A dozen riveting WWII movies focused on combatants
Jul 04 '04 (Updated Aug 13 '08)
The Bottom Line check 'em out!
There are a very large number of movies set in and around the Second World War, including the various holocaust/Jewish survival movies such as
The Shop on Main Street (directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, 1965)
The Pianist (directed by Roman Polanski, 2002)
Europa, Europa (directed by Agnieszka Holland, 1990)
Schindler's List (directed by Stephen Spielberg, 1993)
The Diary of Anne Frank (directed by George Stevens, 1959)
Lacombe, Lucien (1974), directed by Louis Malle)
The Seventh Cross (directed by Fred Zinneman, 1944)
and many about the traumas of war on women and children, including
Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games, directed by René Clément, 1952)
Open City, Paisŕ, and Germany, Year Zero (directed by Roberto Rosselinni)
Two Women (directed by Vittorio de Sica, 1961)
Malèna (directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, 2000)
Au revoir, les enfants (1987, directed by Louis Malle)
Empire of the Sun (directed by Stephen Spielberg, 1987)
Mrs. Miniver (directed by William Wyler, 1942)
The Search (directed by Fred Zinnemann, 1948)
Hope and Glory (directed by John Boorman, 1987)
The Ogre (directed by Völker Schlöndorff, 1996)
plus Night of the Shooting Stars (the Taviani brothers, 1982), also involving confused noncombatant males in an Italian village,
This Land Is Mine (directed by Jean Renoir, 1943) with a French coward finding courage,
Hangmen Also Die (directed by Fritz Lang, 1943) with a Czech family harboring the assassin of a Nazi official
Empire of the Sun (directed by Steven Spielberg,1987) with a spoiled boy from the European enclave in Shanghai separates from his parents and growing up in an internment camp next to a Japanese airstrip
and some Chinese films with longer historical arcs and István Szabó similarly sweeping 1999 "Sunshine"
I have also excluded prisoner camp/escape movies such as
Robert Bresson's masterpiece A Man Escapes and
The Human Condition trilogy (though it has some combat, too, in the third part)
Stalag 17
King Rat
The Great Escape
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
The Bridge on the River Kwai
I have excluded these war-related genres, recovery films (such as "Stairway to Heaven") and also movies focused on commanders such as Rommel (The Desert Fox) and "Patton" (also Preminger's "In Harm's Way," my favorite of the star-studded cast WWII movies), and those involving Humphrey Bogart reluctantly getting involved (Casablanca, To Have and Have Not) to focus on dramas centering on combatants (air, land, and sea). I am saving comedies for another list.
Before getting to my list, I should mention that I have not seen the following:
The Assault
The Immortal Battalion
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing
My final prefatory note is that I am well aware that the three most recent entries of my list all have some vociferous detractors. There are bases for criticism, though the vehemence with which some have been pressed puzzle me.
(13) Like "Saving Private Ryan," Enemy at the Gate (2001), directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, starts by throwing the audience into the chaos of war, in this case the German attack on Stalingrad. The terror of the evacuees is compellingly portrayed, but a hero is needed. In the rather unlikely person of the almost-too-handsome Jude Law as a shepherd from the Ural Mountains, one is manufactured. The propaganda machine is nearly as much of a focus in the movie as is the duel of wits between the Soviet champion Vassily Zaitsev (Law) and an aristocratic German officer sent to eliminate him, Major Koenig (Ed Harris). Both are superb marksmen, so the duel ultimately depends not on their marksmanship but on information. Gabriel Thomson's Sasha is insufficiently realized, and I think that the rivalry for Tania.(Rachel Weisz) between private solider Zaitsev and officer Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), who is his de facto publicist, is a distraction. Bob Hoskins's scenery-chewing Kruschev is not a distraction, because the considerations of building a hero to rally the people of Russia is absolutely central (in both Soviet and Nazi warmakers' views). The cinematography and set construction would be hard to fault. (See Gungian's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_13476466308)
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(11) Terrence Malik's adaptation of The Thin Red Line (1999) from a novel by James Jones (whose From Here to Eternity I don't consider a World War II film, though it is about soldiers and ends with the Japanese attack on Hawaiian military installations on Dec. 7. 1941) is also very visually striking with some slow stretches that seem like dawdling for those seeking nonstop action sequences. Using different techniques than Spielberg's in "Saving Private Ryan," Malik plunges the viewer into ground-level action (and the pauses with death continuing to lurk). It also contains revelatory performances by James Caviezel as Private Witt and Sean Penn as Sergeant Welsh.(See Stargull's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_23745433220)
(10) The first Hollywood movie that I've seen that shows some real agony rather than the "natural" triumph of the American military in WWII is William A. Wellman's The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). The ersatz heartiness of Burgess Meredith as Ernie Pyle and some sentimentality of his narration (and the mascot dog) slightly undercut the gritty realism. There is the usual wide range of American types thrown together and Robert Mitchum as a brave and resourceful and caring lieutenant (later captain) whose unit the famous correspondent keeps finding in the Italian campaign. (The cast was heavily populated by recent G.I.s and war correspondents playing themselves.) The pace seems slow after decades of subsequent WWII movies, but the grand-daddy remains moving in my opinion. (There are no epinions reviews of this movie that I find it more realistic and less sentimental than John Huston's documentary "The Battle of San Pietro," noting that it was heavily censored. I find the characters in Wellman's later (1949) "Battleground" too stock company, with too much comedy in the first half hour and too much uplift in the last, though James Whitmore was very good.)
"The Story of G. I. Joe" does not rely on cheap musical swells and balletic deaths as in Allan Dwan's "Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949) with its cardboard-figure marines and Wild West cavalry leader John Wayne. And for the off-duty scenes, "From Here to Eternity" is far superior to "Sands."
(9) Stephen Spielberg's many detractors level the charge of sentimentality at the last part of Saving Private Ryan (1999), too. The Omaha Beach landing in it is the most compelling part and far superior to depictions in other movies (such as "The Longest Day" and "The Big Red One"), and it juxtaposes intense action scenes with genuine character development, including Matt Damon's title character's, Jeremy Davies's clerk, and Tom Hanks's Captain Miller. (See Grouch's review at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-41C0-CF10675-382BF5A9-bd3)
(8) I think the best WWII straight-ahead heroic action flick is the Guns of Navarone, directed by J. Lee Thompson in 1961. Based on a hugely successful novel by Alistair MacLean (who also wrote Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare, both of which were turned into memorable action movies). Gregory Peck is at his most heroic leading a motley crew on a seemingly impossible mission (to neutralize the title artillery on a Nazi fortress on an Agean island). Anthony Quinn is flamboyant and ethnic (Greek) David Niven is wry (maybe even flippant). Both are in top form in their specialties. (See j_deverchai's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_103713574532; I have not included the later, somewhat similar raid by "The Dirty Dozen" directed by Robert Aldrich, despite the performance by Lee Marvin, mostly out of repugnance for a mission to incinerate civilians, which even wives of German officers and local French prostitutes are. On that movie, see Eplovejoy's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_6480760452)
(7) Robert Aldrich's Attack! is primarily a duel movie, though the duel is between American army (reserve) officers, the politically well-connected cowardly captain played by Eddie Albert and the seething lieutenant played by Jack Palance, who promises to come back and rip out the captain's heart if he again fails to provide support for a platoon sent into the lion's mouth. The combat scenes are excellent, and both the interior and exterior black-and-white cinematography of Joseph Biroc are notable, but it is the performances of Albert, Palance, Buddy Ebsen, William Smithers, and Lee Marvin that make the movie, overcoming some lame attempts at comic relief and an ending I find difficult to credit. I reviewed "Attack!" at http://www.epinions.com/content_142769622660.
The great American poet of violence, Sam Peckinpah, also directed a duel within an army movie. From the title, "Cross of Iron," it is obvious that the army is the German one. It has Maxmillian Schell was the well-connected, vainglorious captain sending a subordinate who sees through him, is considerably more competent and cares about his men (James Coburn) to be eliminated. (James Mason is quite unlike Lee Marvin as the colonel in command, however.) In my view, it drags often and is inferior to "Attack!" (However, see George Chabot's championing of it at http://www.epinions.com/content_94603021956; regretably the DVD is not letterboxed and lacks bonus features)
(6) The movie about Germans I'm including is the ultimate submarine movie Das Boot, directed by Wolfgang Petersen in. I have not seen the director's cut, and my memory of seeing the movie in its theatrical release in 1981 is hazy, so I especially recommend Metalluk's comprehensive review at http://www.epinions.com/content_135417138820. Human beings in a small underwater metal tube commanded by a savvy professional not wrapped up in Nazi ideology is also on view in The Enemy Below. The focus of "Das Boot" is entirely on the German sailors.
(5) In my view, one of the best WWII action movies is the little-heralded 1965 John Frankenheimer movie The Train. I enjoy movies about duels of wits (such as The Enemy Below, Enemy at the Gate) and this one features a formidable German officer played by Paul Scofield and a resourceful French railroad controller played by Burt Lancaster. It has great railroad sequences, including a real crash. The DVD has a fascinating commentary track by John Frankenheimer. Jeanne Moreau needlessly slows things down, but Lancaster and Scofield are superb, as is the black-and-white cinematography by Jean Tournier and Walter Wottitz. (See DavidMac's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_126650650244)
(4) Although the glamorous fly-boys are more a staple of movies about World War I than about World War II, and about the Korean War than World War II, they are not lacking altogether. The Air Force entry on my list, however, goes to one that does not glamorize. Twelve o'clock High (1949), one of the many movies starring Gregory Peck that was directed by Henry King. Peck plays a hard-driving general (with the unsbubtle name Savage) whipping into a shape a demoralized unit and pushing himself to breakdown. The supporting players, including Dean Jagger's that got him a well-deserved Oscar, are convincing, but it is Peck who makes "Twelve o'clock High" a masterpiece.
(See NFP's appreciation at http://www.epinions.com/content_14518881924 and Peck making "Pork Chop Hill" the greatest Korean war movie.)
(3) Roberto Rosselini's Paisŕ is more uneven than "Twelve o'clock High." It portrays a series of episodes in different locales from Sicily to the Po River estuary as the American Army pushed the German one north through Italy. The focus is more on relationships between the American troops and the Italians being liberated (but in dire straits) than about American-German combat and might be consigned to the "effects on civilians" subgenre. The battle scenes in the marshes are very unusual, though the most memorable sequence involves an African American MP and a desperately poor young boy who steals his boots when the MP passes out drunk in the rubble of Naples. (I reviewed "Paisŕ: at http://www.epinions.com/content_67600354948)
(1 and 2) Some of Rosselini's film has a documentary look, some is actorly. Most of the movies on my list get down and dirty. The top spot goes to two very extreme (hyper-real?) late-1950s movies directed by Kon Ichikawa, Fires on the Plain (Nobi, 1959) and The Harp of Burma (Biruma no tategoto, 1956). "Fires" portrays the desperation of Japanese soldiers on the Philippines at the end of the war, a tubercular one (Tamura, indelibly portrayed by Eiji Funakoshi) in particular, and "Harp" a haunted Japanese solider (the lute-playing Mizushima, portrayed by Shôji Yasui) burying the dead in Burma after failing to convince a company of his compatriates dug-into a mountain redoubt to surrender. "Harp" is more lyrical, though both are desolating reflections on life and death, compassion and ruthlessness.
(See DavidMac's review of "Fires on the Plain" at http://www.epinions.com/content_29504802436; )
P.S. I had not seen Kobayashi's (1959-60) "Human Condition" (Ningen no joken) trilogy when I made the list. The final part, A Soldier's Prayer, is not quite as extreme as "Fires on the Plain" and its hero, played by the extraordinary Tatsuya Nakadai, has something of the humanism and much of the despair of Mizushima in "Harp of Burma." With the two 1950s Ichikawa masterpieces, it shows the desperate plight of Japanese soldiers at the end of the war. Kaji tries to protect various Chinese and Japanese soldiers, women, and forced-labor groups and to get back to his wife, whose visit in the middle movie of the trilogy is very memorable.
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