Greatest War Movies

Introduction: War films acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting or conflict (against nations or humankind) provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. There are a significant number of influential, important, and milestone war films throughout cinematic history, outlined here.

In 2007, Military History Magazine created a special collector's edition highlighting their selection of the 100 Greatest War Movies, a critical guide to the best war films of all time, chronologically covering war films from Battleship Potemkin (1925) to Letters From Iwo Jima (2006), as this list does. The magazine wrote that "the movies that made the cut cover a full spectrum of life during wartime, were made by filmmakers around the globe and span the history of war from ancient days to now..." Their rankings are found in this list.

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star in the following list are the films that
Greatest Films has selected as the "100 Greatest Films".

MH Rank	Film Title/Director	War-time Setting	Brief Description	Example
25	Open City (1945, It.) d. Roberto Rossellini	Time of anti-Nazi Resistance in Rome during German occupation of Italy in WWII	Roberto Rossellini's influential, low-budget documentary-like landmark film formally introduced Italian Neo-realism - it was the first film in a Rossellini 'war trilogy' of post-war Neo-realistic films. The gritty and realistic post-war film was set in the underworld of war-time resistance, with the use of on-location cinematography, grainy low-grade black-and-white film stock and untrained actors in improvised scenes. In a shocking, realistic scene, pregnant widow Pina (Anna Magnani) ran after a military truck hysterically screaming the name of her lithographer fiancee and underground leader Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet), when she was abruptly machine-gunned and killed on her planned wedding day, in front of Pina's ten year-old son Marcello (Vito Annichiarico) and brave Catholic parish priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi).
45	The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) d. William A. Wellman	WWII campaigns in North Africa, Sicily and Italy	William A. Wellman's poignant but unsentimental film was released just after the German surrender. It was one of the best and most realistic of all WWII combat films - the story of Company C, 18th Infantry foot-soldiers chronicled by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle (portrayed by Burgess Meredith), during miserable campaigns in North Africa and Italy, especially the Battle of Monte Cassino. The film included an Oscar-nominated performance by Robert Mitchum as tough Captain Bill Walker, and featured a number of GIs appearing as extras.
99	They Were Expendable (1945) d. John Ford	The Philippines, PT boats in combat against Japanese during the early months of WWII (Dec 1941 - April 1942)	Toward the close of the war, John Ford based his realistic, under-rated and bleak (black and white) film upon the true, inspiring story of the Navy's PT boat squadrons and crews based in the Philippines during the early years of the war that faced the advance of Japanese forces. The film was based on William L. White's bestselling 1942 book about a torpedo boat squadron commander (Lt. John Bulkeley, changed to Brickley and played by Robert Montgomery) and executive officer/skipper (Robert Kelly, changed to Rusty Ryan and played by John Wayne).
82	A Walk in the Sun (1945) d. Lewis Milestone	WWII, Italy, 1943	Lewis Milestone's modest yet starkly realistic, dialogue-filled combat film, based upon the novel by Yank Magazine's Harry Brown, followed an American infantry unit (with Dana Andrews as Sgt. Bill Tyne) struggling to survive while making a frontal assault on a fortified, Nazi-occupied farmhouse in Italy, as part of the Allied attack on Anzio. The tension and fear was brilliantly captured on the faces of the terrified soldiers.
40	The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) d. William Wyler	US Homeland following WWII	William Wyler's Best Picture winning film depicted the difficulties of demobilization. It was a landmark, classic drama about three WWII veterans attempting post-traumatic readjustment to peacetime life and discovering that they had fallen behind. Perhaps the most memorable film about the aftermath of World War II, it unfolded with the homecoming of three servicemen to their small town: Army Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) who turned to drinking, Air Force major Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) who was rejected by his wife (Virginia Mayo), and double-amputee seaman Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) who agonized over his relationship with his girlfriend-fiancee Wilma Cameron (Cathy O'Donnell). In two of the film's memorable scenes, Hoagy Carmichael taught double-amputee Russell to play Chopsticks on the piano, and Russell displayed his vulnerabilities to his fiancee in his bedroom.
57	Notorious (1946) d. Alfred Hitchcock	Rio de Janiero in Brazil after WWII	The 'master of suspense' created a compelling spy mission interwoven with a romantic love story. The dark, intricate film was thematically concerned with both political (and sexual) betrayal and issues of trust, friendship, and duty embodied in the characters' relationships. Hitchcock told the subtle tale of beautiful but confused and agonized American spy Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) with a reputation for loose living as a playgirl (she was the American-born daughter of a convicted Nazi sympathizer) who unwillingly infiltrated an evil German cartel by marrying the Rio-based enemy leader Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) living there incognito. A love triangle developed between three of the characters - the Nazi villain, a federal intelligence agent named T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant), and the woman.
36	Battleground (1949) d. William A. Wellman	WWII, The Battle of the Bulge (Siege of Bastogne in Belgium), December 1944	The first significant post-WWII film in the US was this MGM film - the ultra-realistic, grim and authentic war film followed a group of raw American recruits of the 101st Airborne Infantry Division fighting in the Battle of the Bulge (the Siege of Bastogne). When caught in the "fog of war," they were cut off from supplies reinforcements and military intelligence. Van Johnson starred as paratrooper Pfc. Holley, while Ricardo Montalban played the part of Pvt. Johnny Roderigues, and John Hodiak was featured as Jarvess, all stressed-out GI comrades. The film won two Academy Awards: Best B/W Cinematography, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay.
55	She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) d. John Ford	A US Army cavalry post in the Southwest, 1876	John Ford's autumnal western starred John Wayne as a retirement-age cavalry captain named Nathan Brittles, who attempted, in one last patrol, to prevent a large-scale Native-American Indian uprising with Chief Pony That Talks (Chief John Big Tree) following General Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It was noted for Winton C. Hoch's beautiful Oscar-winning color cinematography (the film's sole nomination and win). This was Ford's personal favorite of the so-called 'cavalry trilogy' of films.
80	The Third Man (1949, UK) d. Carol Reed	Post WWII-Vienna, sectioned up between US, UK, French, and Soviet occupation forces	Carol Reed's film was a visually-stylish noir thriller - a paranoid story of social, economic, and moral corruption in a depressed, rotting and crumbling, 20th century Vienna, split among the occupying forces, following World War II. Unusually reckless, canted camera angles (one of their earliest uses), and wide-angle lens distortions amidst the atmospheric on-location views of a shadowy Vienna cast a somber mood over the fable of post-war moral ambiguity and ambivalent redemption. The deliberately unsettling, tilted angles reflected the state of the ruined, fractured and dark city, filled with black marketeers (Orson Welles as Harry Lime), spies, refugees, thieves, and foreign powers seeking control.
72	Twelve O'Clock High (1949) d. Henry King	WWII, England, 1949 (flashback to late 1942)	This war movie about leadership starred Gregory Peck as Brig. Gen. Frank Savage, the tough, discipline-oriented commander assigned to the struggling 918th Bomb Group (of the US Eighth Air Force) of B-12 bombers located at Archbury, England in late 1942. His character was based on Colonel Frank Armstrong, Jr. whose exploits in whipping into shape the real-life 306th Bombardment Group at Thurleigh Field in England were documented in the 1948 novel of the same name.
32	The African Queen (1951) d. John Huston	Central Africa during WWI	Top stars Humphrey Bogart (in an Oscar-winning performance as cynical, alcoholic boat owner Charlie Allnut) and Katharine Hepburn (as stubborn, indomitable spinster missionary Rose Sayer) appeared together in John Huston's exciting World War I adventure film, shot on location in Africa. Together, as representatives of the American and British positions, they confronted the Germans on the geographical margins of the major conflict. During the course of many hardships and quarrels along a course filled with tropical dangers and 'evil' Germans in a warship, they developed a hard-earned love and respect for each other. The real prize and goal of their water journey down the Ulonga-Bora, other than the destruction of a German boat, was to overcome the various psychological obstacles that stood between them.