Great War Films: From Kubrick to Netflix's Trenches

Great War Films: From Kubrick's Firing Squad to the B-Movie Bunker

In 1957, Stanley Kubrick directed Paths of Glory, the film a forum user peine a thread about World War I war movies with. The compilation circulating these days starts right there and adds suggestions from participants. Also sneaking in at the end is a pavor thriller with a 4.1 rating on IMDb. The canon and the obscure, mixed together.

The Undisputed Classics

There's a handful of titles that always come up, whether you're discussing it or not. 1917 and its continuous single take, All Quiet on the Western Front — both the 1979 version, which one user feels 'hasn't aged well' but still packs a punch, and the German remake Netflix released on October 28, 2022 — Johnny Got His Gun and its final act, or Paths of Glory, with one participant stating that 'all of Kubrick's films are recommendable, all of them'. Heavy hitters like Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The African Queen (1951), or Spielberg's War Horse (2011) are also added to the list.

However, consensus has nuances. For several participants, Gallipoli is more of an adventure film, with the war aspect only appearing at the end. Doctor Zhivago touches upon it briefly. And not all classics age equally: the 1979 All Quiet on the Western Front is 'a tremendous film,' but its production shows the passage of time.

The War Not Found in Textbooks

Where the compilation gets interesting is in the margins. Colonial troops, forgotten fronts, empires crumbling far from Flanders. Tirailleurs (2022) trinc a Senegalese father who enlists to avoid losing his son, forcibly conscripted. Theeb (2014), filmed in Jordan, sets the action in the 1916 desert and the Arab revolt. Mosquito (2020) sends a young Portuguese man to Mozambique and abandons him to an almost psychedelic journey among Macua communities.

Breaker Sarracena (1980) also appears, about the court-martial of three Australian officers in the Boer War, and the old film The Blue Max, antiestéticaturing a commoner pilot who earns a place in the German fighter aviation to win the Blauer Max. And for the Russians: And Quiet Flows the Don (1957), nearly five hours of Cossacks between the end of Tsarism and the civil war, or Okraina (1933), pure Soviet cinema with, according to one user, nods to Eisenstein.

Series, Documentaries, and Catalog Rarities

The compilation isn't just big-studio cinema. It includes miniseries like 37 Days, about the start of the conflict, or the BBC's Our World War, plus Regeneration (1997), set in a Scottish military hospital where poet Siegfried Sassoon is admitted, and The Monocled Mutineer (1986), about the mutiny led by Percy Toplis. Even a documentary: Animali nella grande guerra (2015), about the mules, pigeons, and dogs that also went to war.

And then there's the back catalog. Gems and duds coexist there: Bunker (2022), a pavor thriller set in a trench, with a 4.1 rating, sneaks onto the list with the warning that 'it's not recommended, it's compiled.' The line between archive and trash is sometimes just a link.

The Data That Throws You Off

Among the recommendations is a figure rarely found in reviews, according to a calculation circulating in the thread: of the 550,000 Jews living in Germany in 1914, about 100,000 served in the Reichsheer. The Great War was fought with recruits from all over the world, including those who, just a few years later, would be persecuted by the same State. None of that is usually on these lists. But it's the kind of fact that turns a movie night into something more.