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Greatest War Movies Part 2 |
| Film Title/Year/Director, War-time Setting and Brief Description | |
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
Michael Curtiz' historically-inaccurate film, a tale of 19th century imperialism, told about the memorable military engagement during the mid-19th century Crimean War. it also included a romantic pairing between Major Geoffrey Vickers (Errol Flynn) and Elsa Campbell (19 year old Olivia de Havilland). It included the climactic sequence of the famous light brigade charge of 600 soldiers during the Crimean War - an event which was in reality only 7 minutes long with only 30 seconds of intense gunfire. |
 
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Scipio Africanus (1937, It.) (aka The Defeat of Hannibal)
This propagandistic Italian film recreated part of Rome's Second Punic War (218-201 BC), the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, when the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio (Annibale Ninchi) invaded North Africa and defeated Rome's Carthaginian archenemy, Hannibal Barca (Camillo Pilotto) at Zama, with Hannibal's war elephants. The film was criticized for its inhumane treatment of animals in the battle scenes - some were maimed or killed for authenticity's sake. Scipio was later named Africanus for his triumph. The film's motto: "Victory or death" was appropriated by Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) to inspire his people, at the time of his invasion of Ethiopia. |
 
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Grand Illusion (1937, Fr.) (aka La Grand Illusion)
French director Jean Renoir's classic WWI POW drama idealistically expressed the 'grand illusion' and hypocrisy of men at war. The filmmaker attempted to signal a warning about warfare's 'grand illusions' with this classic anti-war film set in a WWI German prison camp in 1916 where aristocratic French officer Capt. de Boildeau (Pierre Fresnay) faced a dilemma regarding his escape with other POWs, including working class mechanic French officer/hero Lieut. Marechal (Jean Gabin) and wealthy middle-class Jew Lieut. Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio). They were imprisoned and under the watchful eye of German Captain von Rauffenstein (Eric von Stroheim). The film only implied that a war was occurring for the most part, and ended with Marechal and Rosenthal crossing the Alps to freedom in Switzerland. |
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Alexander Nevsky (1938)
This nationalistic film presented the medieval story of the 13th century Russian prince Alexander Nevsky (Nikolai Cherkasov), enhanced with a score by Sergei Prokofiev. The film's most memorable battle scene was on the ice (that started to crack) at frozen Lake Peipus in 1242 between the invading barbaric Teutonic knights and the Russian army - both wielding spears and axes. The set piece battle on the ice was parodied in Ken Russell's Billion Dollar Brain (1967). |
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The Dawn Patrol (1938)
Errol Flynn took the lead role as insubordinate flight commander Captain Courtney and Basil Rathbone starred as the commander officer Major Brand forced to send amateur pilots of the 39th Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps into the air against ace German fliers. It was a remake of the 1930 film starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Richard Barthelmess as pilots, which told the story of the British Royal Flying Corps at a remote outpost in France during World War I. |
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Beau Geste (1939)
William Wellman's tale was a superb, high adventure set in the desert. The themes of the film, involving three Geste brothers (Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, and Ray Milland) who disappeared from England to avoid scandal and became members of the French Foreign Legion, included brotherly loyalty, patriotic honor, self-sacrifice, and treachery. The film opened with the enigmatic view of Fort Zinderneuf, later to be explained as the film progressed. |
 
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The star-studded Civil War epic drama traced the South's tragic history during the war and the Reconstruction period. Set against this sweeping historical backdrop, the film followed a melodramatic romance between an indomitable, fiery Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and a slyly-dashing war profiteer Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), tangled by her emotional love affair with a married Southern gentleman (Ashley Wilkes). She struggled to protect her family and her beloved plantation, Tara, from the ravages of the Civil War. |
 
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Foreign Correspondent (1940)
When the war in Europe commenced in 1939, British film directors tried to alert Americans to the looming German and Italian Fascist threat. Alfred Hitchcock's political/war-time thriller - his second American film, contained many memorable scenes, including the assassination scene of a Dutch diplomat in a crowded sea of umbrellas, a murder attempt in Westminster Cathedral Tower, and a spectacular trans-Atlantic ocean plane crash. It concluded with a plea to the American public to enter the war by NY crime reporter Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) in Europe: ("It's as if the lights were all out everywhere, except in America. Keep those lights burning there! Cover them with steel! Ring them with guns! Build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them! Hello, America! Hang on to your lights. They're the only lights left in the world..") |
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The Great Dictator (1940)
Charlie Chaplin lampooned Adolf Hitler (in the role of Adenoid Hynkel) and The Third Reich in this film, the director/actor's first all-talking picture - it was Chaplin's last film with the Little Tramp character. The film was a slapstick satire on world conditions and fascism at the start of World War II. Chaplin played a dual role: as a poor, unnamed Jewish ghetto barber, and as a Hitler look-alike, the ruthless tyrannical dictator Adenoid Hynkel of the European country of Tomania. Hynkel's rival was Mussolini-like Benzino Napaloni (Jack Oakie) of Bacteria. The barber and the dictator became involved in a case of mistaken identities. With a memorable scene of Hynkel dancing with a world globe balloon. The film concluded with a lengthy monologue about hope and human rights. Hitler banned German audiences from viewing the picture due to its offensive characterization and even some American audiences believed that Chaplin had become self-indulgent. |
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Northwest Passage (1940)
This misleadingly-named film included the retaliatory attack by Rogers' Rangers, a rag-tag colonial army led by Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy), on Saint-François-du-Lac, Quebec, a settlement of the Abenaki Indians. The adventure-war film dramatized part of Kenneth Roberts' 1937 epic novel of the same name. The purpose of the brutal raid in 1759 was to avenge the many attacks on British settlers and deter further attacks by French-allied Indians. The force of 160 men, after meeting with starvation and being stranded, was whittled down to about 50 survivors after a long agonizing retreat. |
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The Sea Hawk (1940)
This exciting swashbuckler, one of the best of its kind, was adapted from the novel by Rafael Sabatini. Set in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I of England (Flora Robson) suspected that Spanish King Phillip II (Montagu Love) and his crafty ambassador Don Jose Alvarez de Cordoba (Claude Rains) were planning to spread their influence over the continent. The Spaniards were getting ready to launch a naval attack with their armada against England. The Queen secretly commissioned swashbuckling privateer, British sea captain Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn), "the Sea Hawk," to raid Spanish settlements and ships. While threatening the Spanish, the beautiful daughter of the ambassador Donna Maria (Brenda Marshall) fell in love with Thorpe. He and his crew were ambushed and imprisoned by Spanish forces. With Maria's aid, he escaped slavery aboard a Spanish galleon slave ship, and helped alert the Queen to the impending Armada attack. |
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1854 Charge during the Crimean War against Russians at Balaclava 
(chronological by film title) Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 |
