Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Movies
Submitted by Rushmore on Mon, 05/16/2005 - 02:22
Tags:
- Saving Private Ryan
- Apocalypse Now
- The Great Escape
- Schindler's List
- Full Metal Jacket
- Platoon
- A Bridge Too Far
- Zulu
- Black Hawk Down
- The Bridge On The River Kwai
- The Dam Busters
- The Deer Hunter
- Braveheart
- The Guns Of Navarone
- The Killing Fields
- The Thin Red Line
- Das Boot
- Dr Strangelove
- Born On The Fourth Of July
- The Longest Day
- Where Eagles Dare
- M*A*S*H
- Paths Of Glory
- Gladiator
- Spartacus
- Ice Cold In Alex
- The Dirty Dozen
- Enemy At The Gates
- Battle Of Britain
- Casablanca
- Good Morning, Vietnam
- The Pianist
- All Quiet On The Western Front,
- Kelly's Heroes
- The Last Of The Mohicans
- Henry V
- Cross Of Iron
- Salvador
- Tora! Tora! Tora!
- Lawrence Of Arabia
- The Cruel Sea
- Catch 22
- Empire Of The Sun
- Patton
- 633 Squadron
- Master And Commander
- A Matter Of Life And Death
- Gallipoli
- Carve Her Name With Pride
- Three Kings
- A Town Like Alice
- Hope And Glory
- Troy
- From Here To Eternity
- Casualties Of War
- Life Is Beautiful
- In Which We Serve
- Stalingrad
- Reach For The Sky
- The English Patient
- La Grande Illusion
- Ran
- When The Wind Blows
- The Battle Of Algiers
- The General
- Enigma
- Napoleon
- Glory
- Went The Day Well?
- Oh! What A Lovely War
- Come And See
- The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp
- Ride With The Devil
- Alexander Nevsky
- Gone With The Wind
- Sands Of Iwo Jima
- The Charge Of The Light Brigade
- Breaker Morant
- Mrs Miniver
- Land And Freedom
- Love And Death
- No Man's Land
- Cromwell
- The Caine Mutiny
- To Be Or Not To Be
- El Cid
- Rome, Open City
- Memphis Belle
- Von Ryan's Express
- Regeneration
- Hell In The Pacific
- The Birth Of A Nation
- Europa, Europa
- The Colditz Story
- Welcome To Sarajevo
- Cold Mountain
- Lacombe Lucien
- Big Red One
- The Eagle Has Landed
- Rambo: First Blood, Part II
Fascinating idea for a list; was this a television special with a segment on each film?
I'm glad to see Apocalypse Now at #2, but I personally don't think Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, or Full Metal Jacket should be rated so high. All are good movies, but so consistently overrated. The Killing Fields (15) is well-meant, but ultimately boring and too "high-minded" of a film to really provoke any deeper emotions.
On the other hand, a few that struck me as being shockingly underrated are Lawrence of Arabia (40), Patton (44), Casualties of War (55 and far too overlooked in discussions of Vietnam-era films), Battle of Algiers (64), and Breaker Morant (78), among others.
Overall though, a great list for discussion...
Johnny Waco
Yes, it's a 2 part show (each show 3 1/2 hours) with about 3 / 5 mins of talking about each movie and about 6/9 mins on the last 5. it's very good viewing, its nice because, you don't really have to watch it, you can just have it on in the background.
Apocalypse Now, i have not seen it but i hear its great. my brother just ordered it on dvd, so i'll catch it soon. The Killing Fields, looked great i thought, really interested me, but if you say its bad, i may think twice before checking it out. sadly i'm probably not the guy who should discuss this as i've seen very little from this list. but all of them looked good on some level, so it filled up my "too see list". I had seen The deer hunter anyway before this list aired, that is a truely great movie. Walken stole that movie, the final scenes are so gripping. personally i'm glad Good Mornning Vietnam got in the 30s, (hoped higher) thats a very good movie, both sad and hits the right emotional levels but also very funny and light-hearted, thats one of my personal faves. Lawrence of Arabia i also expected to be higher, alot. it is widely known and thought it would storm ahead.
Interesting list, but it is a shame to see Lawrence of Arabia only on #40.
Lawrence of Arabia is a great movie, but it's not a great war movie. The war takes a backseat to so many other things, that I could see why they'd be reluctant to rank the film high up on a list of war movies.
Also, where's The Battleship Potemkin?
You're right about Lawrence of Arabia not having the war as its central feature, but my belief is that if it qualifies for the list in the first place, it must be ranked as how great a film it is. If there isn't enough war in it for Channel 4 (or whoever actually produced it), than it should simply be left out of consideration.
I also agree with you on Potemkin--I didn't even notice its absence! Curses be upon me!
Johnny Waco
My guess is that there wasn't an adjective that descibed what they really wanted the list to be about. For example, you can make a list of the funniest movies or the scariest movies or the most romantic movies, but there's not really a word that sums up the best features of a war movie, so they just called it "greatest war movies" for simplicity. It wasn't like there's a threshold for having enough war to be a war movie; the movies were ranked in terms of greatness and in terms of war-movieness, and as a war movie, Lawrence of Arabia is somewhat lacking. I'm not saying I think this is how the ranking system should be done, but my guess is that's how Channel 4 did it.
Besides, no one really thinks Full Metal Jacket is greater film than Lawrence of Arabia, right? Right.
Regarding Battleship Potemkin - this is Channel 4, not BBC. This is the channel that shows The OC, Friends, One Tree Hill, and a marathon of bloody Hollyoaks every Sunday. My guess is Battleship Potemkin falls a little outside their cultural radar.
lolol it's funny because its true! death to hollyoaks! (And The O.C!!)
I love to meet a kindred spirit. Round my house every Sunday, my boyfriend turns on the tv for background noise, which is immediately followed by my yelling "NO HOLLYOAKS!"
:-) it really annoys me, it tries to be too cool, i hate it, with a passion.