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A DOZEN CLASSIC WAR FILMS TO REMIND US OF THE SACRIFICES MADE BY AMERICANS FOR THEIR NATION
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Capturing the American fighting spirit on screen
of TheColumnists.com
In these early years of the 21st century, a generation of Americans is growing up without the shadow of mandatory military service looming over their lives. Though we're in shooting wars today in Iraq and Afghanistan, there still are probably millions of young Americans who don't really feel anything about wars that so far don't really touch their lives.
And that is why it's so important for America to continue to celebrate Memorial Day, the day set aside by our nation for remembering the sacrifices made by Americans who served in past wars and those who are serving today.
I was born before America entered World War II and was too young to serve in the Korean War. Before America entered the Vietnam War, I was drafted into the peacetime Army, but quickly was ruled physically unfit for military service due to a degenerative eye disease that finally required me to undergo corneal transplants to avoid blindness. Still, I lived the first 23 years of my life fully expecting to be drafted and to serve, as a majority of American men did, when called.
What I knew of war and the sacrifices it required of people then was mainly shaped by the books I'd read and the movies I'd seen. I'd read many wartime memoirs like "Guadalcanal Diary," "An American Guerilla in the Phillipines," "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and novels like "Paths of Glory," "The Naked and the Dead" and "All Quiet on the Western Front."
As powerful as all those books were, though, I'm sure the movies exerted the most influence over my notions of war. Pessimistic anti-war films like "All Quiet on the Western Front" frightened me with their images of shellshocked soldiers going crazy in the trenches while under bombardment, soldiers taking refuge from artillery fire in a cemetery filled with corpses disinterred by explosions, human hands blown off by a hand grenade dangling on barbed wire and the haunting memory of a scene in which a wounded war veteran dies when a tiny sliver of shrapnel from a nearby explosion penetrates his brain as he's being carried to safety by a fellow soldier.
In my youthful mind, there was no doubt that war was hell. Still, the movies flaunted heroism and personal sacrifice. To this day, I'm not sure I wouldn't throw myself on a grenade before I'd let it blow up my friends. I mean, didn't I see that over and over again on screen?
To be sure, Hollywood produced many jingoistic war movies that celebrated American military might, even as we were recovering from the almost total destruction of our Navy by Japanese bombers at Pearl Harbor. Films I saw during World War II depicted the Japanese as savage beasts. They were pushing propaganda to make us hate our enemies. Modern films like Oliver Stone's "Platoon" showed our soldiers doing even worse things to civilians in Vietnam. Today's war films are more likely to be even-handed.
Some critics have looked back and smirked at the thought that actor John Wayne, who never served in the military, seemed to have won World War II all by himself, if you saw all his "gung-ho" war films. I think there may have been some major value in having someone like Wayne standing tall on the movie screens when we actually were at war with the Germans and the Japanese.
There are lessons to be learned by the films about war. An amazing number of them stress humanitarian issues. In 1930, "All Quiet on the Western Front" showed the film's German soldier-hero, Paul, spending the night in a trench with a French infantryman he'd just killed. By the end of their long hours together, Paul was feeling profound remorse because he'd gone through the dead man's personal effects and discovered he was a regular person, just like Paul was before their national leaders had proclaimed them enemies of each other.
In "Sahara," Humphrey Bogart's American tank moves away from unarmed Italian prisoner J. Carrol Naish, leaving him behind to perish on the desert. They don't have enough food and water for him. But, as vultures wheel overhead, they stop for him to catch up. Even when your own future seems hopeless, the film tells us, you mustn't abandon your human values. Like the dead Frenchman in "All Quiet on the Western Front," this poor Italian soldier is just a guy like all the guys ready to leave him behind.
If you have no other plans to observe Memorial Day, this year or any year, I'd like to suggest you try to round up some classic war movies to better understand America's role in warfare and how it affects the men and women who fight it as well as the civilians who suffer it. I've selected a dozen personal favorites.
One note: You won't find some very great
war movies on this list because I've tried to keep this about
America's experiences in war. Hence, three of the very best,
"All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930), which told
its story from the viewpoint of German soldiers; "Paths
of Glory," which really deals with the French military in
World War I, and "Bridge on the River Kwai," which
was mainly about British prisoners of war, did not make the list.
I've also included only films that are available on DVD or VHS
home video.
WORLD WAR I
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MGM/1925 masterpiece artfully captures the devastating impact of war on a young American recruit (John Gilbert) sent to France in World War I. The tension of the Yanks advancing into an enemy ambush through a forest, which Vidor set to a metronome beat, is still extremely suspenseful. This was a huge box office hit and ran 96 consecutive weeks at one New York theater. |
 Renee Adoree was the French girl who falls in love with Yank soldier John Gilbert. |
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Warner Bros./1941 peaceful Tennessee country boy Alvin York, an uncanny marksman who became the most decorated American soldier of World War I after he single-handedly captured 132 German soldiers on a battlefield in 1918 France. York insisted that only Gary Cooper could play him on the screen. His choice proved providential for Cooper, who won the Best Actor Oscar for the role. |
 Gary Cooper played Alvin York, who went from being a prizewinner in hillbilly turkey shoots to America's most decorated war hero of the First World War. |
WORLD WAR II
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20th Century-Fox/1945 novel, this was a character study of G.I.'s heading up a road toward an important German target after a beach landing in Italy. Director Lewis Milestone ("All Quiet on the Western Front") put together a cast of mostly new faces with veteran leading man Dana Andrews as the reliable dogface who steps up when duty calls. |
 "A Walk in the Sun" was mainly conversations between infantymen as they walked up a road in Italy. |
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Columbia/1943 later one of the "Hollywood 10" who went to jail for refusing to "name names" when called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, was one of the writers who adapted this story about a stranded tank crew in North Africa from an incident in the 1937 Soviet film "The Thirteen." Humphrey Bogart played the tank commander in charge of a ragtag group made up of his American tank crewmen, British stragglers, a Sudanese soldier, an Italian POW and a captured Nazi pilot. Ultimately, they wind up in a standoff against superior German forces. |
 Tank commander Humphrey Bogart led a ragtag crew isolated from their main force after the fall of Tobruk in North Africa. |
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Warner Bros./1943 made this suspenseful drama about an American submarine that penetrates Japanese anti-sub nets and attempts a bold attack in Tokyo harbor. Cary Grant played the sub commander with stern conviction, deserting his usual comic/romantic image. |
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Paramount/1943 depict the role of women in war. The all-star cast headed by Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake dramatized the danger-filled lives of military nurses in the South Pacific. |
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OVER TOKYO MGM/1944 decided to mount an incredibly bold reprisal attack on Japan's most important city with a bombing run on Tokyo itself. Led by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle (Spencer Tracy), U.S. bombers flew this most daring of raids, knowing they would run out of fuel over China and their crews would have to somehow make their way to safety. Director Mervyn Leroy's thrilling action film helped buoy America's spirit as the war raged on. Tracy was backed with an outstanding supporting cast, including Van Johnson, Robert Walker and Robert Mitchum. |
 This rousing, patriotic film was, ironically, written by Dalton Trumbo, later sent to prison for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee on his ties to American communism. |
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20th Century-Fox/1949 raids on German strongholds by U.S. squadrons based in England gave Gregory Peck one of his best postwar roles as a squadron leader accused of getting too involved in the lives of his men. He had strong support from Gary Merrill and Dean Jagger, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. |
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20th Century-Fox/1950 memoir of her days as a female resident of Borneo taken prisoner by the invading Japanese. Though many acts of cruelty are portrayed, the film was one of the first to show humanitarian traits in a Japanese character, a prison camp officer who took an interest in Keith. Claudette Colbert was marvelous as Keith and Sessue Hayakawa gives a rousing preview of the great role he was to play in 1957 as the prison camp commandant in "Bridge on the River Kwai." |
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Paramount/DreamWorks/1998 about the D-Day invasion by Allied forces and its aftermath is by far the best film about World War II of the past quarter century. Tom Hanks plays the Army captain assigned to take his seven-man patrol into enemy territory in the days after D-Day to find and send home Pvt. Ryan (Matt Damon), whose three brothers have all been killed during the war. The extreme realism of this film is awesome and its ability to reflect the fighting spirit of American soldiers is unmatched. |
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THE KOREAN WAR
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Paramount/1954 novel told the story of a World War II veteran (William Holden), now married (to Grace Kelly) and working as a lawyer, who is called back to military service as a jet fighter-bomber pilot in the Korean War. This is a poignant human drama witih an uncompromised ending that reflects the enormous sacrifices asked of some Americans who already have given their all. Beautifully played with Holden getting great support from Kelly, Fredric March and Mickey Rooney as a reckless chopper pilot who rescues downed aviators. |
 "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" doesn't blink when dealing with the futility of modern war. |
THE VIETNAM WAR
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United Artists/1979 moral fable about the Vietnam War was in many ways an epic disaster, ending up years over schedule and millions over budget. But no other film so perfectly renders the absolute insanity of the Vietnam War. It's supposed to be about an assassin (Martin Sheen) being sent up river to kill a colonel (Marlon Brando) who has formed his own renegade military unit, but it's really about the madness that warfare can fire up within human beings. Featuring Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Larry Fishbourne, Dennis Hopper and Harrison Ford. |
 Marlon Brando's brief cameo role in this mostly horrifying war film added to its overall surrealism. |
©2007 by Ron Miller. The reproductions of home video cover illustrations are courtesy of their respective studios and distributors. This column first posted May 28, 2007.
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