10. “The Bridge On The River Kwai” (1957)
We ummed and ahhed on the inclusion of POW movies, often quite a distinct genre from much of what we’re talking about, but David Lean’s masterpiece “The Bridge On The River Kwai” feels indefinably like a upper-case-w War movie in a way that something like, say, “Stalag 17” doesn’t. And with Nolan seemingly channeling Lean with his new film, missing it off a list centered on “Dunkirk” would have felt odd. The Best Picture-winning epic is set in a camp in Burma, where all prisoners, regardless of rank, are ordered to aid the construction of a railway bridge. Senior British officer Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) initially balks at the orders, but eventually relents with the idea that he can use the work to keep his men’s morale up and show the superiority of British engineering, while American escapee Shears (William Holden) plans to destroy the bridge. It’s stirring, sweeping stuff that marked Lean’s move into widescreen spectacular, but it’s also remarkably complex, digging into issues of class, the end of the British Empire, and the futility, or otherwise, of the fight.
9. “Full Metal Jacket” (1987)
Returning to the 20th century battlefield for the first time since “Paths Of Glory,” Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Gustav Hasford’s novel “The Short-Timers” takes quite a distinct approach to the war in Vietnam from other seminal films set during the conflict — one that also feels quite different from the director’s other work (it’s tighter and slyer than most of his other late-period movies, and yet feels entirely Kubrickian. Split into a two-part structure that still frustrates some, it begins with a group of Marine Corp groups being terrorized by their near-psychotic drill instructor (an extraordinary R. Lee Ermey), culminating in the famous “major malfunction” scene, before hero Joker (Matthew Modine) goes to the front as a war correspondent during the Tet Offensive. It takes a couple of views to get the best out of it (though Kubrick’s craft amazes first time around as ever), but it eventually emerges as an gripping look at the ways we’re dehumanized by war, and the system that attempts to exploit that.
8. “All Quiet On The Western Front” (1930)
The third ever Best Picture winner (and the first to win Best Picture and Best Director), “All Quiet On The Western Front” remains one of the most potent and forward-looking anti-war movies ever made, a full 87 years on from its release. Helmed by Lewis Milestone, it’s based on Erich Maria Remarque’s seminal novel following a group of young German men (including Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim and John Wray) who sign up to serve their country in the First World War, only to discover that their romantic ideas of soldiery are a long, long away from the truth. It’s a long, bleak, tough movie, one that often feels shocking even now (not least because it was a film that dared to show war from the point of view of a nation that had been an enemy), and if there’s an early-talkies stiffness to it in places, the power of Milestone’s imagery (which inspired Spielberg on “Saving Private Ryan”) and the humanism of its message utterly shines through.
7. “The Battle Of Algiers” (1966)
A favorite of, among others, Paul Greengrass and Steve McQueen (it shows in both their work for sure), Gillo Pontecorvo’s revolutionary docu-drama reconstructs the events of the Algerian War as insurgents of the National Liberation Front attempt to throw off the yoke of French control with escalating and often shocking violence on both sides, from terrorist bombings by the Algerians to torture by the French. Virtually plotless (we follow a few recurring figures but not many) and mostly using non-actors, it melds a neo-realist visual approach that feels pulled from newsreels with genuinely radical politics (it’s almost journalistic in its attempt to show both sides, even if it’s clear that its heart lies with the Algerians) and Ennio Morricone’s tremendous score in a way that feels as electric now as it must have done then. Golden Lion-winning and Oscar-nominated, it was also banned in France and condemned on its eventual release there five years later, it’s influenced everything from Bourne movies to the Baader-Meinhoff Group, and is quite simply one of the most important movies ever made.
6. “Army Of Shadows” (1969)
Misunderstood and mistreated on its release —landing in the aftermath of May ’68 in France, the French mostly saw it as a patriotic relic, whereas it wasn’t even released in the U.S. until 2006— “Army Of Shadows” sees Jean-Pierre Melville tackle the wartime occupation of his country for the third time after “Le Silence De La Mer” and “Leon Morin, Priest,” and he definitely left the best for last. Lino Ventura stars as Philippe Gerbier, the head of the resistance in Marseille who escapes from the police in Paris and involves a network of like-minded agents in a plan to rescue one of his men (Paul Crauchet), even as more of their comrades are picked off. Melville was in the Resistance himself, and there’s both a grubby realism and a laudable lack of sentimentality in his depiction of them here: his subjects are heroes, but also hard, ruthless men who’ll brutally deal with betrayal, or even the possibility of betrayal, without a second thought. It grips like any of Melville’s thrillers, but its unsparing bleakness and fatalism makes it a towering peak of the genre.