World War II Films and Documentaries

[C. Lee]

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

Another golden oldie I have seen a dozen times (and putting the DVD in now to watch again) is BATTLE OF THE BULGE.

 

[JimThompson]

Another golden oldie I have seen a dozen times (and putting the DVD in now to watch again) is BATTLE OF THE BULGE.

That is a goodie! And of course we're leaving out classics like Sands of Iwo Jima, The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone.

 

[C. Lee]

That is a goodie! And of course we're leaving out classics like Sands of Iwo Jima, The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone.

Yep....got 'em all seen 'em all. t:

Speaking of DIRTY DOZEN....I recently picked up the short lived TV series. I watched the series when it was on back in '88 but haven't seen it since. Hope to watch it soon (but I have so many different things to watch).

 

[C. Lee]

Today I watched -

BATTLE OF THE BULGE (1965) starring Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, and Ty Hardin.

I've watched this a dozen or more times in my life. It played regularily on Network TV for years when I was a kid. So always being a fan of WWII action films I loved it. If you want large sprawling action....especially large tank battles where you see dozens of tanks in one shot taking each other on....this is for you. If you want your movies to be as accurate as possible....then pass it up. If you are wanting to learn actual facts about the Battle of the Bulge then I suggest you watch PATTON, BATTLEGROUND, or the episodes from BAND OF BROTHERS that cover it. Most of the action was filmed on the treeless plains of Spain instead of the forests of Ardennes Belgium....they used obvious American tanks as stand ins for the distinctive looking German Tiger Tanks....etc.....

 

[C. Lee]

Today I watched -

THE WAR LOVER (1962) starring Steve McQueen, Robert Wagner, Shirley Anne Field, Gary Cockrell, and Michael Crawford.

This film, based on a novel by John Hersey, follows the crew of a B-17 bomber. The pilot, "Buzz" Rickson (Steve McQueen), is an egotistical bully with a deathwish (the most unsympathetic character that McQueen ever played)....the co-pilot, Ed "Bo" Bolland (Robert Wagner), is the nice guy who's friends with everyone. They both fall for English lass Daphne (Shirley Anne Field).....Buzz quietly pines for her while Bo starts a romance. In between this they go on several missions where Buzz breaks rules and ignores orders getting himself and the crew in trouble with superiors. Finally....on a 1,000 plane raid, their plane gets shot up, with a couple of engines out of commission and the bomb bay doors stuck open with a live bomb lodged hanging half out of them, they decide to bail out over the English channel. [BLACKOUT]As they all jump out, Buzz stays aboard because his ego says he can bring the plane in safely in spite of everything .....up until he flies into the white cliffs of Dover.[/BLACKOUT]

It's a decent little war movie. You have some good action and a nice love story. Because it was shot in black and white it's easy to incorporate real WWII film into some of the fight scenes as well as a scene of a crashing bomber from the Gregory Peck movie 12 O'CLOCK HIGH. Being a trivia buff who especially likes to take notice of character actors, I like to see actors I primarily know from later roles in their careers as young actors. In here you can see Michael Crawford, Ed Bishop, Robert Easton, and Burt Kwouk.

As a sad note.....Mike Reilly drowned after parachuting from 2000 feet into the English Channel, near Newhaven, during the filming of a stunt for the film. He was 29 years old, had more than 300 jumps, was British parachute champion and the first Chairman of the newly formed British Parachute Association.

 

[C. Lee]

Today I watched -

ATTACK ON THE IRON COAST (1968) starring Lloyd Bridges, Andrew Keir, Walter Gotell, and Sue Lloyd.

This is based on an actual event from the war (British commando raid on a Nazi shipyard in France)....and I suggest you find a documentary on it to watch instead of this movie. This plays like a low budget TV movie instead of a theatrical release. Most of the movie is angry Major Jamie Wilson (Lloyd Bridges) arguing with Captain Franklin (Andrew Keir) and anyone else who gets close enough for him to bark at them. The last 10 minutes is the actual raid (part of it using some very bad models of ships slowly.....slowly.....slowly sailing into battle) shot at night.

The actual raid deserves a big budget telling. It was a raid of 600 British commandos where fully half were killed, wounded, or captured in their attack that included a large air raid and the ramming of a navy destroyer loaded with explosives into the largest drydock on the Atlantic coast held by the Nazis. It was so successful that the drydock destroyed in 1942 was not fully repaired until 1947. The movie has 40 or so commandos on a much smaller minesweeper make the raid while we see 3 bombers being shot at but not dropping a single bomb.

If you are a major fan of WWII movies and want to say that you have seen them all (gee, that sounds like me)....then watch it.....otherwise dig out your DVDs of the COMBAT TV series and watch some good WWII action.

 

[DA_Champion]

I've watched the first two of six episodes of Netflix's World War II: From the Front Lines.

The visuals are absolutely fantastic. They did a really marvelous job colorizing the images, I'm astounded at how good that is. All of the footage is archival, and it looks real and better than what makes it into many movies.

But thus far it's very much a dumb, superficial documentary. It states a lot of facts without explaining them. It's just "this happened, and that happened", which is a superficial and misleading take on history. The motivation of any of the historical players is not well understood, for example it seems like the USSR turned around the Eastern Front because Stalin gave a well received speech in the Moscow subway. That is not what happened historically, though they did a splendid job of colorizing that footage of Stalin's speech.

There's a weird choice where they show a NaI shooting a victim in the head, but they stop the cut right when the blood is about to spatter out. This is one of those cases where there's actually an educational use in showing brutality, so show it.

Barring improvement in the past four episodes, I'm going to assume that Netflix made this because their World War II in color was successful. And they did in fact do a great job of colorizing the video. But it's also valid to actually teach about history.

I think the ideal audience for this is a 16 year old who needs help cramming facts prior to his midterm.

One good moment involved an interview with a Polish resistance fighter. He killed a German. Then they killed 20 women and children in retaliation. He said he felt like he personally killed those 20 people.

 

[C. Lee]

Some stuff recently watched -

THE LAST ESCAPE (1970) Starring Stuart Whitman, John Collin, and Martin Jarvis. Set during the end of the war in Europe, Americans and Russians try to snatch German rocket scientists for their respective countries. It's a "B" movie with some decent action with generic fighting but some nice tank footage (although the best scene, a bombing of the rocket site, is lifted from the movie MOSQUITO SQUADRON made by the same director). Also of note is that every bit of music is from the WWII TV series THE RAT PATROL. The movie was filmed in Germany so most of the cast are German or European.

HOTEL SAHARA (1951) Starring Yvonne De Carlo and Peter Ustinov. Comedy about hotel owner (Ustinov) and his beautiful wife (De Carlo) and how it keeps changing hands between the British, Germans, and Americans during the war. Light hearted but cute.

GREYHOUND (2020) Starring Tom Hanks. One of the best WWII movies in recent years. It covers the rarely filmed adventures of convoy protection of supply ships in the North Atlantic against German submarines. Intense and lots of action. Highly recommend it.


SNOW TREASURE (1968) Starring James Franciscus and Paul Austad. Low budget Norwegian film about children helping the Norwegian resistance against the Nazis. The unknown cast is OK and American actor Franciscus makes the most of his role as a sympathetic German soldier.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Definitely agree on Greyhound. I really liked that one.

 

[Boom]

The "Ruin Your Weekend" playlist:

Come and See
Downfall
Schindler's List
Son of Saul
The Painted Bird
The Pianist
The Zone of Interest