Agreed.

Great escape

Kelly's Heroes

+

Guns of Navarone

Bridge at Remagen

Van Ryan's Express

The Desert Fox

Life is Beautiful



Play Dirty -Michael Caine

Two totally different categories:
Schindler's List & Saving Private Ryan
or
Catch 22 & Good Morning Vietnam

Some of U Boyz are treading the line as to what you consider to be war movies....Chaplins Great Dictator....NOT!!!! Best Years Of Our Lives Star Wars, Manchurian Candidate wt Sinatra is a political thrilla, On The Beach..with Peck Astaire Gardner a post WW3 tale of apocalypse

You forgot the classic..ALL IS QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT...and Wings...

Dawn Patrol with Errol Flynn The Fighting 69Th
H Cagney Sergant York Cooper, Three Graves To Cairo, Sahara Bogart directed by Korda,Sands Of Iwo Jima with Francis Marion, Guadalcanal Diary....with Anthony Quinn, Richard Jaeckel, Lloyd Nolan and William Bendix, Wake Island Back To Bataan, American Guerrilla In The Philippines with Tyrone Power, They Were Expendable ..Robert Montgomery Flying Tigers Francis Marion Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, A Walk In The Sun The Story Of GI Joe Destination Toyko Cary Grant and Battle Ground Van Johnson

Or for Korea...Pork Chop Hill..Greg Peck The Bridges At To Ko Ri William Holden and The Mick Rooney

The Victors George Peppard, The Young Lions Brando, Clift and Schell...late 50's revisionism


Then we come to the German movies....Das Boot and Downfall

Battle of Britain is excellent. Dad took me to see it when it came out in 1969 and he kept whispering things like, "Jesus! Those are real Spitfires!"

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Now comes the exposition.

Ostensibly the first big budget sprawling war movie came in the late 50's with The Bridge On The River Kwai.. Holden and Alec Guinness...Others primarily British were semi documentaries Sink The Bismark, and The Dam Busters. However the first of the Big Budget Panoramic Histogram All Star war movies came in 1960 with Zanick's Longest Day story of D Day as chronicled by Cornelius Ryan, Zanick also was at D Day in 1944 filming the actual event That movies success spawn a whole host of similar movies...Battle Of the Bulge, Bridge At Remagen A Bridge To Far also a book by Ryan, Tora, Tora, Tora 12/7/41 Pearl Harbor, 2 directors and filming one Japanese and one American, Midway, andBattle Of Britain

This genre died out by the mid 70's as war movies became anathema due to Vietnam. They were nostalgic for the WW2 vets as enough time had passed from the real events to soften memories.

And REAL ME 109's and HE 111's...all bought from the Spanish AF after they were decommissioned..

The Technical Advisor for the German scenes was Germany's WW2 General of the Fighters Adolf Galland, He was in the battle...

The movie the Longest Day told the stories of actual combatants who were also used as technical advisors on the movie. The German Ace Pips Priller was not only a Luftwaffe pilot depicted in the movie he as a technical advisor as well. As was the German major who first saw the invasion fleet and said ..."Sie Kommen."

When U-571 came out one of the movie review shows had a REAL WW2 U-Boat captain on the show. He was asked about how realistic the movies was to real life...The captains answer was, "Well the story was set in the Atlantic Ocean."

Jurgens was ardently anti NAZI

Another good sub movie, set in the N Atlantic in the early 60's Cold War.....The Bedford Incident..Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier and Martin Balsam

Otto Preminger's big budget all star opus of a "gut busting naval war in the Pacfic." ...Otto treated most of the cast like dirt with the exception of John Wayne and Kirk Douglas

Everybody seems to have forgotten Clint Eastwood's[B]Flags Of Our Fathers[/U] and the better Letters From Iwo Jima which is really one of the first Japanese POV war movies, the other would be Tora, Tora, Tora of which half was filmed at least partially by Akira Kurosawa in Japan.

Gettysburg.....the made for TV movie.

The character Animal at the end of the movies says, "Didja ever think that that what he sic Septem really wanted was our wire cutters?"

Another WW2 POW movie this time a Japanese camp was "King Rat" based upon James Clavell's novel...staring George Segal.

Also Gods and Generals

A companion movie in the same mold as Guns Of Navarone was the mid 60's The Secret Invasion with Mickey Rooney and Raf Vallone. Foreign low budget fair..

But the big one youse all forgot was The Caine Mutiny Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred MAcMurray and Mel Ferrarer based upon Herman Wouks novel of the same title.

Also The Gallant Hours Cagney, the story of the fight for the Solomon islands in the early days of WW2...up until Adm Yamamoto is ambushed and shot down on a tour of the forward bases.

Red Badge of Courage ("I'd 'a killed more Yankees ifn' I'd had more powder."

The Beast. From 1988, just before our minds were changed.

There was an "anniversary release" of BoB some years back which included a full length doco on the making of. The doco is better than the movie. Largest peace time airforce ever assembled, B17 camera ships, and those glorious warbirds.

Its on Utube, and worth watching.

Paths of Glory.

This is a ripper, sort of WW1 "A Few Good Men". Kirk Douglas at his magnificent steel jawed best, its an early Kubrick film. Worth checking out.

I saw it in the theater when it first came out...I was about 4 years old

Paths Of Glory and Spartacus are the two Kubrick and Kirk Douglas collaborations

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"The Green Berets"

Saw it at the Virginia Beach Drive In with my Dad when it first came out in 1968. My Dad died later that same year. Lot of sentiment associated with this one....


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The Green Berets....is pure comedy.