WWI Movie Recommendations

[Chris Spellman]

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

[Peter]

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

[Dave]

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.)

[Melinda]

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! :)

[GMcManus]

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

[greg blake]

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

[Michael Skeet]

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.

[Peter]

what Michael says above is perfectly correct..WW1 flying films are not much good as a reference..added to which the sound is tinny, the pictures scratchy and the acting hammy.
but guess who went out and baught a copy of Dawn Patrol to-day...coz I lerv it to bits

dagadagadagadagadagadagadagadagadagadagadagadagada gadagadaga

Peter

[greg blake]

Stephen, next time you find yourself in an Aussie pub don't call the Lighthorse "British". You'll find yourself in a blue quick smart.

[Chris Spellman]

The main reason for wanting to find films on this subject is to get a better understanding for the equipment and feel of the environments during the war. I fully understand the inaccuracies conveyed by film and I plan to exercise the utmost in discretion in allowing myself to be influenced. Dialogue is also important. I'm not British but my character is, so it would help to learn a little of the slang lingo of the day. Most importantly, I want to see the planes themsleves in flight. I plan on ordering Four Years of Thunder - the History Channel special on WWI Aviation. My understanding is that this program is a fantastic resource for information.

It's really time for a WWI film done with the accuracy and feel of 'Saving Private Ryan'. If it was me, I'd do a film on the VERDUN Offensive of 1916, or the Somme bloodbath. It's amazing no one has yet recognized the potential and importance of an epic film on WWI. It's as forgotten a war as the Korean Conflict.

Chris

[stephen]

Chris: Lingo? Someone in your story absolutely must have the "wind up."

Greg: You be right. I be wrong. I be thanking you.

[Michael Skeet]

I don't think WWI aviation films will be much good as a source of aviators' slang, since they will have been largely cleaned up to suit the censors. (A noteable exception is "Hell's Angels," in which Hughes somehow got microphones into that Sikorsky to record the two stars cursing a blue streak as their plane is attacked.)

I don't think films will prove a workable shortcut to just plain hard work in the research department. My suggestion is that you write your first draft with the information you've been able to gather, and then do research to fill in only the needed details when you revise. At that point, you'll be able to ask specific questions, which will allow you to find specific answers (possibly even from this forum).

I don't think that WWI provides sufficiently epic scope to make a "Private Ryan" type film. The personnel spent so much time just standing around being shot at that it's hard to conceive of how you could open up the story. (And Stanley Kubrick has already made the definitive film about how wasteful that all was.)

[cam]

Another movie which is a must is " the great Waldo Pepper "

It tabulates the barnestormers in 1919 - 1925 and the changing of the guard from the war flyers to the new standards of commercial flight. It is represented metaphorically by the main star and his german antogonist ( Kessler ) wanting to fight to the death without guns cos it was the way the wanted to fly and live and die. Fascinating themes in it and several good chuckles on the way.

cam

[Peter]

Chris, if you seak an understanding of the British, or in this case more correctly English, class system as it was 80 years ago you face a mammoth task..Those of us who live here don't understand it now!
In fact this was the premise of the BBC series "Wings" mentioned elsewhere. Our rough hewn hero, the son of a Cornish blacksmith, struggles to fit in with his gentlelmanly comrades.. The Beeb had 12 hours to develope this conflict within a conflict, Gone With The Wind only lasts 4!
Maybe you should dust off your library card. Watch Aces High by all means, then read Journeys End on which it is (very loosely)based. I don't mean to go off at a tangent, but how about Fighter Pilot by Richard Hilary. Although about a Hurricane outfit during the fall of Franc it has a very WW1 feel to it..
annybody else read any good books lately

Peter L

[Stacy "Mutley"]

A definite must for the proper "dreary frame of mind", because basically that is what stagnate trench warfare perpetuates, is the acclaimed PBS series "The Great War". It is a documentary that depicts as much the effect on the human psyche as the battles themselves. It can be downright depressing, like listening to Sinead O'Connor or reading your Visa statement. I dont believe it is in rental stores yet but it retails for about $100(4 tapes) in most Borders or Barnes & Noble booksellers.

[Vigilant]

Michael, WWI "not epic enough"?? How epic do you want! Think about a full-scale offencive along a 10 mile front, involving hundreds of thousands of men, with a vast weight of metal crashing down over their heads as the barrage goes in, and the bloody murder as the opposing troops come into contact at strongpoints and push through them. And occassionally a suicidal aeroplane will fly through the shells over the battle on a contact patrol....

Peter, I've read "The Last Enemy". Good book but I found Hillary a bit of a pain. Maybe I'm just jealous!? My favourite aviation writer is Saint-Exupery. Sheer poetry.

[rammjaeger]

Hi Chris. The most of these movies are not very reliable, but always better than this HORROR FILM WITH THE RED BARON, which I have seen some years ago. In this video MvR was shoot down and his ghost transfered into a toy aircraft 60 or 70 years later. And than this hun-occupied toy aircraft started to terrorize the family of a little boy! Nonsens³!

Regards Hannes Taeger

[Michael Skeet]

Vigilant:
My comment about WWI not being "epic" enough was probably ill-judged. Certainly its scope was epic. But I try to imagine a "Private Ryan" scenario, and it doesn't work. My overwhelming impression of WWI in the trenches is one of claustrophobia; even the assaults crammed large numbers of men into small frontal areas, where mobility was virtually non-existent. Imagine the first 20 minutes of "Private Ryan" repeated over and over for two hours: it doesn't work for me. (I think WWI is best remembered in the verse and memoirs of the War Poets -- Graves, Blunden, Sassoon, even Lewis, who though not a poet managed some remarkable imagery in "Saggitarius Rising." If you haven't done so, I recommend reading "The Great War and Modern Memory" by Paul Fussell.)

[Barrett]

I'll endorse the sentiments expressed here regarding ANZACs and "The Light Horsemen"--very entertaining films with a high degree of technical authenticity. However, ANZACs ends on 11 November with sunshine and daffodils!

John Ford's "What Price Glory?" with James Cagney and Dan Dailey is, well, typical Ford. Great characters with a salty aspect of the dedicated professional soldiers (in this case marines) doing what they do best.

A long-ago TV miniseries (mid 70s?) was "Once An Eagle" based on the Anton Meyer novel. The young Sam Elliot knew how to work an '03 Springfield.

[Chris Spellman]

I can completely envision a WWI film in league with Saving Private Ryan. A film opening with the massive German assault on Verdun would be a horrendous scene. Wave after wave of Hun infantry charging over the snow covered moonscape toward the French positions with a hailstorm of artillery raining down in front of them. Of course such a film would need more than just blood and guts to succeed so let me think about it for awhile and I'll dream up a plot....

Chris

[phill Vanderlaan]

Have Spellberg do a decent remake of all quiet on the western frount

[Reinout]

I wonder, what is wrong with "All quiet on the western front", that you would like a remake to be done Phill? Didn't it convey the message to you?

Actually, I am all fore warmovies with (relatively) unknown actors in them; it helps to show people that it was about ordinary men and women. Only too often I have seen a warmovie becoming a glorification of war because of the Hollywood-actors not being taken seriously as soldiers. "Gettysburg" was an exception. "Stalingrad" (1991 German version), "Aces high", "Das Boot" and "All quiet on the western front"/"Im Westen nichts neues" and "Schindler's list" are in my view the best warmovies around, and they featured only a minimum of famous actors.

P.S.: I haven't seen "Saving private Ryan" yet.

Kind regards,

Reinout

[mike_baram]

Phil,
That's the best suggestion I've seen yet.
Mike