodness we had Herbert West and Dr. Moreau on our side!
As Sal Ammoniac inferred, Snoopy’s pantomine of an unnamed World War I flying ace in the Peanuts comic strip is one of the most famous WWI references in popular culture. It itself has inspired some other media, including the Royal Guardsmen’s hit song Snoopy vs. the Red Baron. (The Peanuts gang took a more serious look at both World Wars in the award-winning TV special What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?- Snoopy sometimes imagined himself as a soldier in World War II as well, usually around D-Day.)
Tarzan fought the Germans in East Africa in at least one Tarzan novel.