Now I’m a relatively new possessor of a DVD player (3 weeks) and I’ve already developed an alarmingly huge appetite for those shiny little discs. It’s a life change, I tell ya’.
New friends populate my spectrum (the sales clerks at Wherehouse Music, Blockbuster and, oh heck, I can’t remember the name of my third-best hunter/gatherer grounds).
Well, I have decided upon a project, and you, the TM, can help me.
I want to view to best of the best movies about WWII in somewhat of a chronological order, and I’ve got some gaps. I realize that they will overlap. And I also realize that, as with books about the war, many made in the '50s and '60s are fairly incognizant of MAGIC and ULTRA. And, I’m undecided about trying to follow it chronologicaly, or by theater of operations.
So, while I’ve found many good flics to pursue, can you suggest titles I might seek to portray the following:
Invasion of Poland (there was one out only a few years ago, but I don’t remember the title)
The fall of France
Dunkirk
Barbarossa
The Battle of the Coral Sea
Seige of Leningrad
Battle of Britain
Midway/Wake Island
Guadalcanal
Stalingrad
Dieppe
Anzio
The taking of Rome
Tarawa/Betio
Okinawa
The Battle for Berlin
A-Bomb time
I realize my list doesn’t encompass all of the major pivot points of that conflict. Pearl, for one, is notably absent. That is only because I’ve already acquired several remarkable films on that. If you think I’m missing something, please suggest.
Unfortunately, some of these are probably not available on DVD; but here are some films you may find of interest:
Midway. IMO not as good as Tora! Tora! Tora!, but you asked specifically about Midway. Tora! Tora! Tora!. Not on your list of subjects, but a good docu-drama. Enemy at the Gates. I liked this sniper vs. sniper film that took place in the Russian Theatre. Patton doesn’t show the liberation of Rome, but it’s a classic flick about Patton’s march from North Africa to Germany.
The Battle of Britain deserves its own section.
The Battle of Britain is an epic from the 1960s. Very good. Spitfire starring Leslie Howard is a great one about the development of the magical airplane from Supermarine. It starts durning the Battle of Britain, then flaches back to the 1920s, finally reaching the Battle of Britain again. Excellenf film. 12 O’Clock High. Not BoB, but one of the best war films – or *anti-*war films out there. The War Lover. This one’s often overlooked. Good one for B-17 fans.
Of couse your collection should also include The Longest Day and Das Boot.
“Hope and Glory” (Battle of Britain/Blitz/Homefront);
“The Dam Busters” (1954, bombing Ruhr valley);
“The Cruel Sea” (1953, North Atlantic navy yarn: one of best war movies ever)
“Ice Cold in Alex” (1958, North Africa spy thriller)
“The Colditz Story” (1955, great POW film–see this before the crappy remake comes out!)
“The Wooden Horse” (
“Captains of the Clouds” (1942, great colour Canadian film about James Cagney and Alan Hale as bush pilots who join the RCAF)
“Above and Beyond” (1952, biopic of Paul Tibbets Jr., man who dropped A-bomb on Hiroshima)
“The Captive Heart” (1946, British officer taken POW at Dunkirk)
“Cockleshell Heroes” (1956, Jose Ferrer, British commandos in canoes [true story])
“Corvette K-225” (1943, surprisingly good Canadian war film about our anti-submarine navy in North Atlantic)
“Go For Broke” (1951, story of 442nd Regl Combat Unit [Japanese-Americans])
“The Hill” (1965, Sean Connery, ruthless bastards in British punishment camp, North Africa. Brilliant film!)
“In Which We Serve” (1942, Noel Coward as Lord Louis Mountbatten in semi-true navy yarn. Stiffest upper lip ever)
“Mrs Miniver” (1942, British home front–6 Oscars, incl Best Picture)
“The North Star” (1943, heavily pro-soviet about partisans vs Nazis in Russia)
“Open City” (1944-46, Rossellini’s great film about occupied Rome [some actually filmed during the Nazi occupation])
“08/15 (Null-acht funfzehn)” (1954, GREAT German film about life in barracks, just pre-WW2)
“Kanal” (1956, Polish movie about partisans escaping Warsaw after the Uprising of 1944)
“Fire on the Plain” (1959, stark, dark Japanese view of Phillipine campaign)
“Die Bruecke” (“The Bridge” 1961, possibly greatest German film dealing with WW2–young recruits hold a bridge in the last weeks of WW2)
I forgot about Hope and Glory. My ex-g/f and I went to see it on our first date, and I have it on DVD. I like the part where the German pilot lands in the neighbourhood and the bit with the barrage balloon.
The Dam Busters is pretty obscure. It plays on teevee occasionally, but I never seem to catch it. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid in the '70s.
You’ll probably find the version re-released in the 50s with additional footage and comments about the Hungarian uprising tagged at the end. And yes, it was pro-soviet, after all, in '43 they were our allies.
**
It is part of a trilogy following the same characters through out the war. The other two are 08/15 - Zweiter Teil and 08/15 - In der Heimat. The first one dealing with the Russian front, the second dealing with the tail-end of WWII.
Now for my recommandations :
Guadalcanal diary , a 1943 movie, this is still one of the best movie about 'Canal.
Uprising, a made-for-TV movie about the Warsaw ghetto uprising that is surprisingly good.
For the purposes of the OP, A Bridge Too Far covers the doomed Operation Market Garden. Haven’t seen The Devil’s Briaged, though.
As to some of the others mentioned in the OP, Wake Island, Midway and Stalingrad all have eponymous movies. I’ve seen Midway and thought it rather lackluster; haven’t seen Wake Island, though. I have Stalingrad - very good movie, though not as action-oriented as most Hollywood war movies.
Stalingrad, a German film from the early/mid-1990s, gets my vote for most realistic (and most grim) portrayal of the Eastern Front. It’s all about a German unit moved from the comfort of Italy to Stalingrad, where the survivors end up in a penal battalion on the steppe, fighting off T-34s with rifles.
Thanks, detop, I actually didn’t realize that “08/15” was a trilogy. I saw it (old 35mm print) in a University class about 20 years ago…the Prof was a bit of an oddball, don’t know why he never mentioned the other 2.
Just remembered “Theirs is the Glory,” a rather disjointed film about Arnhem, made in 1946, with many members of the Airborne retracing their (still-warm, almost) steps. Has a Panther and a Tiger I in it, as well as enough Airborne kit and uniform (now rare and expensive) to make you weep.
Apparently the film crew came across a number of corpses in slit trenches during the filming, so soon after the battle. I have a special aluminum ticket to the premiere; it is cast out of metal from crashed gliders, and has the Pegasus symbol on one side.
Well, for the A-Bomb Time genre, may I suggest Barefoot Gen? It’s not by any stretch a “War Movie” like “The Dirty Dozen”, and it’s Anime, which you may not care for, but it DOES take place in Hiroshima when the bomb goes off. With graphic detail.
Say what you will about anime, but you have to admit that it doesn’t any pull punches. Try showing someone getting their skin boiled off by “Little Boy” in What Have we Learned, Charlie Brown?, and see how far you get.
