World War II Films and Documentaries

[DA_Champion]

I'm starting this thread as a discussion of world war II films and documentaries. There are so many of those, and most of them are not that widely watched, that if we have a thread for each one they will simply all be small. We're more likely to have good discussion here, I think.

I'm watching World War II in Colour on Netflix. Their gimmick is that they've digitally colourized a lot of WW2 film, and added commentary on it. It's about a dozen or so episodes of ~50 minutes each, each covering a major event. It's not bad ... it has a good review of events. It's not great either there. It doesn't have a lot of analysis, and it's very focused on events in Europe and on the western front.

In an early episode we hear about how Italy built an impressive navy ... but we never hear about it being used. What happened to it?

The battle of Russia is a single episode, way too short, but on the other hand that's the format.

 

[Gort Baringa]

There is a great series on Sunday afternoon here in Australia called Dan Snow: Last Heroes of D-Day which is excellent.

As far as films go Spielberg's Schindler's List is probably the greatest motion picture ever made IMO!

And television series it would be The Winds of War and its continuation War and Remembrance, both epic mini series based on the books by Herman Wouk.

 

[DA_Champion]

And television series it would be The Winds of War and its continuation War and Remembrance, both epic mini series based on the books by Herman Wouk.

Thank you.

Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises are two good Japanese movies covering different parts of the story.

 

[rockerjohn]

A good documentary that i watched a while back is called "Hitlers Hidden Drug Habit". It's about Hitlers extremely unorthodox doctor who put hitler on an astonishing number of drugs which probably contributed to some of his bad decisions during WW2.


http://docur.co/documentary/hitlers-hidden-drug-habit-secret-history

 

[OutOfBoose]

I can recommend "Soviet Storm: World War II in the East". Really nice documentary, available on youtube. Informative and really interesting to watch.

 

[DA_Champion]

I can recommend "Soviet Storm: World War II in the East". Really nice documentary, available on youtube. Informative and really interesting to watch.

I watched episodes 1 and 2 tonight, thank you.

 

[Rain in Gotham]

Best film's I've seen about ww2 is the German film "downfall" about hitlers last days in his bunker & the masterpiece that is schindlers list which every child should watch as soon as possible but tv wise band of brothers was very good indeed.

 

[OutOfBoose]

I watched episodes 1 and 2 tonight, thank you.

Happy to help.

 

[DA_Champion]

Best film's I've seen about ww2 is the German film "downfall" about hitlers last days in his bunker & the masterpiece that is schindlers list which every child should watch as soon as possible but tv wise band of brothers was very good indeed.

Is that the one that gets parodied a lot in Hitler reaction videos?

 

[Gort Baringa]

A great low budget film called Conspiracy with Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci is worth watching - about a dozen or so men meeting in a stately home taken from Jewish victims. These men are there to decide the so-called "final solution."

It is unimaginable how such absolute evil could have existed!

 

[Teelie]

The Pacific is a miniseries that aired on HBO several years ago. It is a counterpart to where Band of Brothers was taking place in Europe.

I really liked it although like all these pseudo-documentary series it takes some liberties with the historical events. Nothing I know of that was drastically altered but when you are doing a dramatic story there has to be some dramatic moments in it that might not have really happened or happened differently.

 

[Boom]

Downfall is a phenomenal film. It's a crime Bruno Ganz wasn't nominated for an Oscar.

 

[C. Lee]

Today I watched -

THE HEROES OF TELEMARK (1965) starring Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson, and Michael Redgrave.

This is based upon a true story. The Nazis are working on producing "heavy water" in Norway. Heavy water is used in making Nuclear Bombs. Norwegian resistance first infiltrate and sabotage the facility making the heavy water....and then when the Nazis are transporting a large quantity of it back to Germany the resistance has to hit it too.

There is a fair amount of decent action, but there are several slow quiet parts that could make the modern "explosion a minute/snappy paced action" audiences lose interest.

An interesting note - I first saw this back in 1965.....and I always remembered a scene that I thought was stupid. Kirk Douglas's character is being chased cross country on skis by the Nazis.....at one point the lone Nazi chasing him gets off a shot from only a few feet away and manages to just barely graze him. In 2003 there was a documentary made about the raid (I saw it on PBS) that included many filmed interviews with the resistance fighters. The real guy that Kirk's character was based upon spoke about the most terrifying moment about the whole raid for him....it was when he was being chased cross country on skis and a Nazi got within a few feet of him and emptied his gun at him....and missed every single time. So, not only was the "stupid" scene real, they even embellished it by having him slightly wounded in the movie when he wasn't hit at all in real life.

I recommend it for fans of WWII movies. For Americans, there is very little knowledge of things that went on in places like Norway during the war....so although some of the facts have been changed, the basics are there and it gives some insight into a portion of the war many don't know about.

 

[JimThompson]

When Trumpets Fade (1998). One of the better WWII movies out there.

 

[C. Lee]

When Trumpets Fade (1998). One of the better WWII movies out there.

I haven't seen that in years. I had in on VHS tape at one time. I tried to transfer it to DVD but it had anti copy protection. I remember it as being pretty darn good. I want to see it again now.

 

[JimThompson]

I haven't seen that in years. I had in on VHS tape at one time. I tried to transfer it to DVD but it had anti copy protection. I remember it as being pretty darn good. I want to see it again now.

A Midnight Clear (1992) is pretty good, too.

 

[C. Lee]

I watched today -

633 SQUADRON (1964) starring Cliff Robertson, George Chakiris, Harry Andrews, Donald Houston, and Angus Lennie.

This is a fictional story. The plot is of a squadron of Mosquito bombers assigned to bomb a factory in Norway that is situated at the base of a mountain, under an overhand, at the end of a fiord. The mission will involve flying down a narrow fiord with multiple anti-aircraft instillations along the way until they can bomb the overhang at the end to bring it down on the factory (this is one of the movies that George Lucas based STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE on). Cliff Robertson is the squadron leader. George Chakiris is the Norwegian resistance fighter who supplies info on the area they are to bomb. The pilots train in the mountains of Scotland (Scotland stands in for Norway in the training scenes as well as the actual mission run)....there is a romance thrown in when Robertson falls for the sister of Chakiris....and what will happen to Chakiris when he is captured by the Nazis - [BLACKOUT]Robertson flies to Norway and bombs Gestapo headquarters to kill him[/BLACKOUT] - .

According to info on the movie, they had 3 flying mosquito bombers and 2 of them that could taxi on the runway, so there was some decent scenes of real planes flying and moving around...BUT....for actual scenes of bombing and planes getting blown up, it was all models (which while mostly decent for the time it was made, some of it is very bad and modern audiences would be disappointed).

 

[Asr]

As far as fictional stuff goes, Spielberg's WW2 material are all my favorites—Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, The Pacific.

Out of relatively recent movies (from since 2000), I've really liked Fury (for the tank battle scenes alone), Defiance, Enemy at the Gates, and U-571. No offense to the older movies from before the 90s, because I'm sure there are a lot of great ones, but I just haven't watched any of them due to lack of interest in older movies in general.

Not really a fan of documentaries myself, but I did get Victory at Sea and The War (Kevin Burns) for my dad, who likes all things WW2 including documentaries, and he liked those a lot.

 

[moviefreak]

The definite WWII documentary for me was The World at War, the 26 episodes series narrated by Laurence Oliver. You can see a restored version of the first episode on YT:

[YT]G1UU9iZsRa4[/YT]

That opening sequence about the massacre in an old French town, Oradour-sur-Glane is a powerful piece.

Another great documentary IMO is Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985).

 

[C. Lee]

Yesterday I watched -

THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN (1969) starring George Segal, Robert Vaughn, Ben Gazzara, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, and Peter van Eyck.

Based on true events. As the war nears it's end, the Nazis are retreating across the Rhine. All major bridges are being destroyed by both sides....the allies want to keep the Nazis from escaping and being able to regroup, the Nazis want to keep the allies from chasing them. The final bridge, the one at Remagen is still standing. The Nazis, and civilians running from the fighting, are streaming across it. Hitler orders the bridge destroyed....but General Von Brock (Peter van Eyck) wants to give his troops time to escape. He orders Maj. Paul Kreuger (Robert Vaughn) to go there and make sure the most possible soldiers make it over before he blows it. Lieutenant Phil Hartman (George Segal) and his men are ordered to take it intact. Much fighting ensues.

This is a good movie for action fans. There are plenty of battles between foot soldiers, and if you like tank action in your WWII movies then this is a good one for you. There are several scenes with tanks causing destruction (surprisingly, the government of Yugoslavia{where this was filmed}gave the film company permission to destroy a bunch of old real buildings in the city where it was shot) and a real cool scene with around 10 Sherman tanks going at full speed down a road on one side of the river while firing at the Nazis on the other side of the river.

Interesting side note trivia; this was shot in Yugoslavia in 1968. In 1968, the Russians thought that the Communist government in Yugoslavia was getting too chummy with the east (letting American film crews to come in and make movies there was one of the things that upset them)....as a prelude to Russia invading Yugoslavia in August of that year, they started rumors that the film's American soldiers and tanks was an invasion force by the East....and the actors and crew had to flee the country and finish the movie in Germany and Italy.

This movie seems to be a forgotten film. I recommend you take a look at it.

 

[JimThompson]

Yesterday I watched -

THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN (1969) starring George Segal, Robert Vaughn, Ben Gazzara, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, and Peter van Eyck.

Based on true events. As the war nears it's end, the Nazis are retreating across the Rhine. All major bridges are being destroyed by both sides....the allies want to keep the Nazis from escaping and being able to regroup, the Nazis want to keep the allies from chasing them. The final bridge, the one at Remagen is still standing. The Nazis, and civilians running from the fighting, are streaming across it. Hitler orders the bridge destroyed....but General Von Brock (Peter van Eyck) wants to give his troops time to escape. He orders Maj. Paul Kreuger (Robert Vaughn) to go there and make sure the most possible soldiers make it over before he blows it. Lieutenant Phil Hartman (George Segal) and his men are ordered to take it intact. Much fighting ensues.

This is a good movie for action fans. There are plenty of battles between foot soldiers, and if you like tank action in your WWII movies then this is a good one for you. There are several scenes with tanks causing destruction (surprisingly, the government of Yugoslavia{where this was filmed}gave the film company permission to destroy a bunch of old real buildings in the city where it was shot) and a real cool scene with around 10 Sherman tanks going at full speed down a road on one side of the river while firing at the Nazis on the other side of the river.

Interesting side note trivia; this was shot in Yugoslavia in 1968. In 1968, the Russians thought that the Communist government in Yugoslavia was getting too chummy with the east (letting American film crews to come in and make movies there was one of the things that upset them)....as a prelude to Russia invading Yugoslavia in August of that year, they started rumors that the film's American soldiers and tanks was an invasion force by the East....and the actors and crew had to flee the country and finish the movie in Germany and Italy.

This movie seems to be a forgotten film. I recommend you take a look at it.

It's a great film -- and an interesting place to visit (Remagen). I'd also recommend A Bridge Too Far, a movie about Operation Market Garden. They used to show it to US Army teams participated in the Nijmegan Marches to give them an idea of the historical underpinnings of the event.

 

[C. Lee]

It's a great film -- and an interesting place to visit (Remagen). I'd also recommend A Bridge Too Far, a movie about Operation Market Garden. They used to show it to US Army teams participated in the Nijmegan Marches to give them an idea of the historical underpinnings of the event.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR is excellent. It's epic in scale and production. Before there was CGI, if you wanted thousands of soldiers running around you had to find thousands of people....and Attenborough did. I last watched it back in March. As a companion piece for it I usually also watch around the same time THE LONGEST DAY since it too is epic in scale and production, based on real historical events, and from the writings of Cornelius Ryan.

 

[JimThompson]

A BRIDGE TOO FAR is excellent. It's epic in scale and production. Before there was CGI, if you wanted thousands of soldiers running around you had to find thousands of people....and Attenborough did. I last watched it back in March. As a companion piece for it I usually also watch around the same time THE LONGEST DAY since it too is epic in scale and production, based on real historical events, and from the writings of Cornelius Ryan.

Have you seen Battle of Britain?

 

[C. Lee]

Have you seen Battle of Britain?

Yes. t: It's funny you mention it....just last night I gave an extra DVD copy I had of it to my brother in law.

Just so you know.....I am the old man (I'm 59) movie fanatic of the Hype. I have watched thousands of movies of all genres (I own thousands on DVD.....movies are my fanaticism). The movies I have wrote about in here the last couple of days....I have seen them all multiple times.

 

[JimThompson]

Yes. t: It's funny you mention it....just last night I gave an extra DVD copy I had of it to my brother in law.

Just so you know.....I am the old man (I'm 59) movie fanatic of the Hype. I have watched thousands of movies of all genres (I own thousands on DVD.....movies are my fanaticism). The movies I have wrote about in here the last couple of days....I have seen them all multiple times.

I'm about a decade behind you -- but I have seen these multiple times as well.