Last week, Seraphic Secret picked the Ten Greatest Movies of all time. Our ruthlessly reductive list eliminated dozens of great movies that we love. Ultimately, we decided on movies that we return to over and over again because there is always something new to see and because they never fail to entertain and astonish.
This week, we’ve decided to concentrate on war movies, a genre particularly suited to the kinetic energy of motion pictures. Readers will immediately notice the absence of silent films and movies from Hollywood’s golden age. Yes, in spite of our love of classic cinema, we are the first to admit that sound and modern special effects have rendered most older war movies tame and stylized.
We have also excluded war movies that treat war as “senseless killing” or set forth a pacifist narrative. As far as Seraphic Secret is concerned, a just war is the only method by which moral states can triumph over evil nations. In short, war is too serious to be intellectually castrated by fuzzy minds who traffic in moral equivalence.
We concentrate on movies that feature intense warfare, yet whose narrative line does not neglect the more intimate, personal stories. We have eliminated home-front movies, fantasies of good Nazi soldiers ( Auf Wiedersehen, Das Boot), movies about Holocaust victims, tales of spies, and POW movies, sub-genres that—except good Nazi movies, historically suspect and morally loathsome—deserve and will receive ten best lists all their own.
As always, we invite our readers to list their own ten best war movies.
Beautiful Australian movie shot entirely in South Australia, that takes place during World War I, telling the story of a light horse unit fighting in Ottoman Palestine. The final assault on Beersheva is a masterpiece of filmmaking. The director, Simon Wincer, told me that he was working with very few horses and just used lots of “simple camera tricks” to make the final charge such a tour de force.
This is a long movie, but it’s riveting. The battle of Little Round Top, the furthermost left flank of the entire Federal line, is exquisitely choreographed. When Jeff Daniels, as Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, orders his men to fix bayonets a chill runs up your spine. In spite of the bad wigs and even worse beards, a very effective film.
Oh gosh, where to begin? This Sergio Leone epic is saddled with the worst title in movie history. Rod Steiger, a lice-ridden Mexican bandit, and James Coburn, a mysterious Irish Republican explosives expert on the run from the British, reluctantly team up and join the Mexican revolution. Enio Morricone’s score will haunt you for days afterwards. A neglected masterpiece.
The opening shot and monologue are, perhaps, the greatest introduction to character and personal narrative ever to be seen in motion picture history. Patton was a bully, an anti-Semite and a braggart, but he was a great field commander. The script and score wisely play up Patton’s mystical side which adds a whole new dimension to this memorable film. George C. Scott’s performance deservedly won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He refused to accept it, saying he rejected the idea of such competition among actors.
One of the first lessons a screenwriter learns is to define heroes by their faults. The script for David Lean’s masterpiece elegantly portrays Lawrence’s emotional struggles with the violence he claims to abhor but in which, ultimately, he delights. His confused sexual identity is on display in several subtle scenes, and his divided allegiances between the British empire and the romanticized desert Arabs is fully rendered. This movie strikes the perfect balance between sweeping epic and intimate portraiture.
The true—well, sorta—story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, 1879, South Africa, where ninety British soldiers fought against several thousand Zulu warriors. At one point a young bugler, lips trembling, asks the tough Sergeant: “Why? Why?” And the Sergeant, stiff-upper lip, as the British used to be, replies, “Because we’re here, lad.” A young and incredibly gifted actor named Michael Caine makes his very first major film appearance as a foppish young officer who becomes a man in the crucible of battle. Zulu’s score by the great John Barry, is one of the most memorable I have ever heard. During the Yom Kippur War I used to hum it to myself to keep up my spirits and remind myself that numbers don’t matter, that in the end discipline, courage and fortitude triumph.
A spectacular Finnish movie that tells the story of the hundred day Winter War fought by Finland against the Soviet Union from November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940. It was the Winter War that convinced Hitler that invading Russia would be a cake walk.This epic details how ill-equipped, inept, and poorly led Soviet troops repeatedly flung themselves against brave and determined Finnish soldiers posted in thin lines across a massive front. Fighting in bitter, subzero weather, the story is told through the multiple story lines of a single squad composed of farmers, school teachers and village merchants, intensely patriotic men whose lives in a harsh, isolated land breeds first-rate soldiers. The overwhelming strength of the Soviet Union in men and armaments seemed to doom the Finns to a fast and bloody defeat. But the Finns are a stubborn people whose resistance should rank with greatest last stands in military history.
Based on a classic, Hemingwayesque novel of the same name by Antti Tuuri, the central character, Martti Hakala, is a member of the 23rd Infantry regiment, an easy-going farmer who likes nothing better than plowing the fertile earth. The battle scenes are huge and impressively choreographed with waves of screaming Soviet soldiers charging frontally—flank attacks are way too subtle for the Soviet bear—into pitifully narrow Finnish lines. It takes a while for non-Finnish viewers to identify all the supporting characters, but soon enough the individual soldiers become distinct. Family life is lovingly rendered. The sturdy women who wait anxiously for their men to return are blessedly unglamorous. The film has a nicely understated heroic yet gritty quality that correctly views war as abrupt bursts of blood drenched chaos and soul-shattering fear. This is a classic war film that deserves a wide international audience.
The Nazi occupation of Byeloruss was particularly savage. In this Soviet film, Florian, a naive teenager anxious to join the partisans, and Glasha, a village beauty, end up together, wandering a landscape that resembles hell on earth. Every frame of this film thunders with powerful, unforgettable images. The almost medieval world of the peasants is in stark contrast to the mechanized death brought by the Nazis. There are moments of lyricism that are just overwhelming. In a rain drenched forest, Glasha stands on a log and dances the Charleston. The title comes from The Apocalypse of John:
And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
A brilliant Civil War movie about the merciless bushwacker warfare on the Kansas-Missouri border. A near perfect screen adaptation by James Shamus based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell. Vivid and touching performances by Tobey Maguire, Jeffrey Wright, Skeet Ulrich, Simon Baker, Jonathan Brandis and Jewel. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, as a psychotic bushwhacker, nearly steals the show with an over-the-top performance—is he playing the character sorta gay?—that shouldn’t work but does. The massacre of Lawrence, Kansas is a harrowing, extended sequence you will not soon forget. A major box office flop, Ride With the Devil will eventually be recognized as a timeless masterpiece.
Director Akira Kurosawa’s epic, the greatest movie ever made, speaks directly about the moral imperative of a just war.
The Seven Samurai takes place in medieval Japan, a time when bandits—the terrorists of their time—roamed the land looting, raping and killing defenseless farmers.
Seven down-at-the-heels Samurai warriors are hired to defend one poor village. The Samurai do not negotiate with the bandits. They do not try and appease them. Nor do they ponder the root causes of banditry. The Samurai set strategy and kill the bandits. One by one.
Every true warrior understands there is no deterrence and no freedom without the disproportionate use of force.
The climactic battle in the rain, where mud, blood and tears mix, is perhaps, the finest choreographed battle scene ever staged.
Every skilled director in Hollywood studies this masterpiece and tries—without success—to emulate Kurosawa’s cinematic style. We all stand in Akira Kurosawa’s shadow. This is the film that compelled me to become a screenwriter.
If you love movies but have not seen The Seven Samurai, you are without oxygen.
I think “Saving Private Ryan” is ruined by the anti-war message Spielberg includes. The Hanks character says that saving the private is “the only good thing to come out of this whole war.” How about punishing Nazis ?
I would include “12 0’clock High” and “The Longest Day” as great war movies with great historical value. I have been to most of the locales in Longest Day and think of it as history. “12 O’clock” was written by two guys who were there and is about real people.
Another excellent war movie is “Battleground” with James Whitmore and John Hodiak.
“Patton was a bully, an anti-Semite and a braggart, but he was a great field commander. ”
I think that his opinion of Jews was based on what he saw – mainly in the camps. I’m sure that his opinion would’ve been different if he had lived to witness the courage, tenacity and both tactical and strategic genius of the Haganah and the IDF. However, regardless of his personal faults, he was perhaps the greatest battlefield general we’ve had since the Civil War.
I would concur with the many nominations of “Tora, Tora, Tora!” as one of the best war films ever, as well as nominating “The Battle of Britain.” Notably, these two and Patton were all made right around the 25th anniversary of the end of WW2.
As for Tora, Tora, Tora! – one fellow MOT that I knew in grade school jokingly referred to it as a Jewish war movie.
“Duck, You Sucker” has always been one of my favorite movies (even after they changed the name to “A Fist Full of Dynamite” for TV). I was beginning to think that I was the only person who had ever seen it.
Thanks for validating my appreciation of it. 🙂
I do have a love for “The Wild Geese” – which, while perhaps not about war per se, is about warriors. “We Were Soldiers” is also a favorite…
But I thank you for offering several that I haven’t seen to add to the must-see list.
I certainly agree with Patton, Zulu and Gettysburg. I further agree that Seven Samuri is one of the great movies of all time, but I don’t know that I would classify it as a “war movie.” The rest on your list, I haven’t seen. On my own list of the top 10, I would have to include, in no particular order:
– Tora, Tora, Tora
– Saving Private Ryan
– The Longest Day
– Sergeant York
– Black Hawk Down
– Pork Chop Hill
– The Big Red One
– Zulu
– Gettysburg
– Patton
I would also have to give special mention to the best “war” comedy of all time – – Kelly’s Heroes. What a cast.
A second special mention To Hell and Back, starring Audie Murphy as . . . Audie Murphy. Not the greatest movie, but starring the most decorated soldier in the history of the U.S. Army.
I liked Black Hawk Down a lot. Zulu was okay but I didn’t love it. Maybe a little too old timey for me.
Gotta agree with all of GW’s movies. Great picls!
I might add 1 more, but it falls under the “quest movie” role — Where Eagles Dare.
The Guns of Navarone.
Or is that a spy movie?
It’s a quest movie.
“Once an Eagle,” from the novel of the same name, traces two American officers through WWI and WWII. Outstanding; the movie is IMO better than the book.
“The Caine Mutiny,” while not quite up to the book, is very good.
“Seven Samurai”! Awesome! Even though I expected it, I’m pleased with its selection and position in the list.
I can’t keep up! Another great list of movies to watch. After this week I have come to a conclusion. Robert can make The Seven Samurai fit any list. Romance, War, Comedy, Drama, insert genre here. Wait, I just realized, He’s correct!
Robert – I will have to study this more on my own time – but do you think cinematic masterpieces like The Seven Samurai have some element of “luck” to them or did everybody just do the job the director and screenwriter intended?
Looking at some movies considered masterpieces it seems to me there is an unseen – and perhaps unforeseen component that enters to give them that timelessness appeal.
Bill:
Great question. Hard to answer. People who work on bad movies work just as hard as people who work on good movies. But bad movies can always be traced to a bad script. So, start with a good script and your chances of making a good movie increase. Obviously.
Sidney Lumet used to compare making movies to a working with a rough diamond. You cut it just so, cut it again, polish every facet and hope the final product catches light as it should.
In short: Great movies are planned, but unforseen elements always enter, as does history.
We call it catching lighting in a bottle.
Breaker Morant – Australian movie about the Boer war in South Africa, but with resonances to Vietnam.
Fail Safe – not sure this could be called a war movie per se, but it certainly represented the cold war zeitgeist well.
Robert,
I’ve liked other movies by Kurosawa, but I’ve not yet viewed The Seven Samurai. Just curious: Do I remember correctly? Is this the one that Karen couldn’t sit through when you were courting?
Franny:
Yup, that’s the movie Karen could not sit through. To this day when I sit down to watch The Seven Samurai, Karen beats a hasty retreat.
How I Married Karen is, at this moment, being readied as a fully illustrated eBook. I’ll make an announcement very soon and you’ll be able, at last, to read the entire story of HIMK.
Well, if she feels that way about TSS, it’s obvious your relationship is doomed to failure. I give you two another 50 years, 60 years tops, before she realizes just what kind of man she married.
On the other hand, if Karen starts wanting you to spend all weekend watching the Police Academy movies with her then….
Johnny:
Karen and I share a deep abiding love for “Project Runway.” Every thursday night we DVR the show, then sit back and watch, discuss who is talented, who is totally dysfunctional who is going to get the chop and who is going to win.
Almost as good as sharing Seven Samurai:-)
Here’s some not included above that were in my selection:
The Patriot (best about the American Revolutionary War)
Fat Man and Little Boy (WWII Atom Bomb)
Run Silent, Run Deep (WWII Pacific classic sub movie)
and if you don’t mind some with an anti-war flavor:
(if you love submarines — Das Boot )
(if you like movies about french dishonesty — Paths of Glory )
I’ve seen 4 on the list, but not (yet) The Seven Samurai, so I can’t really comment further 🙂
I do love Tora, Tora, Tora too, and Cast a Giant Shadow is a great story, but the Arabs would tell you that it’s a terrorist story, not a war movie.
I remain awfully fond of Tori! Tora! Tora!. Oh, I know… but I like good documentaries.
I watch Gettysburg at least every Fourth of July.
Other favorites? The Dam Busters. The Cruel Sea. Hell is for Heroes.
“Gettysburg” is amazing. Try reading the novel on which it’s based: astounding. (I think Longstreet was the genius tragically ignored by the ill Lee. What drama in that aspect alone.)
My husband and I love Gettysburg and watch it several times a year. I just visited the battlefield last month, and stood on the summit of Little Round Top. Incredibly moving experience.
I should probably add a slight disclaimer to my recommendation of Gettysburg: Martin Sheen does just an appalling job of portraying Lee. There’s nothing in his performance to suggest why this grumpy old slightly psychotic general was so beloved of his men.
Personal thought: I hate war movies. Command Decision, however, works for me. And to a lesser extent, Gallipoli.