Great War Fictional Movies

[Gunner Bailey]

7 minutes ago, Nick Beale said:

For another with a French army setting (ableit starring the not-very-French Kirk Douglas) there's Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory".

 

I saw it a few years ago and thought it was not one of Kubrick's best. A strong film though.

[Hyacinth1326]

'King and Country'  starring Dirk and Tom.  Leo McKern played a medic who was the very antithesis of Chavasse.  Indeed the entire film owed more to sixties right-on culture than the realities of the Great War.

Edited 16 September , 2019 by Hyacinth1326

[Hyacinth1326]

The Big Parade.  

[Hedley Malloch]

1 hour ago, Hyacinth1326 said:

'King and Country'  starring Dirk and Tom.  Leo McKern played a medic who was the very antithesis of Chavasse.  Indeed the entire film owed more to sixties right-on culture than the realities of the Great War.

 

Hyacinth,

interesting. Would you care to elaborate on this?

[maxi]

Has anyone seen this silent French film:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J'accuse_(1919_film)

 

I cannot yet claim to have seen it but it seems quite fascinating.

 

 

[Hyacinth1326]

On 16/09/2019 at 20:49, Hedley Malloch said:

 

Hyacinth,

interesting. Would you care to elaborate on this?

 

Would you care to consider the work and ideology of Joseph Losey ? 

 

View 'The Servant' then look for resonance with King and Country. The one is after all a pendant to the other.  Ideology signposted a mile off. A simple  discourse of homoerotic angst suffused with Brechtian themes. And WWI supplies plenty of ammo for them. In this view the characters are reduced to cyphers.  O' Sullivan an ill-conceived stereotype, crude even by agit prop standards. A bourgeois drunken thug serving as a foil to the sensitive Dirk. Hamp an innocent shorn of agency.  Without a shred of revolutionary consciousness he is doomed and his mates will die 'as cattle'.  A Billy Budd of the trenches. The other soldiers are reduced to war-coarsened lumpenproletariat . Dirk is the Mother Courage figure  Men like him could stop the war but instead he goes along with it for 'King and Country'. Subtle Not.

 

Is it still interesting Dr Malloch ? I could go on but by deploying this kind of jargon I am even boring myself here.

 

It's magnificent but it isn't history. 

There again you knew that all along, you little tinker.

Edited 18 September , 2019 by Hyacinth1326

[Hedley Malloch]

Ah, now  I understand. I had considered that your original comments referred to another and altogether different interpretive lens - lions and donkeys, butchers and bunglers - you know, that sort of thing. That was premature of me. Sorry to have bored you :-)

[593jones]

How about 'Les Croix de Bois' (1932).  I  haven't seen it myself, but I understand it is highly thought of.

[free1954]

On ‎12‎/‎09‎/‎2019 at 14:12, Gunner Bailey said:

I recommend a French film.

 

'A very long engagement' Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Top Star Audrey Tautou.

 

Super film, excellent trench scenes, 1920s Paris beautifully recreated. Good story too. Funny at times, very sad at other times.

 

One of the few French films that is up to the standard of a UK / US film.

thanks for the heads up on this film. great trench and no man's land scenes.

[BIFFO]

Monocled mutineer,fly boys, blue max, wings sergeant york is this what you want ?

Edited 8 October , 2019 by BIFFO

[Guest]

1)  Paths of Glory

 

2) Journey's End (tho the old BBC version with Edward Petherbridge is excellent)

 

3) La Grande Illusion

 

4) Kameradschaft  (definitely NOT  Great War  -  but one of the great anti-war films generated by it- Georg Pabst 's "war" film, though not set as such during the war

 

5) King and Country   (yes, it's a right-on stage play from the 1960's-so what?)

[T8HANTS]

I know I am going to heap coals on my head, but I don't care, my favorite has always been "Oh what a lovely war".

I saw the film with the BBC's Great War still fresh in the mind, I was enchanted from the opening credits to the stunning closing shot.

The B&W uniforms were now on colour, I loved the songs, I sing most of them.  I knew a few old soldiers who still were singing them at the time.

Knowledge and education on the subject would come later, but it was that film that gave me the love, and a dear veteran friend who told a few stories.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

10 minutes ago, T8HANTS said:

I know I am going to heap coals on my head, but I don't care, my favorite has always been "Oh what a lovely war".

I rather agree. I certainly liked it at the time before the revisionists changed my view of history. Of course it may have been down to my being rather enamoured of Angela Thorne!

[Gunner Bailey]

40 minutes ago, T8HANTS said:

I know I am going to heap coals on my head, but I don't care, my favorite has always been "Oh what a lovely war".

 

 

Not at all. It's a great film, but oh so political.

[T8HANTS]

1 hour ago, Gunner Bailey said:

 

Not at all. It's a great film, but oh so political.

As an adolescent of the 60's two films illustrated the British soldier, Zulu and OWALW, the politics just went over my head.  Where I grew up, there was a plumbers yard attached to the house, with 17 olds soldiers from two world wars to talk to.  I remember asking one, who wasn't very friendly, what did you do in the 'Uncle' Harold?  "Blew up trains, nipper" was the reply, that sounded exciting for  a seven year old, it years later I learned he was with the Partisans in Yugoslavia and had dispatched young Germans with the same hands that offered me a mint.

[UncleBourbon]

An obscure one is "Berge in Flammen" from 1931.
I actually own the DVD of this one. It takes place in the Italian Front and is filmed on location in the Dolomites mountain range, with several scenes being noteworthy for being filmed on skis.

Seeing fast paced tracking shots in an early 1930s film is quite impressive.

[IlluminatiRex]

1933's The Hell Below starring Robert Montgomery, Walter Huston, Robert Young, Madge Evans, and Jimmy Durante.

 

It's a rare sort of First World War film centered on a submarine! And not even a U-Boat but the rarely discussed American submarines. It's one of my favorites, although not faultless. Durante's comedic relief is a bit out of character and place to my modern eye, and the love story aspect is pretty weak. However, the submarine sequences and story are top notch, they even utilized an actual S class boat for the film. So while the submarine itself isn't accurate to the war (US subs in foreign waters were of the L class) they do a bang up job with it. The ending is based a bit on the Zeebrugge Raid, except now in the Adriatic Sea.

 

A locale that US subs weren't stationed in during the war, but I don't think that really detracts.

 

Definitely an obscure film pre-code film. One rumor seems to be that the print that is floating around is actually a 1937 Code recut (as the original 1933 version is pre-code). I haven't been able to track down a physical copy, just a TCM showing and potentially a VHS copy.

Edited 9 October , 2019 by IlluminatiRex

[Nick Beale]

4) Kameradschaft  (definitely NOT  Great War  -  but one of the great anti-war films generated by it- Georg Pabst 's "war" film, though not set as such during the war)

 

In that vein, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is supposed to have started out as an anti-Great War allegory (the hypnotised young sleepwalker sent out to kill by his scheming seniors). Someone then got cold feet and bookended it with scenes in an asylum to explain the events away as delusions.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Nick Beale said:

 scenes in an asylum

 

   Sounds like a pretty succinct analysis of the Great War to me  

[charlie962]

On 13/09/2019 at 08:09, josquin said:

The film is "Life and Nothing But" (or, its French title, "La Vie et Rien d'Autre").  Produced in 1989 and directed by Bertrand Tavernier,

it featured the incomparable Philippe Noiret and Sabine Azema, and won the 1989 BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language

(British Academy of Film and Television Arts). A great film, not least for standing among the few to present a profound portrayal of the

aftermath of the war and its impact on both veterans and civilians.

This excellent film was broadcast again on C5 (France) a couple of days ago. Unusual subject hinging on the identification of bodies several years after the War's end as well as selection of the 'unknown soldier' and even suggestion of unscrupulous arms manufacturers on both sides doing deals to protect their factories, heaven forbid.

A grim process of identification starts with a long  table full of labelled items found on the dead men that the potential relatives had to sift through to see if anything was familiar.

I'm assuming the setting was historically correct even if the plot was fiction?

Charlie

[Martin Bennitt]

1 hour ago, charlie962 said:

This excellent film was broadcast again on C5 (France) a couple of days ago. Unusual subject hinging on the identification of bodies several years after the War's end as well as selection of the 'unknown soldier' and even suggestion of unscrupulous arms manufacturers on both sides doing deals to protect their factories, heaven forbid.

A grim process of identification starts with a long  table full of labelled items found on the dead men that the potential relatives had to sift through to see if anything was familiar.

I'm assuming the setting was historically correct even if the plot was fiction?

Charlie

I also watched this again the other evening. The setting of the railway tunnel was I think fiction, though with a nod to the incident of the Tavannes tunnel in 1916, when more than 500 French troops sheltering there were killed by an explosion of munitions. The selection of the Unknown Soldier is pretty close to how it happened. And worth watching in any case to see the late great Philippe Noiret.

Cheers Martin B

 

[charlie962]

3 minutes ago, Martin Bennitt said:

And worth watching in any case to see the late great Philippe Noiret.

Agreed.

I assumed the tunnel incident was convenient to the plot. Composite train found postwar in collapsed tunnel, full of French, Germans and Americans,  (for the unknown warrior bit)  not to mention munitions and gas, was a bit contrived.

charlie

[rolt968]

What does anyone make of Die Standarte?

I have a German copy without subtitles and don't speak German. I have seen the English version on TV twice which has an appalling English script. It also gives it the title Battle Flag which rather misses the point since what is referred to is the standard of a cavalry regiment with a long history.

It deals with disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of WW1, through the eyes of a junior officer of a "non-German" Austrian cavalry regiment which itself disintegrates (Simon Ward!). Peter Cushing makes an enigmatic appearance.

It seems well meant, but the English version is very disappointing. I wonder if it is better in other languages?

RM

Edited 16 December , 2021 by rolt968

[James A Pratt III]

I made a post some years ago on WW I movies. There are a number of them on youtube

[Moonraker]

On 16/09/2019 at 19:12, Hyacinth1326 said:

The Big Parade.  

Watch it here  "The idle son of a rich businessman joins the army when the U.S.A. enters World War One. He is sent to France, where he becomes friends with two working-class soldiers. He also falls in love."