WWI Movie Recommendations

Hi all. As my research (for my story) is running into snags I'd like to ask for a list of movies that center around the Great War that you feel are reasonably accurate and offer a decent glimpse back into the days of WWI. Aviation films are extremely valuable but so are ones depicting the life of the P.B.I.

I'm having a hard time even finding a copy of "Hell's Angels" on video (I scoured all the rental places), which to my understanding is the best to date (how sad).

Muchos Gracias in advance!

Chris

Chris, as first in the queue I claim the right to get all the old chestnuts in..but they realy are my favourites.

1/Men With Wings..1929 (I think)..the good guys fly Boeing
MB3s in French markings and the bad guys
Curtis P1s with great big crosses on them
These guys were realy there and it shows in every frame.

2/ Hells Angels...29 was avery good year if you're into flying movies and you're not a stock
broker..Brilliant flying scenes, but we
all know that..Weak plot, but again made
by people who were there.

3/ All Quiet On the Western Front. (1931) The Private Ryan of its'day. Brilliant

and now....colour. Somewhere in the no-mans land between The Blue Max and Aces High there is a realy good WW1 flying movie. Take the swash and buckle from the first, add the grit of the second, and with a little of the character building from Memphis Belle we're realy motoring.
I shall now retire gracefully having done the easy bit and await developements..If it's half as instructive and amusing as your last thead we have much to look forward to.

regards

Peter L

Buy a copy of "Aviation History" magazine. There is an advert in there for "Belle & Blade" videos. They list all the old movies for a price of about $20.00US. They have a web site but it is next to useless.

http://www.belle-and-blade.com/index.htm

Cheers

Dave

[mike_baram]

"All Quiet...." , definitely one of the better ones, and "Gallipoli". Come to think of it, there is a dearth of good WWI films. I guess after Der Zweite Weltkrieg, the first kind of faded from the publics interest.
(If my grammar has offended any German speaking readers, I humbly apologize in advance.)

Okay Mike..I'm not a native German speaker...but I have learned a little since I've spent 9 months now in the enemy homeland. It should be "Der Zweiter Weltkrieg", since all adjectives must take the gender of the noun they describe. ("Zweite" would go with a noun that is feminine and "zweites" with a neutral noun.)
)
Melinda is just glad to know SOMETHING everyone else doesn't know already!

Try the film "The Big Parade" an American silent film released in 1925. Considered by some to be the best.
It is available on video.

[mike_baram]

Melinda,
Which is one of the reasons I didn't study more German....I still can't figure out how you get "Der Rote Kampfleiger" (sp?) when "rote" would be feminine, and one would assume that "Kampfleiger" would by definition, be a masculine noun. But then, in Hebrew, masculine nouns take feminine numbers, and feminine nouns take masculine numbers...so it's back to the language of Shakespeare, I guess.
Mike

Have a look at Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory". I think this is one of the best films dealing with WW1 made.

Chris, I'd strongly recommend against using *any* WWI aviation film as a research tool except in the most peripheral fashion. Almost without exception these films have plots and characters that are melodramatic and stuffed full of cliche. You can't even count on background incidents being accurate, since all of these films are coloured by ten years or more of post-war "lost generation" retrospection. The only reason to see films such as "Wings," "Hell's Angels" and "The Dawn Patrol" (from a research point of view) is to see what these early biplanes looked like in the air. (Keep in mind that I'm not disparaging these films as entertainment, just as history.)

If you don't mind my asking, in what respect exactly are you bogged down? (And how close are you to Canada? Second-hand bookstores in this country should have paperback copies of the first three novels of The Bandy Papers by Donald Jack, comic novels that will give you lots of background for WWI infantry and aviation action, not to mention a laugh or two. The best is the first, which I believe is called "Three Cheers for Me," though I could be wrong there; all of the titles have "Me" in them, and I get them mixed up.)

[stephen]

ANZACS. Wonderful plot, beautifully romantic. You Aussies can be weird sometimes, but Lord have mercy on any poor fool who has to fight you. Bravo.

THE LIGHTHORSEMEN. Brilliantly told story of British forces in the Middle East, as seen by the Germans and Turks who were defending a critical city. A must-see film.