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
84	Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) d. Stanley Kubrick	Strategic Air Command base, on-board B-52 bomber bound for Russia, and US War Room	Kubrick's classic, nihilistic, cynical Cold War, satirical black comedy, had scathing humor and timeless performances, based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George and a script by Terry Southern. A crazed, psychotic US general Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), paranoid about his own potency and the Communists, sparked a nuclear crisis with a pre-emptive strike against "the Commies." The American President Muffley (Peter Sellers in one of three roles) must deal with gung ho military brass Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), bureaucratic bumbling, a drunken Soviet Premier and a twisted, black-gloved German rocket scientist, Dr. Strangelove himself (Sellers again). Ended with the memorable bucking broncho image of Major Kong (Slim Pickens) riding the fatal bomb.
62	The Train (1964) d. John Frankenheimer	Post D-Day, 1944, during WWII, in NE France	Frankenheimer's suspenseful war-adventure thriller, a fictionalization of history, told about Nazi art collector Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) whose looted paintings ("Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it" he claimed) were on a train from Paris bound for Berlin, before the Allies arrived. French patriot and railway superintendent-inspector Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster) was commissioned by the museum to stop the train and kill the German commander. The human death toll was staggering in the climax, with bodies everywhere surrounding the crated boxes of paintings.
22	Zulu (1964, UK) d. Cy Endfield	The Battle of Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, in South Africa	The UK's inspirational, historical epic captured and recreated a moment in British military history, with some historical inaccuracies - the 1879 Zulu warrior siege of Rorke's Drift, a South African outpost held by 139 outnumbered British-Welsh soldiers in Natal, Africa. The battle scenes in the film's non-stop second half showed 4,000 threatening Zulu warriors carrying shields fighting to a standstill with the British forces after 12 hours.
N/A	Chimes at Midnight (1965, UK) (aka Falstaff)	The Battle of Shrewsbury, 1403 AD, England	Considered a lost classic film by many, actor/director Orson Welles' low-budget film was a seamless integration and compilation of Shakespeare's two parts of Henry IV and other plays. It started with the end of Richard II to the beginning of Henry V with his onstage death. The film focused on the drunken, bawdy, cowardly, charismatic, corpulent thief / scoundrel / adventurer character ("huge hill of flesh") of Sir John (Jack) Falstaff (Welles) and his drinking companion relationship with young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter, who also later played Henry V). The 10 minute sequence of the Battle of Shrewsbury in this film has been considered the first great battle scene of the modern era, influential upon other films such as Braveheart (1995). In the foggy and muddy scene, inappropriately armored, helmeted Falstaff waded through the muddy battlefield and attempted to scurry away as other armored men were swinging heavy weapons.
24	The Battle of Algiers (1966, It.) (aka La battaglia di Algeri) d. Gillo Pontecorvo	During the mid-to-late 1950s (1954-1962) struggle between the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and the French colonials in the capital of Algeria	Shot in grainy, noirish documentary-style black and white and accompanied by an Ennio Morrocone orchestral score, this stylistic film told the story of the birth of Algerian independence from French colonial rule, the rise of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), and the French response, by Colonel Phillipe Mathieu (Jean Martin, the film's only professional actor), to the group’s terrorist, insurgency, and propaganda campaigns. The film was unflinching in displaying the atrocities committed by both sides.
21	The Dirty Dozen (1967) d. Robert Aldrich	Behind enemy German lines in Europe just prior to D-Day in WWII, 1944	Robert Aldrich's "guy's" action-filled war film was about a group of a dozen convicted, anti-social, death-row military prisoners (including Telly Savalas as religious madman Archer Maggott, Donald Sutherland as dim-witted Vernon Pinckley, football star Jim Brown as black Robert Jefferson, John Cassavetes as rebellious and outspoken Victor Franko, and Charles Bronson as Polish Joseph Wladsilaw) sent on a suicide mission. They were commanded by a tough Lee Marvin as Major John Reisman, to go behind Nazi enemy lines to destroy a French chateau and its German officers (with their mistresses).
20	War and Peace (1968, USSR) d. Sergei Bondarchuk	The Russian army's advance against the French at Austerlitz in 1805, and re-enactment of 1812 Battle of Borodino between Russian troops and invading French led by Napoleon	This seven hour (originally 8 hours in length), Soviet-produced adaptation of the famed novel by Leo Tolstoy was an elaborate, costly, and big-scale film, shot in 70 mm. It was composed of staggering set-pieces, including a scene of the 1812 burning of Moscow, and an hour-long reenactment of the 1812 Battle of Borodino, requiring 120,000 Russian soldiers used as extras. Aerial shots using helicopters provided sweeping views of the bloody battlefield. Other sections of the film's script quoted large sections of Tolstoy's dialogue.
90	Battle of Britain (1969, UK) d. Guy Hamilton	The 1940 Battle of Britain over British skies	Guy Hamilton's moving and authentic big-budget film featured big-name stars portraying outnumbered RAF pilots flying Spitfires and Hurricanes: Michael Caine as Squadron Leader Canfield, Christopher Plummer as fatalistic squadron leader Colin Harvey, and Robert Shaw as exhausted but inspiring Squadron Leader Skipper. It accurately captured how valiant the British, with only 650 aircraft, were 'under fire' during the many air battles and bombing raids of the German Luftwaffe (with almost 3,000 Messerschmitts, Junkers, Stukas and Heinkels) in the summer and autumn of 1940. 100 vintage aircraft were predominantly used in the filming of the reconstructed dogfights, rather than models or computer graphics.
66	Castle Keep (1969) d. Sydney Pollack	Belgian castle at end of WWII	Young director Sydney Pollack's artsy and surreal, allegorical war film was based on William Eastlake's novel. Some viewed it as commentary about the Vietnam War. It told a story about an American platoon of misfits, commanded by eye-patched Major Falconer (Burt Lancaster), that was held up in the Ardennes Forest during WWII, in the 10th century Belgian castle (named Maldoray) of mysterious, impotent Count Tixier (Jean-Pierre Aumont). Army Captain Lionel Beckman (Patrick O'Neal) was entranced by the Count's art collection, although Falconer believed that it would all be sacrificed during further conflict with the Germans - occurring in the film's final assault scene.
33	MASH (1970)* d. Robert Altman	The 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit during the Korean War	Iconoclastic Robert Altman's anti-Korean war, off-beat dark-comedy, with its ballad 'Suicide is Painless' (and Last Supper scene), was an outrageous satirization about a group of surgeons and nurses stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) along the Korean 38th parallel. The countercultural, black comedy anti-war film was a thinly disguised allegory for the unpopular Vietnam War that was raging at the time, and a critique of war in general. The army surgeons retained their sanity by joking, anti-authoritarian and anti-bureaucratic sentiment, and pranks. The film's most memorable scenes included the humiliation of Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) and "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Sally Kellerman), and the climactic football game. Although the film was set in Korea, its real focus of attention was the frustrating Vietnam conflict. Only Burghoff of the superb cast (Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Oscar-nominated Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall and Gary Burghoff) went on to reprise his role as Radar in the popular, long-running TV series.
17	Patton (1970) d. Franklin J. Schaffner	WWII in Europe	Franklin J. Schaffner's complex epic biopic starred Oscar-winning George C. Scott (who refused the award) as the legendary, heroically-crazed, and controversial "Old Blood and Guts" military genius and title character, and Karl Malden as the balanced Gen. Omar Bradley. It was a fairly accurate film biography of the controversial, bombastic, multi-dimensional World War II general and hero George S. Patton. The larger-than-life, flamboyant, maverick, pugnacious military figure was well-known for his fierce love of America, his temperamental battlefield commanding, his arrogant power-lust ("I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life"), his poetry writing, his slapping of a battle-fatigued soldier, his anti-diplomatic criticism of the Soviet Union, and his firing of pistols at fighter planes.
54	Ulzana's Raid (1972) d. Robert Aldrich	US Southwest, Arizona, during 1880s, Apaches vs. US Cavalry	Robert Aldrich's grim and bloody western film starred Burt Lancaster as grizzled, unorthodox, world-weary US Army scout McIntosh, who was in pursuit of fugitive and renegade Apache leader Ulzana or Josana (Joaquin Martinez) with compassionate, idealistic and naive West Point Lieutenant Garnett DeBuin (Bruce Davison). The film's tagline: "One man alone understood the savagery of the early American West from both sides" described how DeBuin learned how to adopt McIntosh's realistic and hardened attitude toward the 'noble savage' and toward the veteran soldiers alike. Many interpreted the film as an allegory about the US experience in Vietnam.