Great British War Films

[stuart.uk]

during the 40s and the 50s the British cinema made an incredible amount of classic war movies. i think many were more realistic than most of their American counterparts

during the war it was the time of the propaganda movies. the most famous of those was Noel Coward and David Lean's In Which We Serve with John Mills, Kay Walsh, Celia Johnson and Bernard Miles with Leslie Howard narrating. there is also 4 Leslie Howard films Pimpernel Smith, The 49th Parallel, The First Of The Few and The Gentle Sex (director only), the last two starring Rosamund John.

After the war John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Rosamund John and Renee Asherson made the classic air-force drama The Way To The Stars. in 1950 Anna Neagle played secret agent Odette. Jack Hawkins made two of his most famous films Angels One Five and The Cruel Sea with Donald Sinden. TCS was a more gritty realistic naval story than In Which We Serve, telling a more darker story.

next to All Quiet On The Western Front, i believe The Dambusters to be the greatest of all war films as Richard Todd's Guy Gibson leads his squadren as they destroy two German Dams. there was also The Escape Of The Amythist with Todd as a ships Captain who along with his men daringly escapes the Chinese Liberation Army in 1949

John Mills continued his war films with The Colditz Story with Eric Portman, Above Us The Waves, the underratted Dunkirk with Bernard Lee and Richard Attenbourgh and the classic Ice Cold In Alex with Sylvia Syms and Harry Andrews.

Virginia McKenna gave the performance of her life as the secret agent shot by a firing squad, leaving a daughter to be brought up by her parents in Carve Her Name With Pride

[knitwit45]

Stuart, how about The Captive Heart? I can hear the groans from the regulars here, but I absolutely love this movie. Michael Redgrave, Rachel Kempson, and many other top British character actors in a moving story about prisoners of war.

Below is a great recap of the movie from our own Moira:

I love this different and haunting prisoner of war drama, The Captive Heart (1946) too, Nancy, though I haven't seen it in a long time.

Michael Redgrave & Rachel Kempson in "The Captive Heart"

I thought that it was a beautiful film, with subtle glimpses of brotherly, romantic and platonic love stories told on several levels, from the German guard who is forced to shackle the Allied prisoners by his superiors, but tries to separate himself from the action, to the unspoken affection that springs up between (real life spouses) Rachel Kempson and Michael Redgrave in their letters.

While foregoing much of the derring-do of a Stalag 17 or The Great Escape, it manages to convey the physical and psychological claustrophobia as well as the sometimes surprising strengths of any diverse group. There are some marvelous performances by Gordon Jackson as a blind POW and Mervyn Johns as well. I wish that this were available on dvd in the U.S., but I was delighted to discover that it can be had in used vhs form for very little on Amazon!

If anyone cherishes Redgrave's performances in Dead of Night, The Importance of Being Earnest or as I do, as W.B. Yeats in Young Cassidy, they will probably like this one. BTW, on Sat. Jan. 26th at 10pm Eastern, there is a rare broadcast of another Michael Redgrave movie, Thunder Rock (1942) following an airing of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at 8pm.

I'll add my request for The Captive Heart to be shown over on the TCM Suggest a Movie, Ms. Knitwit. Thanks for the reminder of this good film.

[charliechaplinfan]

My favorite is Ice Cold In Alex

[movieman1957]

I saw "The Dambusters" not long ago. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The only drawback were the rather noticeable painted in water explosions but when you are on a limited budget....

At the risk of being pedestrian "Sink The Bismark" was always a favorite. Kenneth More did a fine job in his role in a good solid film. Straightforward, no frills movie making.

"The Man Who Never Was" was good too but I thought dragged a bit. The history of it was appealing.

[ken123]

Isn't great British War Films an oxymoron ? But Zulu does have some great battle scenes. An exception that proves the rule

[Ollie]

SINK BIZ and MAN WHO NEVER WAS both get top marks from me, and almost solely on their character studies.

In films made later in WWII or after it, the use of Stock Combat Footage and Model Making strikes me as more burdensome than illustrative.

Van Johnson & James Whitmore in BATTLEGROUND is a favorite film, but none of the so-called action or battle scenes are memorable - it's the characters. Same with OPERATION BURMA, where Errol Flynn and the war correspondent show us faces of boredom and hopelessness on occasion.

DAMBUSTERS is under threat of being remade. I'm sure they'll have better CGI effects than the original's cartoonish drawings of water bursts and AA streams, but so what? Does anyone believe "being realistic" and actually BEING there are the same thing? So, I discount "realistic" effects and their contribution to any film - if the story and acting aren't there, then effects alone don't make a film memorable - at least in a good way.

[Mr. Arkadin]

The Life and Death of Col. Blimp (1943) is a good one that's coming up soon (4/10). Another favorite is The Hill (1965) although it's a later film.

[ChiO]

Thanks to brandonlinden, over the past couple of months I got to see (each for the first time): CONTRABAND, 49th PARALLEL, ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING, A CANTERBURY TALE, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, and THE SMALL BACK ROOM.

As Brandon wrote in his post on STARS IN MY CROWN -- "When is a Western not a Western" -- the above Powell/Pressberger movies are "When are War movies not War movies." They each, especially ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING, A CANTERBURY TALE, and A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, transcend the genre, using WWII merely as an excuse to investigate the journeys people take in their lives. What wonderful filmmaking.

[Ollie]

Those P&P films are indeed wonderful examples. I think MISTER ROBERTS tries very hard to match their tapestry, but it's also a collection of stagey performances that make me remember it was first a Broadway stage play, and not the domain of film. CANTERBURY seems like Pure Film to me.