Kevin's Watch

I'm currently reading Winston Churchill's Their Finest Hour, chronicling the British involvement in WWII. This has naturally put me in a certain kind of mood where I'm going to spend the next few months on related media.

My problem, of course, is that most of the movies I know of are from the American POV, and specifically post-Normandy (or covers the Pacific, which might as well be a separate war). The war, of course, ran for six years before then, so I'd like some suggestions for good films that cover the rest of the war.

Ideally, I'd prefer something that covers the British part (since that's what I'm reading about now), but anything about the war in Europe would be good.

The only film that comes to mind is A Bridge Too Far, an American made film that focuses on the British POV.

Enemy At the Gates is an excellent movie probably Jude Laws best. It is told from the point of view of a Russian conscript during the siege of Stalingrad by the Nazi's. " The one with the rifle shoots, when the one with the rifle is killed, the one with the bullets picks up the rifle and shoots."

Rigel wrote:I'm currently reading Winston Churchill's Their Finest Hour, chronicling the British involvement in WWII. This has naturally put me in a certain kind of mood where I'm going to spend the next few months on related media.

My problem, of course, is that most of the movies I know of are from the American POV, and specifically post-Normandy (or covers the Pacific, which might as well be a separate war). The war, of course, ran for six years before then, so I'd like some suggestions for good films that cover the rest of the war.

Ideally, I'd prefer something that covers the British part (since that's what I'm reading about now), but anything about the war in Europe would be good.

There's a problem with this request. It's called Hollywood!

Rigel wrote:Ideally, I'd prefer something that covers the British part (since that's what I'm reading about now), but anything about the war in Europe would be good.

This might be of use...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films

Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (桃太郎 海の神兵) in particular sounds fascinating for various reasons.

dlbpharmd wrote:The only film that comes to mind is A Bridge Too Far, an American made film that focuses on the British POV.

Excellent suggestion; although I've already seen it, it's on my buy list

Thanks for the link, Menolly. That list is a good reference. According to it, I've only seen three strictly non-American films: Battle of Britain, The Eagle Has Landed, and Escape to Athena. I had thought Mrs. Miniver was a British production, but apparently not, though its setting and POV were British. Greer Garson was a charismatic leading lady; she's the reason to watch this film.

Enigma (2001) was the most recent "internationally" collaborated WWII film I saw, about the British codebreakers who worked to crack the German Enigma machine. It was an okay but confusing film. I mainly went to see it because it had Kate Winslet, whom I adore.

Battle of Britain is the only one in this bunch that might be deemed an "authentic" portrayal of events in the war. Escape to Athena was just a throwaway adventure romp (you know you've got kitsch when Roger Moore and Telly Savalas are in the same movie), or at least that's how I remember it. The Eagle Has Landed may have been the very first war movie I saw (in the West, anyway). A scene from it involving a soldier caught in a windmill traumatized me as a kid.

matrixman wrote:Enigma (2001) was the most recent "internationally" collaborated WWII film I saw, about the British codebreakers who worked to crack the German Enigma machine. It was an okay but confusing film. I mainly went to see it because it had Kate Winslet, whom I adore.

Ooo!
Now that reminds me...
...probably still an American film, and yet...

Not a very well received film, but I enjoyed Windtalkers.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence with

David Bowie
Tom Conti
Takeshi Kitano
Ryuichi Sakamoto

Excellent movie about Japanese prison camps.

matrixman wrote:Thanks for the link, Menolly. That list is a good reference. According to it, I've only seen three strictly non-American films: Battle of Britain, The Eagle Has Landed, and Escape to Athena.

Although, at a glance, that list has quite a few innacurracies (it's Wiki, after all ). For example, they list A Town Like Alice as a British film, whereas it's Australian.

Well, I knew it as My Name Is Ivan, but it looks like it is coming up as Ivan's Childhood now. It's a Soviet film, and doesn't appear on the list given earlier in the thread, for some reason. From Netflix who seems to have it:

Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature is an extraordinarily moving and powerful story of war and revenge. Determined to avenge his family's death at the hands of the Nazis, 12-year-old Ivan (Kolya Burlyayev) joins a Russian partisan regiment as a scout. He becomes indispensable for his ability to slip unnoticed through enemy lines, but as his missions become increasingly dangerous, the enemy starts taking notice.

It's a great little film.

And just in case you've not seen it, Life Is Beautiful is very much worth seeing. If you can get past how annoying Roberto Benigni can be. He used to irritate me until I saw Down By Law, and got what was funny about him. But Life Is Beautiful is an amazing film.

stepping away from the movies, there is a great BBC documentary series done years! ago, called World at War, narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier. It is by far the best documentary on the war I have ever seen. 24 parts, so be warned, I have them on slowly deteriorating VHS tapes.

I haven't seen that WWII documentary. 24 parts! I'd love to sink my teeth into that. But I have watched my share of interesting WWII programs over the years. Of course, during Remembrance week, as this is, the shows get piled on, and I try to watch as many as I can. Right now the most interesting is a 4-part series called Convoy which focuses on the Atlantic conflict in the early years of the war, between Canadian-led convoys of ships that provided a lifeline of vital supplies to Britain and the German U-boat "wolf packs" that hunted them.

I certainly don't watch war movies for historical accuracy. If I want facts undistorted by "artistic licence," that's when I'll watch a documentary or read a book. Any conscientious war movie should of course try to stay reasonably true to the events it is depicting (as opposed to an outright propaganda reel).

My Amercan History teacher in my junior year of high school was a big fan of a documentary series called Victory at Sea. I suspect that possibly I might get more out of it now than my 16/17 year old self did during the weekly showing of another episode in that class...

...but again, that is definitely told purely from an American POV.

matrixman wrote:I haven't seen that WWII documentary. 24 parts! I'd love to sink my teeth into that. But I have watched my share of interesting WWII programs over the years. Of course, during Remembrance week, as this is, the shows get piled on, and I try to watch as many as I can. Right now the most interesting is a 4-part series called Convoy which focuses on the Atlantic conflict in the early years of the war, between Canadian-led convoys of ships that provided a lifeline of vital supplies to Britain and the German U-boat "wolf packs" that hunted them.

I certainly don't watch war movies for historical accuracy. If I want facts undistorted by "artistic licence," that's when I'll watch a documentary or read a book. Any conscientious war movie should of course try to stay reasonably true to the events it is depicting (as opposed to an outright propaganda reel).

dang... my dad watched that series (Convoy) and said it was really good.
sorry I missed it....

By the way, there's one I've been looking for for a while now, but I can't remember what it's called, and I'm having trouble finding it.

It's about an attempt to destroy a bridge in German control. Since there's no way to directly assault the bridge, a small group is sent instead to destroy a dam upriver, hoping the resultant flood will do the job for them.

I think Harrison Ford is in it, but when I browsed his movies a while back I didn't see anything that looked like this...

Rigel wrote:By the way, there's one I've been looking for for a while now, but I can't remember what it's called, and I'm having trouble finding it.

It's about an attempt to destroy a bridge in German control. Since there's no way to directly assault the bridge, a small group is sent instead to destroy a dam upriver, hoping the resultant flood will do the job for them.

I think Harrison Ford is in it, but when I browsed his movies a while back I didn't see anything that looked like this...

That's Force Ten From Navarrone, the sequel to The Guns of Navarrone. It's an alright film, and I don't think it's as tragic as most people tend to.

Loremaster wrote:Das Boot.

Took the words out of my mouth. A fascinating movie. I need to find a way to see Triumph of the Will in psuedo-secrecy.

I would also recommend a Japanese movie called Grave of the Fireflies. The firebombings were a war crime, plain and simple. It's a side of the war few Americans really know about. Hiroshima was mercy by comparison.