A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Top Ten ww2 Films

Saving ​Private Ryan​
Saving ​Private Ryan​

Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg, is known to be one of the best World War II films ever created. The movie opens up in a battle at Normandy.

image: filmonic.com
Das Boot​
Das Boot​

Das Boot (German pronunciation: [das ˈboːt], German: "The Boat") is a 1981 German war film written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, and Klaus Wennemann.

Inglourious ​Basterds​
Inglourious ​Basterds​

Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger, and Mélanie Laurent.

The Thin Red ​Line​
The Thin Red ​Line​

The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American epic war film written and directed by Terrence Malick. Based on the novel by James Jones, it tells a fictionalized version of the Battle of Mount Austen, which was part of the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

image: ign.com
The Bridge on ​the River Kwai​
The Bridge on ​the River Kwai​

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British-American epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the novel Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai (1952) by Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction that uses the historical setting of the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–1943.

image: military.com
Schindler's ​List​
Schindler's ​List​

Schindler's List is a 1993 American historical period drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Zaillian. It is based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally.

Letters From ​Iwo Jima​
Letters From ​Iwo Jima​

Letters from Iwo Jima (硫黄島からの手紙, Iōjima Kara no Tegami) is a 2006 Japanese-American war film directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, starring Ken Watanabe and Kazunari Ninomiya.

Downfall​
Downfall​

"Downfall" explores these final days of the Reich, where senior German leaders (such as Himmler and Goring) began defecting from their beloved Fuhrer, in an effort to save their own lives, while still others (Joseph Goebbels) pledge to die with Hitler.

source: imdb.com
image: fanpop.com
The Longest ​Day​
The Longest ​Day​

The Longest Day is a 1962 epic war film based on Cornelius Ryan's 1959 book The Longest Day (1959), about the D-Day landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, during World War II. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who paid author Ryan $175,000 for the film rights.

The Great ​Escape​
The Great ​Escape​

The Great Escape is a 1963 American World War II epic film based on an escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from a German POW camp, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough, filmed in Panavision.

The Pianist​
The Pianist​

The Pianist is a 2002 biographical drama film co-produced and directed by Roman Polanski, scripted by Ronald Harwood, and starring Adrien Brody. It is based on the autobiographical book The Pianist, a Holocaust memoir by the Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman, a Holocaust survivor himself.

The Dirty ​Dozen​
The Dirty ​Dozen​

The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 American war film directed by Robert Aldrich, released by MGM, and starring Lee Marvin. The picture was filmed in the United Kingdom and features an ensemble supporting cast including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Robert Webber and Donald Sutherland.

Enemy at the ​Gates​
Enemy at the ​Gates​

Enemy at the Gates is a 2001 war film written and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and based on William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 and 1943.

A Bridge Too ​Far​
A Bridge Too ​Far​

The key to the operation was the bridges, as if the Germans held or blew them, the paratroopers could not be relieved. Faulty intelligence, Allied high command hubris and stubborn German resistance would ensure that Arnhem was a bridge too far.

source: youtube.com
Casablanca​
Casablanca​

In the case of Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), there are many portrayals of conflict against authority that are represented in the context of a Hollywood film in the midst of World War II. First of all, setting the film in the city of Casablanca has a large amount to do with the power play that is set up in the film.

image: time.com
Flags of Our ​Fathers​
Flags of Our ​Fathers​

Flags of Our Fathers is a 2006 American war film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by William Broyles, Jr., and Paul Haggis.

image: skip.at
The Big Red ​One​
The Big Red ​One​

The Big Red One is a 1980 epic war film written and directed by Samuel Fuller starring Lee Marvin alongside an ensemble supporting cast including Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Siegfried Rauch, Bobby Di Cicco, and Kelly Ward.

Cross of Iron​
Cross of Iron​

Cross of Iron. Cross of Iron is a British-German 1977 war film directed by Sam Peckinpah, featuring James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason and David Warner. The film is set on the Eastern Front in World War II during the Soviets' Caucasus operations against the German Kuban bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula in late 1943.

The Guns of ​Navarone​
The Guns of ​Navarone​

The Guns of Navarone is a 1961 British-American epic adventure war film directed by J. Lee Thompson. The screenplay by producer Carl Foreman was based on Alistair MacLean's 1957 novel The Guns of Navarone, which was inspired by the Battle of Leros during the Dodecanese Campaign of World War II.

Tora! Tora! ​Tora!​
Tora! Tora! ​Tora!​

However, even the team of Jack Hardwick and Ed Schnepf who have been involved in research on aviation films, had relegated Tora! Tora! Tora! to the "also-ran" status, due to its slow-moving plotline. The film holds a 57% "Rotten" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 28 critical reviews.

Patton​
Patton​

I am a fan of both General Patton and the movie that captured a portion of his duty in WWII. It exposes Patton's incredible strengths and vulnerabilities.

source: imdb.com
Empire of the ​Sun​
Empire of the ​Sun​

Empire of the Sun was filmed at Elstree Studios in the United Kingdom, and on location in Shanghai and Spain. The filmmakers searched across Asia in an attempt to find locations that resembled 1941 Shanghai. They entered negotiations with Shanghai Film Studios and China Film Co-Production Corporation in 1985.

Life Is ​Beautiful​
Life Is ​Beautiful​

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella [la ˈviːta ɛ bˈbɛlla]) is a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, who co-wrote the film with Vincenzo Cerami. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who employs his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

Where Eagles ​Dare​
Where Eagles ​Dare​

Where Eagles Dare is a 1968 British World War II action film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that stars Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood and Mary Ure. It was directed by Brian G. Hutton and shot on location in Austria and Bavaria.

Stalingrad​
Stalingrad​

The battle for Stalingrad was the turning point of World War II. Following the German invasion of Russia — Operation Barbarossa, which began in June 1941 — the Wehrmacht swept eastwards, destroying whole Soviet armies and capturing two million prisoners, most of whom they starved to death.

image: youtube.com
Black Book​
Black Book​

Black Book (Dutch: Zwartboek) is a 2006 thriller film co-written and directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, and Halina Reijn.

Kelly's Heroes​
Kelly's Heroes​

Kelly's Heroes is a 1970 American war comedy film, directed by Brian G. Hutton, about a group of World War II American soldiers who go AWOL to rob a bank behind enemy lines.

The Dam ​Busters​
The Dam ​Busters​

The Dam Busters is a 1955 British epic war film starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd. It was directed by Michael Anderson. The film recreates the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF's 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in Nazi Germany with Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb.

Grave of the ​Fireflies​
Grave of the ​Fireflies​

NTV in Japan produced a live-action TV drama of Grave of the Fireflies, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. The drama aired on 1 November 2005. Like the anime, the live-action version of Grave of the Fireflies focuses on two siblings struggling to survive the final months of the war in Kobe, Japan.

image: jpninfo.com
Fury​
Fury​

Fury is a fictional film about a tank crew during the final days of the war in Europe. Ayer was influenced by the service of veterans in his family and by reading books such as Belton Y. Cooper's Death Traps, about American armored warfare in World War II.

Pearl Harbor​
Pearl Harbor​

Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American romantic period war drama film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer and written by Randall Wallace. It stars Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, Josh Hartnett, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Colm Feore, and Alec Baldwin.

image: thewrap.com
Come and ​See​
Come and ​See​

Though no one could possible describe the experience of watching “Come and See” as a fun time, the film is nonetheless a masterpiece, worthy of consideration as not just the best war movie ever made, but also one of the greatest films ever made PERIOD.

Dunkirk​
Dunkirk​

Dunkirk grossed $190.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $337.2 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $527.3 million, against a production budget of $100–150 million. Globally, it is the highest-grossing World War II film (not adjusting for inflation), surpassing Saving Private Ryan ' s $481.8 million.

Stalag 17​
Stalag 17​

Stalag 17 is a 1953 comedy-drama war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp, who come to suspect that one of their number is an informant.

From Here to ​Eternity​
From Here to ​Eternity​

From Here to Eternity is a 1953 drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann, ... From Here to Eternity proved to be an instant hit with critics ... World War II and ...

Resistencia ​(VE)​
Resistencia ​(VE)​

Given his hard-bitten reputation, it’s surprising Clint Eastwood hadn’t got around to directing a World War II movie before 2006. But he made up for it with a groundbreaking one-two punch: a pair of films exploring the battle of Iwo Jima from both the American and Japanese perspectives.

source: timeout.com
image: youtube.com
Thirty ​Seconds Over Tokyo​
Thirty ​Seconds Over Tokyo​

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo Passed | 2h 18min | Drama, History, War | November 1944 (USA) In the wake of Pearl Harbor, a young lieutenant leaves his expectant wife to volunteer for a secret bombing mission which will take the war to the Japanese homeland.

source: imdb.com
image: bookmice.net
Von Ryan's ​Express​
Von Ryan's ​Express​

Von Ryan's Express is a World War II adventure film, released in 1965, about a group of Allied prisoners of war who conduct a daring escape by hijacking a freight train and fleeing through German-occupied Italy to Switzerland.

The Bridge at ​Remagen​
The Bridge at ​Remagen​

It's not really about World War II at all, but about how many Americans saw the Vietnam War. The Bridge at Remagen is out of time, set in 1945 but made in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, when the US realised that Vietnam was a lost war.

source: imdb.com
Rome, Open ​City​
Rome, Open ​City​

Open City or Rome, Open City (Italian: Roma città aperta) is an Iconic 1945 Italian neorealist drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. The picture features Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani and Marcello Pagliero, and is set in Rome during the Nazi occupation in 1944.

The Boy in the ​Striped Pajamas​
The Boy in the ​Striped Pajamas​

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (released as The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in the United States) is a 2008 British historical drama film set in World War II, based on the novel of the same name by John Boyne.

image: tvguide.com
Valkyrie​
Valkyrie​

Valkyrie is a 2008 historical thriller film set in Nazi Germany during World War II. The film depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country.

Memphis ​Belle​
Memphis ​Belle​

Memphis Belle is a fictionalization of the 1943 documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress by director William Wyler, about the 25th and last mission of an American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, the Memphis Belle, based in England during World War II.

Army of ​Shadows​
Army of ​Shadows​

Army of Shadows (French: L'armée des ombres) is a 1969 French film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. It is a film adaptation of Joseph Kessel's 1943 book of the same name, which blends Kessel's own experiences as a member of the French Resistance with fictionalized versions of other Resistance members.

The Cranes ​Are Flying​
The Cranes ​Are Flying​

The Cranes Are Flying (Russian: Летят журавли, translit. Letyat zhuravli) is a 1957 Soviet film about World War II. It depicts the cruelty of war and the damage suffered to the Soviet psyche as a result of World War II (known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War).

U-571​
U-571​

U-571 is a 2000 French-American war film about a World War II German submarine boarded by American submariners to capture her Enigma cipher machine.

Battle of ​Britain​
Battle of ​Britain​

Battle of Britain is a 1969 British Second World War film directed by Guy Hamilton, and produced by Harry Saltzman and S. Benjamin Fisz. The film documented the events of the Battle of Britain.

Sands of Iwo ​Jima​
Sands of Iwo ​Jima​

Sands of Iwo Jima is a 1949 war film starring John Wayne that follows a group of United States Marines from training to the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. The film also features John Agar, Adele Mara and Forrest Tucker, was written by Harry Brown and James Edward Grant, and directed by Allan Dwan. The picture was a Republic Pictures production.

Soldier of ​Orange​
Soldier of ​Orange​

Soldier of Orange (Dutch: Soldaat van Oranje, IPA: [sɔlˈdaːt fɑn oˈrɑɲə]) is a 1977 Dutch film directed and co-written by Paul Verhoeven and produced by Rob Houwer, starring Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé.

image: youtube.com
Ice Cold in ​Alex​
Ice Cold in ​Alex​

Ice Cold in Alex (1958) is a British film described as a true story in the film's opening credits, based on the novel of the same name by British author Christopher Landon. Directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring John Mills, the film was a prizewinner at the 8th Berlin International Film Festival.