The Top 10 War Films

Canadian Military History Volume 19 Issue 3 Article 8 2010 The Top 10 War Films Tim Cook Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Part of the Military History Commons Recommended Citation Tim Cook "The Top 10 War Films." Canadian Military History 19, 3 (2010) This Feature is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. : The Top 10 War Films The Top 10 War Films Tim Cook saw Peter Weir’s Gallipoli (1981) remember leaving the theatre, asking war film be humorous? Do films like I when I was ten years old. I’ve my parents how the attack could be M.A.S.H. (1970), Oh, What a Lovely watched it several times since, so my carried out and why the soldiers had War (1969), or Private Benjamin (1980) memories have no doubt blurred into followed the suicidal orders? I don’t have something to tell us about the one another, but the final sequence of remember their answers, although human condition in war? the film has imprinted itself upon me. I suspect they too were at a loss for From epics to indies, and While the film meanders through the explaining such actions. It would be a everything in between, there are Australian outback and the brothels rewriting of my own personal history thousands of war films. Most are of Cairo, it is the 1915 Gallipoli to suggest that I became interested in forgettable, clichéd, lamentable, but campaign where the shattering the Great War at that moment, but some touch us deeply, opening up climax is reached. The fighting is it certainly lodged in my head. Film new insights, shaking our convictions, intense, bewildering, and ugly. Flies has the power to do that to us. It can stunning us with their brutality. The cover the food; the rocky terrain shake us to the core. ten historians were asked to cast the seems impassable; death comes to And war films can be even net widely and include any film from swimmers frolicking in the water, more powerful, as life and death, any time period and any language seemingly safe from the enemy. Yet heroism and horror, courage and that elucidates the experience of the focus of the film is on the hopeless carnage are projected at us. But war and its myriad effects upon attack by the 3rd Light Horse Brigade what is a war film? Is a war film societies and individuals. The only at the Nek on 7 August 1915. As a different than a combat film, and caveat was that they do not include 10-year-old, I remember watching how do these compare to films set science-fiction movies that might with body-straightening tension on the home front or those that deal touch on war – for example, the as the Australians charged into the with the veterans’ experience in the Star Trek or Star Wars series or, one mouth of the waiting Turkish guns, aftermath of conflict? How important of my favourites, Starship Troopers. and as new waves lined up to follow are character, plot, and accuracy in The historians were encouraged to their doomed comrades. The light a war film, or are these films simply select films that mattered to them. horsemen of subsequent waves know entertainment? Paths of Glory (1957), These lists are deeply personal, but their likely fate, and so they write last Apocalypse Now (1979) or All Quiet each historian has offered some letters, remove personal effects, share on the Western Front (1930 or 1979), justification as to why a film was cigarettes, and say goodbye. Even as usually classified as antiwar, have selected. The selected films are I write this thirty years later, I can much to tell us about war. These arbitrarily listed to some degree, yet feel my pre-teen self, squirming in films are usually shaped by an there is a first choice and perhaps the his seat. Surely the attack would be ideological or moral predisposition or close second, the middle films, and called off. Surely the runner, played orientation, but so too are the hyper- that last film that edged its way on to by Mel Gibson, will beat the clock and patriotic films. Can either genre be the list, even as other powerful films convince the high command of the ignored? Are there dispassionate were left off. futility of ordering another wave over glimpses of war? War is serious, Most of us will never be in the top. He of course does not. His deadly business. Men and women are a war. Yet we live it vicariously best mate and all his friends go over killed and maimed, driven mad and through the writings and memoirs the sandbags and are shot down. I dislocated from their societies. Can a of the participants; we view or study Published© Canadian by Scholars Military Commons History @, Laurier,Volume 2010 19, Number 3, Summer 2010, pp.73-79. 73 1 Cook - Top 10 films.indd 73 10/4/2010 2:02:52 PM Canadian Military History, Vol. 19 [2010], Iss. 3, Art. 8 art, photographs, and documentary footage; we talk element in war: fear, love, exhaustion, fury, brutality, and to veterans and hear their stories; we pick through the sacrifice are presented in their rawest form. But in the end, archives of the nation. But we also turn readily to fiction, I am left wondering if war films tell it like it is, like it was, in the form of novels, plays, and of course films. The latter or how we imagine it. reaches the largest audience, throws images and stories at us, even as we are entertained and engrossed. The best Dr. Tim Cook is the author of several books, including The Madman films shed light on the hidden history of war. The spectacle and the Butcher: The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie (Allen Lane, 2010). of battle is revealed in all its gruesome glory. The human Mike Bechthold 10. Memphis Belle (1990) 9. The Longest Day (1962) Mike Bechthold is the managing 8. A Bridge Too Far (1977) editor of Canadian Military History and the communications director 7. Das Boot (1981) of the Laurier Centre for Military 6. Platoon (1986) Strategic and Disarmament 5. Saving Private Ryan (1998) Studies. He teaches military history 4. Black Hawk Down (2001) at Wilfrid Laurier University and 3. The Big Red One (1980) has published many articles on the First and Second World War. He 2. Zulu (1964) is the co-editor of a collection of 1. Kelly’s Heroes (1970) essays on the Battle of Vimy Ridge entitled, Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment (WLU Press, 2007). Aleksandra Bennett othing starts a conversation among military historians like asking the question, “So, what’s your Dr. Aleksandra Bennett is N an associate professor in the favourite war film?” In short order, the discussion turns Department of History at Carleton into a critique about how bad, or how unrealistic the University. She recently edited a history/weapons/tactics are portrayed! For that reason, collection of letters entitled Kiss my list is not based on anything other than movies that the kids for dad, Don’t forget to I enjoy watching. They are war movies with good plots, write: the Wartime Letters of George Timmins, 1916-18, (UBC great action and perhaps most important, movies that I Press, 2009). Timmins, a lance- watch again and again. corporal, served with the CEF at As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t get any better than Vimy, Lens, Passchendaele and Kelly’s Heroes. How can you not like a movie about a bank Amiens. heist behind German lines using Sherman tanks with a cast that includes Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland (as rowing up in post-war Britain, I was exposed to a hippie tank commander), Telly Savalas and Don Rickles. Gmany fine war films made during the Second World Zulu is another of my favourites. This “against all odds” War or shortly thereafter. These I often watched with movie brings the story of Rorke’s Drift alive. I first saw my family on a small black and white TV, on Sunday this movie during my summer as a guardsman at Fort afternoons. Grandad lived with us at the end of his life. Henry and watching the movie reminds me of one of my He had served in “German East,” as he called it, during best summer jobs. Other notable mentions are The Big Red the First World War, hence my selection of The African One (with Lee Marvin and Luke Skywalker, sorry, Mark Queen. George Formby, the Lancashire comedian, was Hamill) which follows the story of a snake-bit grizzled a favourite of Grandad’s; in Let George Do It, Formby old sergeant through North Africa, Sicily and Normandy; famously “clocks” Hitler. Although Dad served in the Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down (Band of Brothers Royal Berkshire Regiment, he was avidly “airminded”: and The Pacific also fit into the category, but they are not we didn’t miss a film featuring aircraft, includingFirst of movies, per se) for the sense of realism that the latest the Few, Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky. Mrs. Miniver generation of Hollywood films depict; and classics like and the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp were also well Platoon, The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far.

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