WWII movies

I like all of those :-X, but I haven't actually heard of The Train! Must keep an eye out for that.

Where Eagles Dare, Von Ryan's Express and The Guns Of Navarone are great suspense movies, but The Longest Day is the most historically accurate movie from that collection, followed by Midway. I really appreciate adherence to actual events in historical dramas.

In that regard, these ones are hard to beat:

Dambusters

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

Tora Tora Tora

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgX1WBf2SjE

Battle Of Britain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atkbSqBU98Q

PZ · November 14, 2012, 09:17:50 AM

Nice :-X

I didn't know about Dambusters

fragger · November 16, 2012, 05:01:33 AM

Really? Dambusters is a classic! Some of the visuals in it are rather cheesy by today's standards, but that's to be expected from a 1955 film.

Totally true story told in painstakingly accurate detail, pretty much exactly as it went down in reality. There was a remake in the works recently with Peter Jackson involved but it doesn't appear to have come to anything. Maybe just as well, they'd probably screw it up nowadays ::)

PZ · November 16, 2012, 07:39:09 AM

Cheesy is alright by me; after all that was produced only 10 years after the war ended!

Jim di Griz · November 17, 2012, 01:29:03 AM

If you've not heard of The Dambusters PZ then there is also 633 Squadron featuring the light and very fast Mosquito fighter bombers on a mission to knock the top of a mountain off onto a heavy water research plant in Norway.

Like all of the other WWII films of the 60/70 same amount of cheez and model usage but not a bad film if you like your planes.

Not strictly how the film goes, but nicely dubbed and quite funny:

Starwars: 633 Squadron Mosquito Deathstar attack

I can always watch The Longest Day because the writer Cornelius Ryan researched the conflict from everybodys' viewpoint and the film reflected that. He also wrote the Last Battle about the fall of Berlin a very strong book indeed that shows the real deprivation and suffering experienced when a capital city gets invaded. Then there is A Bridge too Far about the paratroopers attempt to liberate The Netherlands - this last is also a film done in the same way as The Longest Day. I won't spoil it for you but things get a little intense.

PZ · November 17, 2012, 08:02:00 PM

I didn't know about 633 squadron either, but is that related to [imdb]The Heroes of Telemark[/imdb] ( starring Kirk Douglas)?

I too can watch The Longest Day repeatedly; I remember when I first saw it as a child, watching with my parents. I also watched A Bridge Too Far, and thought it an excellent movie.

For the same reason I like these movies, I like Brothers In Arms: Hells Highway, which is a linear game, but the "feel" of the game is much like the classic WWII movies above.

fragger · November 18, 2012, 03:37:05 AM

Good find with that clip JdG, both funny and clever

I too always believed that the attack on the Death Star in the original Star Wars movie was a direct ripoff of 633 Squadron, not Dambusters ::)

I love the mozzies btw, one of my fave WWII aircraft. I got to sit in the cockpit of one once a long time ago, that was a blast :-X

Another movie featuring those is Mosquito Squadron, but I only saw that once as a kid and don't remember much of it except that a lot of footage seemed to have been lifted from 633 Squadron, it had David McCallum in it and they were using Dambuster skip-bombs on land to try and clobber something other than dams (can't remember what it was).

I have Cornelius Ryan's books The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far as well as the DVD movies. Books and films all excellent :-X

One interesting aspect of those two movies was that scenes and story elements were included that many moviegoers felt were far-fetched and ridiculous - but these were the things that really happened! I've long thought that if real historical events were depicted faithfully in movies people wouldn't believe half of them - and evidently they don't. Truth is so often stranger than fiction.

Just getting back to the subject of aerial war films, this fairly recent one isn't WWII but WWI, and despite some schmaltz it's not a bad film:

Flyboys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ejaNRXaQzg

Jim di Griz · November 18, 2012, 07:36:30 AM

Quote from: PZ on November 17, 2012, 08:02:00 PM
I didn't know about 633 squadron either, but is that related to [imdb]The Heroes of Telemark[/imdb] ( starring Kirk Douglas)?

Related, maybe as the 633 film was about a fictional mission of a similar type - I didn't actualy know that before today though. The Telemark one was true and was to take out the heavy water plant. 633 I must have got confused with the other as their mission was to take down a V2 fuel plant - sorry about that but it was a long time ago that I actually saw them ^-^

I know what you are saying about truth and fiction fragger. The Last Battle book at one point with a column of PoWs who were left to fend for themselves and so started heading for the allied lines - it got strafed by allied fighters who thought they were an enemy column and quite a few were killed by their own side. It also detailed how thousands of German troops were pulled away from the front line defense of Berlin to act as extras in a propganda film set up by Goering.

The one WWII film I don't like is The Battle of the Bulge as it had the wrong tanks in it and was a fairly skewed version of the actual events.

fragger · November 19, 2012, 04:34:59 AM

I agree about BotB, I don't like that one either for the same reasons. Plus I don't like hearing Axis characters speaking to each other in accented English, that's just silly. I much prefer to hear them speaking in their own languages, even if it means having to read subtitles.

Jim di Griz · November 19, 2012, 11:17:54 AM

Yeah, that's the best way to do it. Though I did find the technique they used for Enemy at the Gates also worked: American accents for the Germans and English for the Russians.

Art Blade · November 21, 2012, 11:27:03 AM

interesting and amusing discussion, gentlemen :)

I'd like to point out a few WWII films which I think are nice:

Patton http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066206/
The Big Red One http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080437/
Band of Brothers http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185906/

PZ · November 21, 2012, 03:15:34 PM

Yes indeed; excellent ones!

Art Blade · November 21, 2012, 05:10:34 PM

thanks :)

Oh, and two more.

Hitler: The Rise of Evil http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346293/

^ Delicate subject but apart from minor inaccuracies the film generally gives the best insight at how how someone like Hitler could become what he was and how all this s#!t stacked up to WWII.

Also very good:

Schindler's List http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108052/

Both films are very long. Good if a bit morbid entertainment :-()

fragger · November 21, 2012, 10:57:06 PM

Forgot about Patton, superb movie :-X And so is BoB although it's not a movie but a miniseries :) I haven't seen all of The Big Red One, just a bit of it many years ago, but I liked what I saw :-X

Haven't seen H:TRoE, will look out for that one too.

Another Hitler film I really like is Downfall, an excellent and painstakingly accurate German production focussing on Hitler's final days. The actor who portrays Hitler, Bruno Ganz, gives an extraordinary performance:

Downfall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp1RXmM1-60

Art Blade · November 22, 2012, 05:14:56 AM

I've got that one. I need several years between the last time I watched it and the next time. That film kind of makes me sick -- not sure whether because of it's so good or so bad ::) No doubt the acting of Bruno Ganz is great, though.

In the original version Bruno Ganz even brilliantly mimics Hitler's voice and peculiar way of pronouncing so if you're going to watch it (again, perhaps) I recommend a subtitled version :-X

fragger · November 22, 2012, 09:28:14 PM

Quote from: Art Blade on November 22, 2012, 05:14:56 AM
...so if you're going to watch it (again, perhaps) I recommend a subtitled version :-X

That's the version I have, I wouldn't want to watch it any other way :) Ganz does sound amazingly like Hitler, and although he doesn't quite look like him, he's pretty darned close :-()

I get what you mean about it making you sick, it's rather brutally honest and I think it was kind of courageous for a German production team to tackle that subject with such frankness.

Art Blade · November 23, 2012, 02:47:52 AM

indeed a courageous project. What makes me sick isn't the truth or honesty but the overall feeling I get from watching it. It is so dark, figuratively speaking, and almost like a stage play -- the Führerbunker basically being all you see.

one more film I'd like to recommend:

Das Boot http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082096/

Make sure to get the Director's Cut version of the film. It really is different and re-cut by Director Wolfgang Petersen the way he originally wanted the film to be. It is well worth it, with 149 min the original film and an amazing 209 min director's cut you'll get to see a classic. Many of its actors became famous, among which is Jürgen Prochnow who is probably the only actor well known outside Germany.

WWII movies

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