Favorite war movies

[LivingDefiance]

Platoon, anyone?

[KillZone]

Platoon, anyone?

It is too raw for my stomach, even though it may be fairly realistic. More realistic than the bulk of the others, according to a good friend I have that was "on the ground" in the muck and rain and saw more than anyone needed to see.

[Capricorn]

Schindler's List
The Great Escape
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Lawrence of Arabia

[Jim Colyer]

Gone with the Wind 1939
War and Peace 1956
Doctor Zhivago 1965

[Cd.]

Gone with the Wind 1939

Entertaining but completely ficticious. Atlanta was actually a minor railroad town at the time of the Civil War and did not become significant until after the war.

War and Peace 1956

Tolstoy's finest work on film. There were several versions of this. The best was a Russian made mini series which aired on US TV as part of Masterpiece Theater. It did accurately capture the era and the mentality of the Russian Aristocracy at the time, though I think it was tended to villianize the French too much.

Doctor Zhivago 1965

The Book, writen by Boris Pasternak, won a Nobel Prize, yet its author was forbidden from receiving it. The film version was one of the more interesting Hollywood stories. That a film about the Russian Revolution and Civil War could even be made during that era was a miricle.

David Lean, a master at epic dramas, made this film and it was possibly his best work. I am not sure that casting Omar Shariff as a Russian was that believable but it was truely a strong performance.