Vulture's The 50 Greatest War Movies Ever Made
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A look back at a genre that has inspired a century of cinema.
By Keith Phipps
NOV. 11, 2020
This article originally ran in January and is being republished with the addition of Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods.
Speaking to Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune in 1973, Francois Truffaut made an observation that’s cast a shadow over war movies ever since, even those seemingly opposed to war. Asked why there’s little killing in his films, Truffaut replied, “I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” The evidence often bears him out. In Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir Jarhead, Swofford recalls joining fellow recruits in getting pumped up while watching Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, two of the most famous films about the horrors of war. (On the occasion of the death of R. Lee Ermey, the real-life drill instructor who played the same in Full Metal Jacket, Swofford offered a remembrance in the New York Times with the headline “Full Metal Jacket Seduced My Generation and Sent Us to War.”)
Is it true that movies glamorize whatever they touch, no matter how horrific? And if a war movie isn’t to sound a warning against war, what purpose does it serve? Even if Truffaut’s wrong — and it’s hard to see his observation applying to at least some of the movies on this list — it might be best to remove the burden of making the world a better place from war movies. It’s a lot to ask, especially since war seems to be baked into human existence.
So, like other inescapable elements of the human experience, we tell stories about war, stories that reflect our attitudes toward it, and how they shift over time. War movies reflect the artistic impulses of their creators, but they also reflect the attitudes of the times and places in which they were created. A World War II film made in the midst of the war, for instance, might serve a propagandist purpose than one made after the war ends, when there’s more room for nuance and complexity, but it also might not.
Maybe the ultimate purpose of a war movie is to let others hear the force of these stories. Another director, Sam Fuller, once offered a quote that doesn’t necessarily contradict Truffaut’s observation but better explains the impulse to make war movies: “A war film’s objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war.” The films selected for this list of the genre’s most essential entries often have little in common, but they do share that. Each offers a vision that asks viewers to consider and understand the experience of war, be it in the trenches of World War I, the wilderness skirmishes of Civil War militias, or the still-ongoing conflicts that have helped define 21st-century warfare.
Compiled as Sam Mendes’s stylistically audacious World War I film, 1917, hit theaters, this list opts for a somewhat narrow definition of a war movie, focusing on films that deal with the experiences of soldiers during wartime. That means no films about the experience of returning from war (Coming Home, The Best Years of Our Lives, First Blood) or of civilian life during wartime (Mrs. Miniver, Forbidden Games, Hope and Glory) or of wartime stories whose action rests far away from the battlefield (Casablanca). It also leaves films primarily about the Holocaust out of consideration, as they seem substantively different from other sorts of war films. Also excluded are films that blur genres, like the military science fiction of Starship Troopers and Aliens (even if the latter does have a lot to say about the Vietnam War). That eliminates many great movies, but it leaves room for many others, starting with a film made at the height of World War II in an attempt to help rally a nation with a story of an operation whose success required secrecy, extensive training, and beating overwhelming odds.
Notes: Nobi (1959) was originally #12, but was replaced by Da 5 Bloods. The #12 spot is still missing in the updated list.
Che 1 & 2 are counted as a single film.
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1 -
Ran
1985, in 25 top lists Check -
2 -
Paths of Glory
1957, in 26 top lists Check -
3 -
The Thin Red Line
1998, in 14 top lists Check -
4 -
La grande illusion
1937 — a.k.a. The Grand Illusion, in 30 top lists Check -
5 -
Saving Private Ryan
1998, in 28 top lists Check -
6 -
Apocalypse Now
1979, in 37 top lists Check -
7 -
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
1943, in 16 top lists Check -
8 -
Idi i smotri
1985 — a.k.a. Come and See, in 27 top lists Check -
9 -
The Big Red One
1980, in 10 top lists Check -
10 -
The Hurt Locker
2008, in 13 top lists Check -
11 -
Dunkirk
2017, in 8 top lists Check -
12 -
Nobi
1959 — a.k.a. Fires on the Plain, in 6 top lists Check -
13 -
Biruma no tategoto
1956 — a.k.a. The Burmese Harp, in 12 top lists Check -
14 -
Das Boot
1981 — a.k.a. The Boat, in 15 top lists Check -
15 -
Inglourious Basterds
2009, in 17 top lists Check -
16 -
Campanadas a medianoche
1965 — a.k.a. Chimes at Midnight, in 11 top lists Check -
17 -
The Bridge on the River Kwai
1957, in 32 top lists Check -
18 -
The Great Escape
1963, in 14 top lists Check -
19 -
Full Metal Jacket
1987, in 18 top lists Check -
20 -
All Quiet on the Western Front
1930, in 19 top lists Check -
21 -
Letters from Iwo Jima
2006, in 5 top lists Check -
22 -
The Dirty Dozen
1967, in 8 top lists Check -
23 -
Platoon
1986, in 21 top lists Check -
24 -
La battaglia di Algeri
1966 — a.k.a. The Battle of Algiers, in 29 top lists Check -
25 -
Patton
1970, in 13 top lists Check -
26 -
The Steel Helmet
1951, in 2 top lists Check -
27 -
Gallipoli
1981, in 6 top lists Check -
28 -
Paisà
1946 — a.k.a. Paisan, in 14 top lists Check -
29 -
From Here to Eternity
1953, in 13 top lists Check -
30 -
They Were Expendable
1945, in 4 top lists Check -
31 new
Da 5 Bloods
2020, in 2 top lists -
32 -1
The Deer Hunter
1978, in 26 top lists Check -
33 -1
Story of G.I. Joe
1945 — a.k.a. War Correspondent, in 3 top lists Check -
34 -1
Che: Part One
2008, in 1 top list Check -
35 -1
Che: Part Two
2008, in 1 top list Check -
36 -1
Ride with the Devil
1999, in 3 top lists Check -
37 -1
Stalag 17
1953, in 7 top lists Check -
38 -1
Three Kings
1999, in 4 top lists Check -
39 -1
Run Silent Run Deep
1958, in 0 top lists Check -
40 -1
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
1983, in 6 top lists Check -
41 -1
La rivière du hibou
1961 — a.k.a. Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, in 1 top list Check -
42 -1
The Last of the Mohicans
1992, in 9 top lists Check -
43 -1
The Train
1964, in 4 top lists Check -
44 -1
Black Hawk Down
2001, in 5 top lists Check -
45 -1
Sergeant York
1941, in 7 top lists Check -
46 -1
Casualties of War
1989, in 2 top lists Check -
47 -1
Overlord
1975, in 1 top list Check -
48 -1
Courage Under Fire
1996, in 0 top lists Check -
49 -1
War Horse
2011, in 1 top list Check -
50 -1
Booby Traps
1944, in 0 top lists Check
Last updated on Apr 3, 2021 by Fergenaprido; source