What are your favorite WWII movies - and why?

[MsAmerica]

What are your 3-4 favorite WWII movies? And if you can ponder why they're your favorites, do include that.

Erm probably The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan. Not very original. Ooh and Went The Day Well? And Cottage To Let and Backroom Boy. Lots of them for sentimental reasons - watched as a child.

Edited to add I watched Saving Private Ryan alone at home and the opening sequence of the beach landings made me tearful.

Further to add I watched a lot of the Home Front black & white movies often made when the war was still on and more of the blockbuster 60s and 70s movies later on. Always get annoyed by the anachronistic hairstyles and clothes in them

The Archers films: Life and Death of Colonel, Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death and A Canterbury Tale. None are what you’d call a conventional war movie but all are set (or largely set) and indeed made during WW2 and consider its impact on people and England in interesting ways.

Of the more conventional 1960s boysie, action blockbusters I always enjoy Where Eagles Dare and to a lesser extent The Great Escape. Good casts. Derring do.

I also really like The Dam Busters. It’s a good tale, well told. Good actors, particularly Michael Redgrave. Great music. Big influence on Star Wars.

Little of the more modern stuff has stuck with me much and there are some gaps in what I’ve seen. Not seen Dunkirk or Band of Brothers (not a film, I know).

I do really like Inglorious Basterds, which I think is as much a film about WW2 films.

Schindler’s List is an amazing film but not sure it counts.

Das Boot. Not sure I can say why, and it's not aged terribly well, but the sense of claustrophobic stress felt real to me as a child of people who lived through that war.

Schindler's List is a classic, and there are several other films highlighting acts of courageous humanity when there was little to be found.

Oh, and Dad's Army!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a charmingly odd, quirky film about events in occupied Guernsey 🙂

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289403/

Dunkirk. It's my all time favourite film. Not just my favourite war film. Also love Inglorious Bastards. And I suppose from the otherside of the pacific - Pearl Harbour. Always enjoyed that.

I can list the classics forever but my absolute favourite modern one is Jojo Rabbit.

Their Finest is a good recent one, about the making of a propaganda film. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.

Bridge on the River Kwai is another classic although the Alec Guinness plot is far more compelling than the special forces/secret mission plot.

And if we’re doing Spielberg then I’d also mention Empire of the Sun, which I think is really underrated. Again, perhaps not a conventional WW2 film.

I am also partial to The English Patient, but mainly for Ralph Fiennes at the peak of his beauty reasons.

Come And See
Grave Of The Fireflies
Life Is Beautiful
The Zone Of Interest
The Sound Of Music

I can't say any are all time favourites as such (and I'll likely never watch Come And See or Zone Of Interest again) but all are very good, especially for those of us who aren't interested in trad war films.

Ice Cold in Alex - brilliant, tense classic, with a good ending - much-deserved cold beer in a bar!

Come and see
Iron Cross
A Matter of Life and Death
City of Life and Death
The Longest Day

The first two are brutal and anti war. Iron Cross is from the German perspective. A matter of life and death is just a beautiful film and just so different for iIts time especially. City of Life and a death is about the rape of Nanking, it’s the most upsetting war film I have ever watched as about civilians and the atrocities the Japanese committed. There is a horrific scene where the soldiers are just sitting round eating laughing and joking like normal men, because they are normal men Monsters don’t wear a label.

I took a film studies module at University just in my first year to make up credits it was fun. I remember writing an essay comparing how minorities were portrayed in American film using Birth of a Nation and Glory as examples. Not WW2 but American Civil War. If you are interested in war films generally I thoroughly recommend that film.

The Battle of Britain.
The Sound of Music
I love a good WW2 movie!
For a book I would recommend “The Nightingale” by Kirsten Hannah

Oh also forgot the movie “Churchill”

The Wooden Horse
The Great Escape
The Dambusters

Life is Beautiful.
Hope and Glory.
Both wonderful films.

The Sound of Music
Goodnight Mister Tom

The Pianist

The man who never was - true story of how we fooled the Germans with a body and a briefcase.

Went the day well? - German paratroops invade English village dressed as British soldiers, but the plucky villagers fight back. Made in 1942 when the threat of invasion was still very real.

Where eagles dare - Burton, Eastwood and Ingrid Pitt, What's not to like?

A lot of my favourites have already been mentioned but I would add the following:
The Way Ahead,
The Gentle Sex
2000 Women
Odette
Carve Her Name With Pride
The Captive Heart
The Colditz Story
The Gathering Storm
Darkest Hour
The Imitation Game
Millions Like Us

Carve Her Name with Pride

True story of Violette Szabo a secret agent and first woman to be awarded the George Cross. A real testimony to the role of women behind enemy lines.

Tora! Tora! Tora! was on Film 4 yesterday. It’s always on but I nearly always find myself watching it if I find that it is. It’s become a bit of a joke between Dh and I “Quick! Come home soon! Tora! Tora! Tora! is on!”

The Railway Man, excellent film. Never want to see it again. Cinema was silent and nobody moved from their seat for ages when it finished.

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

Mrs Minniver

Reach for the Sky

Most of the ones already mentioned.

Not big on war flims, my husband knows more cos he used to watch all sorts with his grandma. I do like Saving Private Ryan, Hope and Glory, The Imitation Game and Pearl Harbour.

Ice Cold in Alex.

John Mills is awesome. And my Nan served there.

The Cruel Sea
Carve Her Name with Pride
A Matter of Life and Death (just brilliant)

Couple of Italian ones I'm quite fond of:

La lunga notte del '43 (Long Night in 1943)
I Due Colonnelli (The Two Colonels)

There's also another WWII film I've been dying to see but can't find it available anywhere. It stars Vivian Lee and Robert Taylor and it's called Waterloo Bridge. Looks very good and very sad. Anyone seen it?

And of course I have a major soft spot for The Great Escape. Love the whole cast. Steve MqQueen did all his own stunts, apart from the big final attempted jump across the Swiss border. It's because they couldn't insure him for that one. He played a couple of German officers on motorbikes chasing his character too: The Cooler King. Bless 🥲

I love Hope and Glory, its just so cosy. The bit when he goes to school and its been bombed and he looks up at the sky and shouts "thank you Hitler!" I know its a bit rose tinted but most people who were there always were in my experience.