Just been reading the Dambusters thread - I can't agree its the archetypal Brit WW2 movie so here's my sixpennorth worth, a top ten, in a loose- ish order.
Went The Day Well?
The Way Ahead
In Which We Serve
A Canterbury Tale
The Small Back Room
Ice Cold in Alex
A Matter of Life and Death
One of Our Aircraft is Missing
Johnny Frenchman
The Foreman Went to France (and no apologies for this!)
Would love to see other lists especially as there may be gems I've overlooked or don't know......
General
Dunkirk
The Malta Story
A Canterbury Tale
The Small Back Room
Ice Cold in Alex
Colonel Blimp
Air
Dambusters
Angels One Five
Battle of Britain
Naval
In Which We Serve
We Dive At Dawn
The Cruel Sea
The Sea Shall Not Have Them
Special Forces
Ill Met By Moonlight
They Who Dare
Sea of Sand
Spy/Resistance
Odette
Adventures of Tartu
Carve Her Name With Pride
Conspiracy of Hearts
Pimpernel Smith
Night Train to Munich
Contraband
Pow
Two Thousand Woman
Colditz
A Town Like Alice
The Wooden Horse
"NEXT OF KIN" 1942
"THE INTRUDER" 1954
"THE CRUEL SEA" 1953
"I WAS MONTYS DOUBLE" 1958
"ABOVE US THE WAVES" 1955
"WE DIVE AT DAWN" 1943
"THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS" 1956
"THE SILENT ENEMY" 1958
"YANKS" 1979
"HOPE AND GLORY" 1987
"THE COCKLESHELL HEROES" 1955
Some cracking stuff here plus a good few I don't know - yet! I'd forgotten 'Next of Kin' as its been so long since I saw it but a terrific film(is it available anywhere?) I'd put up 'The Captive Heart' as a particular favourite PoW film - not nearly as mawkish as some critics suggest. With 'Colditz' I guess you're referring to 'The Colditz Story' and not the TV series?
A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH
ICE COLD IN ALEX
THE CRUEL SEA
THE SMALL BACK ROOM
SINK THE BISMARK!
AGAINST THE WIND
DANGER WITHIN
REACH FOR THE SKY
A BRIDGE TOO FAR
THE CAPTIVE HEART
WENT THE DAY WELL?
DAD'S ARMY (MOVIE)
Most of these have been mentioned before but:
Went the Day Well?
Canterbury Tale
Pimpernel Smith
The Wooden Horse
Colditz Story
and slightly more recently...well 1969...Battle of Britain.
Forgot to add probably my fave war film:
The One That Got Away.
Hardy Kruger is fantastic in it.
The Day Will Dawn
The McKenzie Break
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Eye of the Needle
Hope and Glory
Fires Were Started
The Hill
The Stars Look Down
King Rat
Great that The Small Back Room appears so often - anybody else read the book? (is it OK to mention books on here!?) Funny that Nigel Balchin is almost totally forgotten now - he was enormously popular up until the 60s, and Darkness Falls From the Air is perhaps ( along with 'Caught' by Henry Green)the definitive Blitz novel....
The book is great as well, the film sticks quite closely to it. They just drop the piece about the brother who's a fighter pilot and the little girl who's sister picked up one of the booby-trapped devices but the little girl is too young to explain what happened. Very well written.Paul E:
Great that The Small Back Room appears so often - anybody else read the book? (is it OK to mention books on here!?) Funny that Nigel Balchin is almost totally forgotten now - he was enormously popular up until the 60s, and Darkness Falls From the Air is perhaps ( along with 'Caught' by Henry Green)the definitive Blitz novel...
When I first saw the film I admired some of the sparse dialogue thinking that was typical Pressburger. Exchanges like:
Susan: Where were you going Sammy?
Sammy: I don't know.
Susan: A woman?
Sammy: Maybe.
Susan: How about me?
- but it's straight out of the book.
Balchin also helped to script Mandy (1952) and The Man Who Never Was (1956)
Steve
While not the best, Ealing's San Demetrio London is the most interesting. A damaged tanker is taken to its destination, not by the officers who have left the vessel, but by Anglo-American seamen (and one token officer who does not impose authority). A brilliant propaganda film promoting Balcon's views of a democratic UK - Ealing's version of Battleship Potemkin.
Was it propaganda? It was based quite closely on a true story. No sign of any prams rolling down the steps :)dylan:
While not the best, Ealing's San Demetrio London is the most interesting. A damaged tanker is taken to its destination, not by the officers who have left the vessel, but by Anglo-American seamen (and one token officer who does not impose authority). A brilliant propaganda film promoting Balcon's views of a democratic UK - Ealing's version of Battleship Potemkin.
Luckily the crew refused the offer of a tow into harbour so they were rewarded very handsomely as salvors.
Steve
"A Caterbury Tale" for example, if we're thinking archetypal, is it a war film or a story filmed in wartime?....just a thought. Decks.
A story that, like many, used the war as a backdrop Decks.
One of my favourites is Sam Peckinpah's European epic co-production Cross of Iron. It's still criminally ignored compared to his other works but it's an auithentic anti-war film looking at trench warfare from the opponents angle.
And David Warner is always fantastic:
I totally concur! A supurbly accurate film, showing, although not regarded as even then as what should be correct in a war film, the Germans being "human" with all the frailties that should be seen in by far and away the biggest theatre(the Russian front)of WW2. The casting was inspired and I was particularly impressed with James Coburn going against his usual grain.
Quite a few of Powell & Pressburger's most famous wartime films are also famous for not showing the war - just the effects of it in the extreme situations it put people in.deckard:
"A Caterbury Tale" for example, if we're thinking archetypal, is it a war film or a story filmed in wartime?....just a thought. Decks.
The Spy in Black (1939)
Contraband (1940)
An Airman's Letter to His Mother (1941)
Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941)
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)
Squadron Leader X (1943)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
The Silver Fleet (1943)
The Volunteer (1943)
A Canterbury Tale (1944)
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
A little bit of fighting the enemy in a few of them but really remarkably little considering what was happening at the time.
Steve
Very good at showing the effects too Steve, what springs to mind, taking "A Canterbury Tale" as an example again, is when Alison was walking around Canterbury looking at the the aftermath of the bombing and the lady she talks to remarks about the view of the cathedral now the buildings are gone, very sobering! Decks.
[quotedeckard:
Very good at showing the effects too Steve, what springs to mind, taking "A Canterbury Tale" as an example again, is when Alison was walking around Canterbury looking at the the aftermath of the bombing and the lady she talks to remarks about the view of the cathedral now the buildings are gone, very sobering! Decks.[/quote]Yes, that's a lovely scene isn't it. There's a benefit even to having your city destroyed!
BTW The lady with the cut-glass voice wasn't a professional actress. Kathleen Lucas was just a local lady, who helped out. She was very good at helping out. She ran Canterbury WVS & her husband was a surgeon at the hospital so she did volunteer work there as well & helped run the hospital library.
Those scenes were of course filmed in Canterbury and showed the extent of the damage very well. Almost as much damage as the City Council have done since then with their re-planning :)
Steve
Mmph! yur not wrong! The town where I live had a lovely central area fondly called "The Moor"(reclaimed land don't y'know) and then they decided to re-develop it into a "piazza" so people can sit and relax - yer rite! It's now a haven for skateboarders. I rekon there are a lot of mini "hitlers" in local councils all over the country and they've probably done near enough as much damage as the original.Decks.
name='Steve Crook']Was it propaganda? It was based quite closely on a true story. No sign of any prams rolling down the steps :)
Steve
In his autobiography, Balcon said he wanted to make a good, honest and truthful film which would be good propaganda for the war effort and (modestly)that San Dimetrio London amply fulfilled all those requirements.
Its subversive as only Ealing could be with its stock cast of proletarian actors (Fredrick Piper, Gordon Jackson, Mervyn Johns et al) completing the voyage with a democratic allocation of tasks instead of the officer (read *class*)elite, who have all been metaphorically thrown overboard, giving the orders.
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