CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 02/09/07

The Seven Best World War II Movies

By jason davis

As the first of Clint Eastwood's complementary accounts of the Battle of Iwo Jima arrives on DVD, CS Weekly looks back at the best cinematic treatments of World War II.

From Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1938 to Japan's surrender in 1945, World War II raged across the globe, sacrificing countless lives and drenching the world with blood. Even before America entered the war in December of 1941, it had found its way into Hollywood films like Casablanca and continues to provide a dramatic backdrop to contemporary films that explore the human condition in that most inhospitable of scenarios. With five Oscar-winning Best Pictures among their number, CS Weekly decorates seven examples of the best cinema has to offer for excellence beyond the call of duty.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Screenplay by Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman (both uncredited on original release)
Based on the novel by Pierre Boule
Claiming Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Bridge on the River Kwai dramatizes novelist Pierre Boule's (Planet of the Apes) tale of British POWs forced to build a railway bridge linking Bangkok and Rangoon. The principal conflict, between British Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and Japanese camp Commandant Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), represents a classic collision of cultures as Nicholson refuses to allow his officers to perform manual labor, as per the Geneva Convention. The two men engage in a battle of wills that eventually finds Nicholson put in charge of the bridge's construction where he can keep discipline amongst his soldiers while providing an example of British superiority in the face of adversity. A subplot added to the film by blacklisted screenwriters Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman finds American Navy man Shears (William Holden) seconded to a British expedition to blow up the bridge and adds a ticking clock to the proceedings. With its subtle line between nationalist pride and a possible case of Stockholm Syndrome underpinning Nicholson's actions, the film elegantly explores the prisoner-of-war experience while still managing to showcase the Japanese perspective in a marvelous scene where Colonel Saito berates Nicholson, enumerating the cultural differences at the heart of his hatred for the British soldiers.

Casablanca (1941)
Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch
Based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison
Often overlooked in terms of the war genre, Casablanca offers a backstage look at the war from the eponymous Moroccan city where the free colonial French forces, represented by the duplicitous Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), bow to the will of Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt), the Nazi officer hunting escaped Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henried). The complex political plot is then subsumed when the vital letters of transit that will allow Laszlo escape from the Third Reich fall into the hands of American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a former freedom fighter disenchanted after a Parisian love affair went south. Things get complicated when Blaine realizes Laszlo is in the company of the former's one-time lover, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), and Blaine sees an opportunity to avenge himself at Laszlo's expense. Based on an unproduced play, Casablanca is all about character, with even minor figures fleshed out in memorable detail, not to mention a star-making role for Bogart. Though far from the battlefields, the film captures the underlying tension between the French and Germans with a musical battle of anthems in Rick's Café American culminating in a Nazi crackdown in the legally unoccupied French colony. With its romance cast against the backdrop of war, its snapshot of the resistance in the form of Laszlo, and a contemporary perspective that eludes later films, Casablanca more than earns its Best Picture Oscar and place in cinematic history.

The English Patient (1996)
Screenplay by Anthony Minghella (also directed)
Based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje
Elegantly dramatizing Michael Ondaatje's stream-of-consciousness novel, writer-director Anthony Minghella's screenplay for The English Patient wanders back and forth in time with the memories of its title character, Count Laszlo de Almásy (Ralph Fiennes), a badly burned Hungarian who mapped much of the Sahara before the war. Opening after the liberation of Italy, where the disfigured and amnesiac Almásy is waiting for death under the care of a nurse (Juliette Binoche), the film slips back to the early days of the war as the Count romances a married woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) and helps the English prepare their African campaign, telling both stories simultaneously until the viewer beholds the whole canvass of tragedy and treachery unraveled across the entire film. A dream-like quality pervades the narrative as Minghella creates mysteries from Almásy's memories and revisits the age-old truism that all is fair in love and war.

The Man Who Never Was (1956)
Screenplay by Nigel Balchin
Based on the book The Man Who Never Was by the Hon. Ewen Montagu, C.B.E., D.L., Q.C.
Blending suspenseful espionage with the details of a crime procedural, The Man Who Never Was tells the true story of a British intelligence officer who devised a plan to keep the Nazi's off the scent of the D-Day invasion by convincing them of an alternative scheme delivered via dead man. Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu's (Clifton Webb) plan to create a lie so complete that the greatest military operation in history hinges on its success sets the stakes from the story's outset. Montagu and company procure the body of a Scottish soldier and set about creating a foolproof identity, even borrowing from the love life of his staff to add verisimilitude to the project. Like another British classic, A Bridge Too Far, The Man Who Never Was is a drama of logistics that forces its characters to put emotions aside for the good of the war effort. The script spares the viewer no detail, and every time a stiff upper lip quivers, the suppressed emotion of the piece takes hold, but the narrative offers no respite.

Mister Roberts (1955)
Screenplay by Joshua Logan and Frank Nugent
Based on the play by Joshua Logan and Thomas Heggen
Based on the novel by Thomas Heggen
Set aboard the U.S.S. Reluctant, which sailed "from apathy to tedium with occasional side trips to monotony and ennui" according to the play, Mister Roberts originated as a series of short stories by former Navy man Thomas Heggen before it found fame as a Tony Award-winning play. Lieutenant (j.g.) Doug Roberts (Henry Fonda) battles the petty tyrannies of his commanding officer (James Cagney) on behalf of the ship's crew and becomes a hero to his men. Laced with the same black humor that would eventually become a hallmark of the Korean War comedy M*A*S*H, Mister Roberts even prefigured the finale of that well-regarded TV show's third season, in which the laugher is punctuated with the only certainty of war. Spawning a sequel, Ensign Pulver, which detailed the further exploits of Roberts' right-hand man (Jack Lemmon), as well as a TV series and 1984 remake, the film remains a high-water mark in the elusive but honorable pantheon of war comedies.

Patton (1970)
Screen story and Screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North
Based on factual material from Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and A Soldier's Story by Omar N. Bradley
Famously opening with General George S. Patton (George C. Scott) addressing either (or both) the audience and a room full of soldiers, Patton starts out by breaking the fourth wall and continues to flaunt tradition, much like the soldier whose World War II career it chronicles. Writer Francis Ford Coppola was fired from the project because of his unorthodox approach, but many of his surrealistic flourishes found their way into the film as a haunted Patton visits ancient battlefields and recalls (or imagines) that he once fought there alongside the likes of Hannibal and Caesar. The contradictions of the character are swiftly drawn as the general kisses young men wounded in battle just as quickly as he slaps soldiers who've lost their nerve. His disregard for procedure—evidenced when he promotes himself to Lieutenant General long before the paperwork is signed—places him both outside the box of conventional thinking and beyond the boundaries of proper protocol. The film presents Patton as both genius and monster, effectively illustrating how one perception cannot exist without the other, and resolves a complicated man into a film as relentless as its namesake.

The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)
Screenplay by James Edward Grant and Harry Brown
Story by Harry Brown
Before Flags of Our Fathers recalled Navy Corpsman John Bradley's experiences on the island of Iwo Jima, Bradley and the two surviving Marines who raised the flag over Mount Suribachi appeared as honored extras in the 1949 John Wayne vehicle, The Sands of Iwo Jima. The movie follows the training and deployment of Marines under the command of the uncompromising Sergeant John M. Stryker (Wayne) who puts his men through hell and accepts their hatred with the knowledge that his training will keep them alive in one of the bloodiest episodes of World War II. Made soon after the war's end, the film deftly illustrates the challenge of taking an island riddled with secret passages and Japanese soldiers determined to die before surrendering while acknowledging the cost of the mission's success in the blood of American soldiers. Indeed, the film is famous as one of only two movies in which Wayne's character is killed, a fitting commentary on the realities of war.

Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly , a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Casablanca courtesy Warner Home Video
The English Patient courtesy Miramax Home Entertainment
Patton courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

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