The 10 best WWII movies list

World War II. 

It was the largest and bloodiest conflict in human history, with battles raging on the air, land, and sea from the steppes of the Soviet Union to the steaming jungles of Guadalcanal. Every major world power was a combatant, and after six years of fighting, over 50 million human beings were dead, millions more were wounded or left homeless, and the seeds of the Cold War were planted as the balance of power now shifted to the United States and the Communist-ruled Russia and its unwilling allies in Eastern Europe. 

Naturally, even during the war, World War II became a popular subject for filmmakers in all the warring countries. not only as entertainment but also as part of the war effort; both the Axis and Allied camps infused their wartime films with propaganda, sometimes grossly heavy-handed (such as the Nazis' The Eternal Jew, which stirred up anti-Semitism in Germany and the countries it occupied), sometimes subtly (Casablanca, which on the surface seems to be just a simple love story set in French North Africa, is firmly rooted in the political realities of 1942). 

Wartime movies were also very stylized and cliched. In "combat" movies (Bataan, Guadalcanal Diary), soldiers and Marines were universally brave, often fun-loving but clean-cut fellows, boisterous but well-meaning,and were often depicted as the embodiment of the American "melting pot myth," i.e., there was always a cross-section of ethnic groups -- Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans, guys from Brooklyn or the Deep South, and, more often than not, the lone intellectual who wore reading glasses and spent time reading books rather than gab with the guys about dames. (More often than not, as well, the "Professors" were often dead by the third act of the film....) And sadly, in those days when segregation was the law of the land in the South, blacks were never part of the "melting pot" squads or platoons. 

Postwar movies about World War II slowly but surely morphed from idealized and overly jingoistic "rah rah" flicks that were epitomized by films starring John Wayne (Sands of Iwo Jima, Back to Bataan, Flying Leathernecks, Operation Pacific....) to the more accurate (gory and profanity-laced) depictions of fighting men and women in movies and television miniseries such as Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Windtalkers, and The Great Raid. 

I've seen many films about the war, most of them "combat films," although a few, like Casablanca and Summer of '42, either deal with the politics or the vagaries of life in the home front. Some are good, most are average, and some (Anzio, Battle of the Bulge, Is Paris Burning?) are plain awful. This list represents 10 of the best World War II movies I've watched. 

1. The Guns of Navarone (1961): Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn. Based on the novel by Alistair MacLean, this action-adventure film follows a small team of Allied saboteurs on a perilous mission to destroy two huge radar-controlled superguns used by the Nazis to deny Allied ships access to a British-occupied island in the Aegean Sea. 

2. From Here to Eternity (1953): Famous for its steamy-for-its time beach lovemaking scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, this adaptation of former GI James Jones' best-selling novel not only depicted life in the Army's Hawaiian Department prior to and during the Japanese strike on Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941, but its success revived Frank Sinatra's moribund acting career. 

3. Run Silent, Run Deep (1958): Forget Operation Pacific (or Operation Petticoat, for that matter); this taut and emotionally charged film version of Edward L. Beach's novel about submarine warfare focuses on the conflict between a submarine commander (Clark Gable) and his executive officer (Burt Lancaster); the skipper is seemingly obsessed with sinking the Japanese destroyer that is sinking U.S. subs in a particular patrol zone, while the exec possibly resents being passed over for command of the sub. 

4. Summer of '42 (1971): This sentimental memoir by writer Herman Raucher and director Robert Mulligan is on the surface a better than average coming-of-age movie about 15-year-old Hermie and his friends Oscy and Benjie, their adolescent exploits on Packett Island, and especially Hermie's desperate love for the beautiful, older, and very married Dorothy. But its setting -- the American home front during that first post-Pearl Harbor summer of 1942 -- and the way Hermie's fondest dream does come true give the viewer a haunting glimpse at the effects of the conflict being waged overseas. 

5. The Longest Day (1962): The Longest Day, Darryl F. Zanuck's ambitious and expensive recreation of the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy, is one of the best -- if somewhat flawed -- war films ever made. Boasting an all-star cast of 41 "A-List" (for 1962, that is) actors from four countries and filmed in various locations around France (Corsica doubling for most of the five invasion beaches on northern France) and made with the assistance of NATO's armed forces, The Longest Day was, till the filming of Schindler's List, the most expensive movie ever shot in black and white. It's the only major movie to attempt to convey the scope and drama of the D-Day landings from a multinational viewpoint. 


6. A Bridge Too Far (1977): An unofficial sequel to The Longest Day. It's actor/director Sir Richard Attenborough's epic recreation of one of the most controversial battles of World War II, is one of those films that fall under the category of "glorious failure." Like the subject it vividly depicts (Operation Market-Garden, an ambitious and daring attempt by the Allies to secure a crossing over the Rhine River and outflank Germany's fortified defenses), it was a well intentioned and daring endeavor, yet it failed to capture a receptive audience and was quickly forgotten by all but a handful of history buffs and film critics (Judith Crist, a respected reviewer of the time, called A Bridge Too Far the "definitive World War II movie"). 

7. Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970): One of the "big budget" semi-documentary war epics in the tradition of The Longest Dayand A Bridge Too Far, this joint Japanese-American production is still the definitive movie about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Based on books by Gordon W. Prange and Ladislas Farago and featuring some of the best battle sequences ever filmed, Tora! Tora! Tora! is a fair and balanced look at one of the most important -- and controversial -- events in American history. 

8. Casablanca (1942): This classic love story set in French Morrocco in December 1941 not only told the bittersweet tale of Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund, and Victor Laszlo, but also commented on the tangled politics of the pre-Pearl Harbor era: American neutrality, the oppression of the Third Reich, the fate of thousands of Europeans who hit "the refugee trail," and -- personified by Claude Rains' inimitable portrayal of Louis Renault -- the grey zone that was Vichy France before the Allied landings in North Africa in November of 1942. 


9. The Great Escape (1963): James Clavell and W.R. Burnett fictionalized Paul Brickhill's non-fiction book about a daring escape by Allied POWs from a high-security Stalag for producer-director John Sturges' now-classic action-adventure film. Although it starred several American big-name actors of the era (Charles Bronson, James Coburn, James Garner, and Steve McQueen) along with a top-notch British cast, no American officers actually escaped in the real-life attempt. The film's producers, to their credit, acknowledge this with a "card" that states that the characters are all composites and that certain events were condensed, but that the details of the escape were accurate. 

10. Band of Brothers (2001): Technically not a theatrical film but an HBO miniseries, this 10-part adaptation of Stephen E. Ambrose's non-fiction account of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division is among the best "based on actual events" projects to hit video shelves. Yes, if you've read the book you'll see certain events were moved around, but this is an excellent look at small-unit warfare during the Allied campaign in Northwest Europe and a fine character study of America's citizen soldiers in World War II. 

Photo Credit: George Washington University