If you’re not a male over the age of 65 who refers to anyone of German heritage as a ‘Kraut’ or a ‘Nazi’, then you likely aren’t intimately familiar with the War Movie genre. In fact, if you you’re flicking through channels and hear the word ‘Luftwaffe’ or see John Wayne wearing anything but chaps and a Stetson (but not JUST chaps and a Stetson), I’m willing to bet you utter a little yelp and quickly change channels.
Well, sadly I have to admit that I have more in common with your elderly grandfather who likes to tell stories about rations he ate in the service while overseas. I love war movies.
If you think that war movies are all propaganda about how great ‘our side’ is, or that all they do is glorify war, then you haven’t seen many war movies. Most war movies made after Platoon tend to have a very cynical turn to them (even Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers), but those movies from the 50s and 60s tend to be historically accurate (accounting for embellished story-telling and censorship).
For a great example of a REALLY good war movie, check out The Longest Day. Made in 1962, and based on a phenomenal book by Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day is a collection of true stories about men’s experiences around what we know as D-Day, or the Allied invasion of France in June 1944. Stories are told from all levels of command and from all sides in the conflict. The focus of the film is evenly divided between sharing the facts of how the day played out historically, while sharing the emotionally difficult circumstances that all these men found themselves in. It’s a snapshot of one very important day in our modern history from a very human perspective, and it stars hundreds of famous actors.
Once you’ve watched The Longest Day, you can graduate to two movies that are far more deeply entrenched in our culture. The first is The Bridge on the River Kwai. It stars Alec “Obi Wan” Guinness as the commander of British Prisoners of War (or POWs) in a Japanese internment camp who are forced to build a railroad bridge. Again, like any good war movie, the focus of the film isn’t on explosions or action, but on how people react in extraordinary circumstances.
This goes double for the second movie… The Great Escape. This epic film also has a huge cast of big name stars, and is centered around POWs in World War II, but they are in a German internment camp, and they’re tunnelling out to escape. This is possibly one of the most intriguing true stories to come out of the war, and there’s barely any fighting in the film.
So, I challenge you to buy, rent or download (eek) these three movies and watch them in turn. I know, they’re each at least three hours long, but you won’t regret it. Send me your reviews at dave@silenttalkie.com, and I’ll do a follow-up article once I get a few responses.
