Al Weisel - CDNow's 10 Essential War Movies
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| The 10 Essential War Movies
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 | By
Al Weisel
CDNOW Senior Editor, Movies
Some war movies are unabashedly anti-war, others are calls
to patriotism, but even the most gung-ho war film can't hide
the fact that war is an ugly, brutal business, though many
directors have tried. Every great war film is, therefore, also
an anti-war film to a certain extent, even when the cause may
be just. As the public's attitude toward war has changed so
have the films. While films made during World War II tend to
be unquestioningly patriotic, post-Vietnam films have usually
taken a more jaded and cynical view. At the same time many
films set during World War II are unrealistic action films
that gloss over the devastation of war, while World War I,
which was largely seen as a wasteful, pointless conflict, has
been the setting of some of the greatest anti-war films.
After the American public had the horrors of Vietnam
brought to them on their television screens, Hollywood at
first had difficulty figuring out how to present it on the big
screen. Until the late 1970s the only film about the war was
John Wayne's jingoistic 1968 World War II-style flick set in
Vietnam, The
Green Berets. Finally, in 1978 Hollywood made two
films about the war -- The
Deer Hunter and Coming
Home -- followed by 1979's Apocalypse Now. The
'80s then saw a slew of Vietnam films such as Platoon
(1986), Full
Metal Jacket (1987), and The
Killing Fields (1984). And in the 1990s Hollywood
began to reexamine World War II through the prism of Vietnam
in such films as The
Thin Red Line.
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| 1. All Quiet on the Western Front
(1930) |
 Adapted from a German novel about World War I but made
in America, All Quiet on the Western Front is unusual
in that it's told from the point of view of soldiers fighting
for a country that was an enemy of the country that made the
film. The point is that suffering in war is universal no
matter which side you're on. Lewis Milestone's film won an
Oscar for best picture and it's still a devastating indictment
of war right up until the final classic scene of a soldier in
a foxhole reaching for a butterfly.
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| 2. Apocalypse Now (1979) |
 While set during the Vietnam War, Francis Ford
Coppola's film is less about that particular war than a
metaphorical journey into the dark, brutal soul of men. Based
on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness the film is full
of startling images -- Robert Duvall's colonel throwing cards
on dead Vietnamese soldiers, sighing, "I love the smell of
napalm in the morning"; the helicopter attack choreographed to
Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries"; Marlon Brando as a
poetry-spouting, murderous tyrant.
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| 3. Grand Illusion (1937) |
 Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion is not set on a
battlefield but in a German prison camp during World War I.
Instead of focusing on war as it's fought by mass movements on
a battlefield, it concentrates on two relationships -- between
Jean Gabin's working-class Frenchmen and Marcel Dalio's Jewish
banker and between Erich von Stroheim's upper-class German and
Pierre Fresnay's French aristocrat. War, the film is saying,
is not really about abstractions like borders but about the
individuals who are forced to fight it.
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| 4. Paths of Glory (1957) |
 Like many of Stanley Kubrick's films, Paths of
Glory was ahead of its time, suffused with the kind of
antiwar cynicism prevalent after Vietnam, though it was made
before the United States became involved in that war. Set
during World War I, the film is about four French soldiers
selected randomly and tried for cowardice by an incompetent
general bucking for a promotion after their battalion refuses
his order to go on a suicide mission. Kirk Douglas stars as a
Colonel who defends them against a corrupt system of military
justice.
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| 5. Schindler's List (1993) |
 After mastering the crowd-pleasing blockbuster, Steven
Spielberg forgot everything he knew to create his masterpiece
about the Holocaust. Succeeding where few filmmakers have
dared to tread, Spielberg tells the story of Oskar Schindler
(Liam Neeson), a German businessman who saved hundreds of Jews
from perishing in concentration camps, without resorting to
the manipulative tricks he had used so skillfully in his
previous films. Shot in stark black and white and featuring a
haunting score by John Williams, Schindler's List is a
remarkable accomplishment.
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| 6. Platoon (1986) |
 Oliver Stone's semi-autobiographical film of a white,
middle-class kid (Charlie Sheen) who volunteers to fight in
the Vietnam War (as Stone did), came closer than any film had
before it to portraying what it's actually like to be in the
midst of a battle. Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger play two
sergeants who battle over the naïve young man's soul, whose
loss of innocence mirrors America's own.
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| 7. Battle of Algiers (1965) |
 This highly detailed and unapologetically partisan
re-creation of the struggle for Algerian independence against
France is so realistic it could be mistaken for a documentary.
Although its justification of terrorism is regrettable, Gillo
Pontecorvo's film is so powerful it's difficult not to take
sides. Unfortunately, the way it one-sidedly smooths over any
difficult questions is more troubling in hindsight, especially
in light of how the violence continues to this day in that
troubled country.
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| 8. Three Kings (1999) |
 David O. Russell's unjustifiably overlooked satiric
film takes on the Persian Gulf War in a way that was
unsettling to American audiences. Instead of presenting the
Patriot missile version of the war served up by President
Bush, the film delves into more complex issues surrounding the
conflict, in the context of an action-packed, often funny
heist film. It should only gain more respect as people gain
more perspective on that war. It's also one of the few
American films to show Arabs as human beings and give some
insight into their culture.
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| 9. Gallipoli (1981) |
 This deeply affecting film by director Peter Weir
follows two young men (played by a young Mel Gibson and Mark
Lee) from their life in Australia to the Battle of Gallipoli
in Turkey during World War I, when the British used Australian
soldiers as cannon fodder. It's a devastating indictment of
the futility of war until its final, heartbreaking
frame.
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| 10 Saving Private Ryan
(1998) |
 Though Steven Spielberg's account of the Battle of
Normandy eventually devolves into a series of World War II
movie clichés, its opening sequence of the storming of the
beach, with its unrelenting barrage of bullets and carnage, is
one of the most remarkable depictions of war ever put on
screen. The film picks up again during its final battle
sequence, although Spielberg can't resist one crowd-pleasing
moment that turns the film into a flawed
masterpiece.
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