Favorite WWII Movies!!!

[RCMerchant]

 Though I have a great dislike for war....I LOVE war films! WWII movies are the best! Ice cold Nazis and baby bayoneting Japs ! (please don't get offended because I used the term 'Japs" I use it cuz it  ...awwww...I ain''t gonna go all PC! They were called japs in the movies...so I will call the enemy in the films 'Japs!' I don't invent this sh!t...I just comment on it...)

OK! Enuff social commentary!

TORA!TORA! TORA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFmVtZLnHio

"TORA TORA TORA!

Gung Ho (1943)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ViJ_zGtxLY

One of the most mind boggling pieces of wartime propaganda cinema EVER!!! " I just don't like japs."  Amazing . Teens from the 40's saw this and signed up.

[Doc Daneeka]

I know I may be alone here, but I loooove BATAAN from 1943. Though it starts out cheesy enough, it eventually gets quite bleak and very tense. It may be a propaganda film, but it doesn't have the kind of sappy stuff you would expect, just the horrors of war (The horrors of the enemy, instead of the concept itself in those days X) ), and fighting to make a difference for as long as possible.

[JJ80]

I think "Ice Cold In Alex" (1958) is a very good war movie about a British ambulance crew's (including John Mills and Anthony Quayle) trek across the Sahara to Alexandria trying to evade the Africa Korps. More of a survival than a combat movie.
  The wartime movie "Went The Day Well"/"48 hours" is also excellent. It's the sinister story about the infiltration of a quiet English village by German soldiers disguised as British Army signalmen. Although they succeed in wiping out the local 'Home Guard' they are then steadfastly resisted by local people.

[schmendrik]

So many good ones.

The Longest Day
The Great Escape
Bridge over the River Kwai
Guns of Navarone

That's off the top of my head. I've probably left off at least a dozen of my favorites.

[indianasmith]

Let's see -

ESCAPE OF THE BIRD MEN
TO HELL AND BACK (Starring my hometown hero, Audie Murphy, as himself!)
PATTON
ENEMY AT THE GATES
MIDWAY
and my favorite of all, the greatest tribute ever to the Greatest Generation . . .

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

I still tear up at the end!

[sideorderofninjas]

Dirty Dozen with Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, etc...

[Javakoala]

I enjoy watching "Kelly's Heroes". Great fun, even if it isn't completely historically accurate.

"A Walk In The Sun" is one I stumbled upon as a kid and got completely wrapped up in it.

"Where Eagles Dare" is another one I get a serious kick out of.

"Hornet's Nest" is another great adventure flick set during WWII.

[Rev. Powell]

I'd go with BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI and PATTON, honorable mention to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

SCHINDLER'S LIST also comes to mind, but Holocaust films are a separate genre.

[The Burgomaster]

In no particular order:

* HELL IS FOR HEROES - Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Fess Parker, Bob Newhart . . . in glorious black & white!

* HELL TO ETERNITY - Jeffrey Hunter as an American G.I., orphaned as a child and raised by a Japanese family.  And George Takei plays his brother!  Co-starring David Janssen.

* FROM HERE TO ETERNITY - Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Lancaster . . . oh, yeah.

* OBJECTIVE: BURMA - Suspense, suspense, suspense and crackling dialogue.  Erroll Flynn leads a group of G.I.s on a mission to destroy a Japanese radar station.  The problem is, they're vastly outnumbered and Japanese troops are hunting them like animals.

* KELLY'S HEROES

* WHERE EAGLES DARE

* THE GREAT ESCAPE

* THE GUNS OF NAVARONE

* THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

Honorable mention: CROSS OF IRON.  Not a great movie, but a very good one.  Told from the Germans' perspective.  Excellent cast, including James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason, and David Warner.  I'm a big Sam Peckinpah fan.

[Jack]

Heroes of Telemark is probably my all-time favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Mj9nSB0Nc&feature=related#

Also like Where Eagles Dare, Battle of the Bulge, and Force 10 From Navarone.

[hotspur]

As a kid I loved Battle of the Bulge, Tora Tora Tora and Midway.  While I can still watch them now, I think I like the nostalgia as much as the movies themselves.

I really like Saving Private Ryan; I thought the battle scene were great and I especially like the scene of Private Ryan's mother at her kitchen sink, seeing the car coming up the long road, with corn fields on either side, drying her hands, going out to meet the officer & minister on her porch and wobbling and then sitting down as her grief at the news of her sons deaths hits her.  A very effective moment and a reminder of the true cost of war.  I also really like the scene with General Marshall reading the Lincoln letter:

"Dear Madam,--
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln"


I consider The Longest Day and Bridge Over the River Kwai great movies. 

Good call by the person who remembered Cross of Iron.  I liked that movie more than they did and interesting to see a movie based upon the German experience. 

I like Where Eagles Dare, with Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton, but this is almost as much a suspense movie as a war movie.

There is a movie, Attack, with Jack Palance and Eddie Albert that I like mostly for a scene, famous amongst my brothers and I, where Jack Palanace says to Eddie Albert, who is the film's gutless villain Lt Cooney, " Cooney, you double cross me one more time and I take this grenade, shove it down your throat and pull the pin." 

There is a movie with Steve McQueen and Frank Sinatra Never So Few maybe, which I loved as a kid.  I haven't seen it in years but I remember loving Steve McQueen in the role of Ringer (?).  As ever, very cool.

Also there is a movie called Too Late the Hero with Michael Caine.  Again, I saw this as a kind and loved it, I'd be curious to see it now to see if it is any good.

[schmendrik]

Another WWII movie that's completely different from those suggested up till now: None But the Brave with Frank Sinatra. A bunch of American and Japanese soldiers are both stranded on an island, make a temporary truce and start to form friendships while they wait to see which side shows up first with the rescue. There's a tension throughout because everyone understands that they are still enemies and as soon as rescue arrives, they're back on a war footing.

Very interesting movie. I wonder if even 20 years after the end of the war, the studio got any guff from audiences for showing Japanese sympathetically.

[RCMerchant]

Wow...so many good ones listed...Hotspur reminded me of a big time favorite...MIDWAY! Wow! The action in that one is unbelievable!

Also....every time this film is on tv I watch it! VON RYANS EXPRESS (1965)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-umWzR3Z3M

A really bizzare fav...I saw this on channel 17 (uhf...not cable  ) in 1981...

HITLER-DEAD OR ALIVE (1942)

Ex cons are hired to catch or kill Hitler....and they do! Unique wartime propaganda mixies the gangster film into the war propagand film! RECOMENNDED for BAD movie fans!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeeWYyH5MZE

[Eyesore]

The Big Red One
The Victors
Sands of Iwo Jima


The History Channel

[RCMerchant]

I know I may be alone here, but I loooove BATAAN from 1943. Though it starts out cheesy enough, it eventually gets quite bleak and very tense. It may be a propaganda film, but it doesn't have the kind of sappy stuff you would expect, just the horrors of war (The horrors of the enemy, instead of the concept itself in those days X) ), and fighting to make a difference for as long as possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNKnw8UMUZ0

Agree! A lot of people find the propaganda WW2 films of the 40's offensive or corny,or both. I love 'em. Ther'e like Sgt.Fury comic books come to life! And I like Sgt.Fury,Sgt.Rock,The Haunted Tank,GI Combat,even the crappy Charleton war mags! In fact...the inspiration for this thread was a movie I saw on TCM called BOMBIDIER (1943)

Corny and predictable and glorifying war...but gimme a bottle and a cigerrete...I can watch this stuff all da
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yGnm1XYolE