You’ve been here before. You’ve already read about war movies. But the war movies keep happening. The discussions about war movies cycle on and on. Maybe it’s fitting. Maybe when the wars stop happening, people can stop talking about and making war movies. Maybe that thinking is wishful. Maybe it’ll never stop. Maybe you’ll be back seeing another ranking of war movies, six months, six years, six decades from now, if the world’s still in one piece. Maybe a sufficiently destructive war will be the only thing that stops war movies from being made, along with all the other genres, because there’ll be no world to make them in.
As for what motivates someone to keep talking about war movies? Maybe someone has to pay the bills and eat the same way powerful nations have to apparently keep sticking their noses in other countries and declaring war and all that nonsense. You want politics kept out of this? Nonsense. Impossible. Read on if you have a brain and/or soul.
10
‘Paths of Glory’ (1957)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
As far as World War I movies go, few are as devastating and memorable as Paths of Glory. It begins with a harrowing depiction of trench warfare, with the aftermath ultimately being the main focus of the narrative, with a military trial that involves three soldiers being made scapegoats for the failure of the operation they took part in.
It’s an angry film that lays out one of the key injustices of war in a very unambiguous way. It was an early great film by Stanley Kubrick, too, and contrasts with some of the more up-for-interpretation movies he made later in his career. Kubrick also directed a handful of other remarkable war films, including a dark comedy about nuclear war (Dr. Strangelove) and one about the Vietnam War (Full Metal Jacket).
9
‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Saving Private Ryan hits as hard as a World War II film as the aforementioned Paths of Glory did as a World War I film. It begins with a famed depiction of the Normandy landings and then becomes about, you know, saving Private Ryan, who’s behind enemy lines and is to be rescued and sent home after it’s found his three brothers have all died fighting in the war.
It’s one of the best-directed films Steven Spielberg’s made, and it rides a line between being anti-war and celebratory of the ways an individual – or group of them – can be heroic during such a time. It’s a tricky balance to achieve, and not one many war films aim to pull off, but it’s done well in Saving Private Ryan, thanks to the strength of the filmmaking and acting on offer.
8
‘Napoleon’ (1927)
Directed by Abel Gance
Almost 100 years before Ridley Scott’s movie of the same name, Abel Gance also directed a film called Napoleon, with this one focusing on Napoleon Bonaparte’s early life, rather than being a complete biopic. Still, there was a lot to cover, even with the narrower focus, with Napoleon (1927) clocking in at five and a half hours in total, with it originally being planned as one part of an ongoing series.
That didn’t come to fruition, but what’s here is still undeniably immense, and epic enough in its own right to feel larger in scale than most war films that followed in its wake. In going through the past 100 years of war films, it feels fitting to highlight at least one that’s not only almost a century old, but that stands the test of time (and then some), and Napoleon is that film.
Napoleon
- Release Date
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April 7, 1927
- Runtime
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330 Minutes
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Albert Dieudonné
Napoleon Bonaparte
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Nicolas Roudenko
Napoléon Bonaparte enfante
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Edmond Van Daële
Maximilien Robespierre
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Alexandre Koubitzky
Georges-Jacques Danton
7
‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Historical accuracy is not too much of a concern for Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds, but neither does it have to be. Inglourious Basterds does have meaningful things to say about World War II, propaganda, prejudice, and justice, but finds a unique way to explore such things, all the while being incredibly intense in ways that feel wrong to ruin (yes, even though the movie’s been out for more than a decade and a half at this point).
What you’ve got is a great cast working with phenomenal material, and what feels like a non-stop series of escalating set pieces and memorable sequences. Inglourious Basterds is stylish, sometimes darkly funny, always engaging, and visually striking. History is chopped up, remixed, played around with, and eventually blown up, and it’s all great.
6
‘The Human Condition’ (1959-1961)
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Like Napoleon, the first thing that jumps out about The Human Condition is its length. It is pretty much one film, but was released in three parts, not dissimilar to what happened just over 40 years later with The Lord of the Rings. Also, though very different tonally and genre-wise, both three-part movies are over nine hours in length, having three parts of roughly three hours each.
Anyway, with The Human Condition, one film focuses on a conscientious objector’s attempts to avoid fighting in World War II, the second film follows him eventually being forced to fight, and then the third follows his fight for survival after Japan surrenders and he’s forced to try and find his way back home alone. It’s a grueling, emotional, and (still) brutal film that uses its length to explore different facets of war and the way it can impact an individual, all the while refusing to pull any punches.
5
‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Pan’s Labyrinth is a dark fantasy movie that gets even darker thanks to it also being a grim war movie. Those genres might not sound like they’d collide (ha) particularly well, but Guillermo del Toro sure knew how to mix this cinematic cocktail. Okay. That’s a crude way to put it. But… if you step back and think about what Pan’s Labyrinth is, as far as genres go? It is impressive.
It’s also a film that ranks among the greatest in international cinema history, with its style and distinctive storytelling making it stand out completely from all the other war films out there. It’s brutal and beautiful in equal measure, and among all the remarkable films del Toro has ever directed, Pan’s Labyrinth is quite comfortably his most remarkable.
4
‘Casablanca’ (1942)
Directed by Michael Curtiz
And then another war film that’s a genre hybrid, here’s Casablanca, which is, first and foremost, a romance movie, but it also plays out against the events of World War II. Also, it was made during the conflict, and first came well before it officially ended, so it works somewhat as a time capsule movie; a way to see some attitudes about World War II while it was still being fought.
As far as the romance stuff goes, Casablanca also soars in that department, and it’s a surprisingly funny movie at times, too; not a comedy or anything, but it goes for many things emotionally and being witty is one of those things it wants to do (and succeeds at doing). It’s a movie of its time, and it certainly looks and sounds like a movie from the 1940s, but so much of Casablanca still feels timeless. And people say that about a ton of older movies, but no, those people really mean it when they say it about Casablanca.
Casablanca
- Release Date
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January 15, 1943
- Runtime
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102 minutes
3
‘The Great Escape’ (1963)
Directed by John Sturges
If not for The Shawshank Redemption, The Great Escape would probably be “the” prison movie, but hey, The Shawshank Redemption is not a war movie, so it doesn’t belong here and has arguably derailed the conversation about The Great Escape already far too much. The Great Escape is, more specifically, a prisoner-of-war movie, and has a bunch of soldiers, all known for their escape attempts, held in a particularly brutal and supposedly difficult-to-escape prison camp.
Across a runtime of nearly three hours, The Great Escape is all about devising a plan, pulling it off, and then trying to get out of enemy territory should they emerge from the prison camp in one piece. It’s simple stuff narratively, but it’s also captivating, and it manages to feel that way in an almost effortless manner. It’s cool, exciting, fun, and also somber when it needs to be, and is one of the absolute greatest World War II movies ever made.
The Great Escape
- Release Date
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July 4, 1963
- Runtime
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172 Minutes
- Director
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John Sturges
- Writers
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Paul Brickhill, James Clavell, W.R. Burnett
2
‘War and Peace’ (1966-1967)
Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk
Released in four parts, but ultimately being one giant film, the 1960s film adaptation of War and Peace makes most other epic movies look small in comparison. But it deserved to be huge, given the size of the legendary novel it adapts, and though a miniseries might technically be able to adapt more of said source material, it’s hard to imagine any other adaptation having the same sense of scale as this one.
But War and Peace deserved to be huge, given the size of the legendary novel it adapts.
War and Peace spared no expense, and it’s the size of it all that makes it stand out against other war movies. It works as a historical drama and a romance film on top of being a war movie, and, rather impressively, its director, Sergei Bondarchuk, also played a lead role in the film, portraying Count Pierre Bezukhov.
War and Peace
- Release Date
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March 14, 1966
- Runtime
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393 Minutes
- Director
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Sergey Bondarchuk
- Writers
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Sergey Bondarchuk, Vasiliy Solovyov, Leo Tolstoy
1
‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
After directing two iconic gangster films and a highly paranoid thriller, Francis Ford Coppola turned his attention to making a movie about the Vietnam War… or maybe even making the movie about the Vietnam War. It was Apocalypse Now, and it was – and still is – a lot. It’s initially about a seemingly simple mission that involves killing a rogue Green Beret Colonel, but it’s what happens along the way that really drives home the madness of war.
Watching Apocalypse Now feels like a bad trip, but in a way that makes it a good film. Well, a more than good film. It might well be the most impressive war movie ever made, simply because it gets to the core of how war feels, and how war can destroy someone from the inside out as effectively as combat can destroy a soldier’s physical body. It argues your life will be ruined somehow, regardless of what side you fall on, and what kind of damage you take. Some sort of damage is inevitable. War really might be hell; who’d have thought?
