Memorable World War II Films

Talking About the Movies with Frank Beaver

Approximately 1,100 US soldiers died in the battle for the Italian village of San Pietro.

Ten years after the 50th anniversary of D-Day and the impending end of World War II the country is once again remembering those historic events. The long-awaited National World War II Memorial was dedicated on May 31, and June 6 was the 60 th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

World War II has been an engaging topic for fiction filmmakers as well as documentarists, and cinema artists in both genres have crated significant and powerful works.

Darryl F. Zanuck's 1962 epic The Longest Day offered a three-hour version of D-Day and its preparation. In spite of its somewhat tedious length, it remains an important effort in large part because of its huge all-star cast of great American, British and French actors.

In my estimation, however, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) is the strongest of the D-Day films, capturing the Omaha Beach invasion with a realism that is shockingly visceral. The chaotic invasion sequence lasted just 30 minutes, but World War II veterans who were there for the real thing praised Spielberg's accuracy.

The human destruction and the setting were so carefully detailed that one D-Day veteran said that the only things missing were “the smell of cordite and the stench of death.” Abetting its realism is the tribute Saving Private Ryan pays to the ultimate heroes of the war: the men and women who never made it back home. In the end that's what the film is really about.

Some other fiction films of lasting memory include:

In Which We Serve (1942), the best film made about the war during the war. Written, produced, co-directed by and starring Noel Coward, this brilliant propaganda film tells the heroic story of men serving on a British Navy destroyer that is torpedoed and sinks off the isle of Crete. By intercutting flashbacks of the men's lives at home before the war, In Which We Serve links family, community and military effort in powerfully nationalistic ways.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), William Wyler's poignant study of returning US veterans and the complexities of re-adjustment to civilian life.

Rome: Open City (1946), Roberto Rossellini's semi-documentary account of resistance leaders in German-occupied Rome, with a great performance by Anna Magnani.

Hope and Glory (1987), John Boorman's autobiographical portrait of British family life during the London air raids of WW II as seen through the eyes of a young boy. My students in “British Cinema” class often tell me that they first watched this film as teenagers with their parents.

Among the dozens of great documentaries about WW II are The Sorrow and the Pity (1969), Shoah (1985) and Into the Arms of Strangers (2000). Yet one comes to mind before all others—John Huston's The Battle of San Pietro (1944). Huston and his Army Pictorial Service film crew were “embedded” with the US 143rd Infantry Regiment (Texas) in Italy's Liri Valley. They were there to cover, first-hand, the regiment's maneuvers against German forces between October and December 1943.

Huston camera crews filmed heavy casualties as they occurred and showed bodies being wrapped in bed-clothing for shipment home. This direct visual record of war's consequences resulted in censorship efforts by military officials and one general accused Huston of having made a “pacifist film.” Huston is said to have replied: “Well, sir, whenever I make a picture that's for war, I hope you take me out and shoot me.”

WWII on film has been an evolving set of stories and thanks to archives, VHS and DVD they exist as a way of revisiting this greatest of 20th century events.

Film historian and critic Frank Beaver is professor of film and video studies and professor of communication.

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