Posted on 07/30/2012 7:53:45 PM PDT by TurboZamboni
Without question, more movies have been made about World War II than any other, but before World War II there was World War I, and some of the best — if not the best — war films ever made were inspired by that conflict. Most movies about the Great War incorporate strong anti-war messages, and to be fair, I can think of few other conflicts (except perhaps the Crimean War or the Thirty Years War) in which this attitude is more appropriate.
You’ll see this thread running through almost every one of my picks — it’s just the way it is. With the exception of movies made as propaganda during WWI and WWII, a good hunk of the First World War films were turned out in the 1920s and ’30s, when the nations of the world were licking their wounds and realizing what a grim, useless affair the whole mess really had been. World War I also proved to be an excellent analogy for Vietnam, so a number of First World War movies were also produced during that period. Anyway, without further ado, here are my particular favorites (and some runners-up) in chronological order.
(Excerpt) Read more at gunsandammo.com ...
There was a 1957 film starring Kirk Douglas about an unjust execution of three French poilus by a tyrannical general.
Then I saw on TCM an original 1918 French film about a young Frenchwoman who is raped by the Germans in 1914. Four years later she has a little girl whom her older husband wants to kill because the child is half German & the product of rape. The mother says, “I will teach her how to be French.” It wraps up with the husband being wounded & dying in hospital, and the young woman marrying a younger man who accepts both her and her daughter.
“Blue Max” is a classic. Especially those scenes with Ursula Andress.
The 1927 “Wings” with Clara Bow the “It” girl. Incredible footage using original aircraft that weren’t that old yet. Best line, “You didn’t kill him, Jack. War killed him.”
A 1931 film about an RAF pilot who goes crackers against war in general and then commits suicide. His wingman loads his corpse into a two seater plane, takes off, then shoots it up with its rear machine gun & blows the suicide’s head head off so he gets a hero’s funeral.
“Sergeant York” a classic. Eerily released just before Pearl Harbor. German soldiers depicted as human, not monsters, which makes them all the more dangerous.
So many WW1 films had an antiwar theme. Pick up a 1921 silver dollar with the eagle’s wings folded and you’ll see how strong that sentiment was, then.
That was quite depressing...
One thing I don’t get is that the remake of Dawn Patrol is not on the list. True it uses the flying sequences from the original, but the acting with Errol Flynn, David Niven, Basil Rathbone abnd Donald Crisp is far suoerior to the original, where you can scarcely notice a British accent.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424205/
Joyeux Noel (2005)
116 min - Drama | History | Music - 9 November 2005
On Christmas Eve during world War I, the Germans, French, and Scottish fraternize and get to know the men who live on the opposite side of a brutal war, in what became a true lesson of humanity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyeux_No%C3%ABl
The unofficial truce begins when the Scots begin to sing festive songs and songs from home, accompanied by bagpipes. Sprink and Sørensen arrive in the German front-line and Sprink sings for his comrades. As Sprink sings Silent Night he is accompanied by a piper in the Scottish front-line. Sprink responds to the piper and exits his trench with a small Christmas tree singing “Adeste Fideles”. Following Sprink’s lead the French, German, and Scottish officers meet in no-man’s-land and agree on a cease-fire for the evening. The various soldiers meet and wish each other “Joyeux Noël”,”Frohe Weihnachten”, and “Merry Christmas.” They exchange chocolate, champagne, and photographs of loved ones. Horstmayer gives Audebert back his wallet, with a photograph of his wife inside, lost in the attack a few days prior, and connect over pre-war memories. Palmer and the Scots celebrate a brief Mass for the soldiers (in Latin as was the practice in the Catholic Church at that time) and the soldiers retire deeply moved. However, Jonathan remains totally unmoved by the events around him, choosing to grieve for his brother.
Although it may not qualify, exactly, as a “World War I movie”, the 1926 film, ‘Tell it to the Marines’, starring Lon Chaney (in his only starring role where he didn’t wear sophisticated makeup), is truly a great movie. I got to watch it on TCM last summer and was floored.
By the way, Lon Chaney was a huge star a real long time ago but is, hands down, one of the greatest actors of all time. He pioneered the art of makeup and starred in many of the most enduring movies of the era (’The Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, for example). He was a very private family man who once proclaimed, “Between movies, there is no Lon Chaney.” He built a cabin high in the Sierra Nevada wilderness as a retreat. A read of his Wiki bio is highly recommended if you are not familiar with the great Lon Chaney. He died young, in 1930, at age 47.
(Yes, Chaney’s son, Lon Chaney, Jr. later found fame as ‘The Wolfman’, Larry Talbot.)
Sgt York, then the rest. I never miss that movie.
I found an old book once called Legion of the Condemned. Pretty standard war love story but in the back was a glossy picture of Gary Cooper and Faye Wray and it said it was a soon to be released Hollywood movie.
I checked IMDB to see if I could view the movie and found this quote: “This movie is presumed lost. Please check your attic.”
They even tried to get the aircraft right. I liked it better than "Flyboys."
I was reading some articles on it and the continuity errors people found were funny. Stuff like using a 1908 aircraft in a 1909 scene.. that’s how hard people had to look for inaccuracies.
“All Quiet On The Western front’’(1930). Front-line horrors told from the German perspective.
“.. he fell on a day so still the General Staff noted in it’s diary “All quiet on the Western Front’’. From the novel.
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