Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. This article originally ran on January 11, Every film about war ends up being pro-war. On the occasion of the death of R. Is it true that movies glamorize whatever they touch, no matter how horrific? So, like other inescapable elements of the human experience, we tell stories about war, stories that reflect our attitudes toward it, and how they shift over time.
War movies reflect the artistic impulses of their creators, but they also reflect the attitudes of the times and places in which they were created. Maybe the ultimate purpose of a war movie is to let others hear the force of these stories. Each offers a vision that asks viewers to consider and understand the experience of war, be it in the trenches of World War I, the wilderness skirmishes of Civil War militias, or the still-ongoing conflicts that have helped define 21st-century warfare.
This list opts for a somewhat narrow definition of a war movie, focusing on films that deal with the experiences of soldiers during wartime. Miniver , Forbidden Games , Hope and Glory or of wartime stories whose action rests far away from the battlefield Casablanca. It also leaves films primarily about the Holocaust out of consideration, as they seem substantively different from other sorts of war films.
Also excluded are films that blur genres, like the military science fiction of Starship Troopers and Aliens even if the latter does have a lot to say about the Vietnam War. That eliminates many great movies, but it leaves room for many others, starting with a film made at the height of World War II in an attempt to help rally a nation with a story of an operation whose success required secrecy, extensive training, and beating overwhelming odds.
War movies released during wartime rarely have time to reflect. Men head bravely into battle. Women accept their separation and sacrifices with a brave face. This is as good a point as any to note that Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo makes frequent, unapologetic use of a widespread wartime anti-Japanese racial slur, a warning that applies to virtually every World War II film set in the Pacific and made in the decades after the war. There they find no glory in fighting, just cruelty, absurdity, and horror.
