War

Synopsis by Hal Erickson
An Italian/French/Yugoslavian/Liechtensteinian coproduction (whew!), Thou Shalt Not Kill features Laurent Terzieff as a French conscientious objector. Interwoven with his story is the saga of a German priest (Horst Frank) who faces stiff punishment for killing a Frenchman during the Second World War. Director Claude Autant-Lara characteristically uses these twin plotlines as a platform to espouse his Leftist political beliefs and to heartily condemn the Catholic church. As a result, the fact-based Thou Shalt Not Kill (originally Tu Nes Tuera Point) caused quite a stir upon its first release. Many of its sentiments became more palatable in the late 1960s, though even at that time critics carped at Autant-Lara’s cut-and-dried directorial techniques.Read More »

Synopsis:
A ficticious war in an unidentified country provides the setting for this drama. Four soldiers survive the crash-landing of their plane to find themselves in a forest six miles behind enemy lines. The group, led by Lt. Corby, has a plan: They’ll make their way to a nearby river, build a raft, and then, under cover of night, float back to friendly territory. Their plans for getting back safely are sidetracked by a young woman who stumbles across them as they hide in the woods, and by the nearby presence of an enemy general who one member of the group is determined to kill.Read More »

Quote:
“MILES OF FIRE,” which opened Saturday at the Cameo, is decidedly not one of the better Soviet-made imports. It should have been, considering all the zing, the picturesqueness and, especially lately, the human cameos the alert Russians have been applying to their war dramas.

This Mosfilm Production, in particular, should at least have streaked like the wind in describing how a few carriage-borne Bolshevik civilians and soldiers race to a friendly town through the enemy-held countryside. But, generally, it jogs.Read More »

The third film from pioneering auteur Samuel Fuller, and the first in a cycle of WW2 films rooted deeply in his own experiences as a WW2 infantryman.

From Time Out London:
A characteristically hard-hitting war movie from Fuller, charting the fortunes of Gene Evans’ Sergeant Zack, sole survivor of a PoW massacre in Korea. Saved by a Korean orphan and joining up with other GIs cut off from their units, Evans’ cynical veteran embodies the writer-director’s abiding thesis that, to survive the madness of war, a ruthless individualism is necessary. Fuller glamorises neither his loner protagonist nor the war itself: if he clearly supports the US presence in Korea, battle is still a chaotic, deadly affair, and nobody has much idea of why they fight. The action scenes are terrific, belying the movie’s very low budget. – Geoff AndrewRead More »

Synopsis:
This is an English language film (made in America) adapted from a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque. The film follows a group of German schoolboys, talked into enlisting at the beginning of World War 1 by their jingoistic teacher. The story is told entirely through the experiences of the young German recruits and highlights the tragedy of war through the eyes of individuals. As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceptions about “the enemy” and the “rights and wrongs” of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and bewildered. This is highlighted in the scene where Paul mortally wounds a French soldier and then weeps bitterly as he fights to save his life while trapped in a shell crater with the body. The film is not about heroism but about drudgery and futility and the gulf between the concept of war and the actuality.Read More »

Synopsis:
Somewhat fictionalized account of the life and war service of Alvin York, who went from humble beginnings to being one of the most celebrated American servicemen to fight in World War I. As depicted in the film, Alvin turned to religion when he was struck by lightning during one of his drunken outings. Alvin took his newfound religion seriously claiming to be a conscientious objector when receiving his draft notice. When that was refused, he joined the infantry where he served with valor, capturing a large number of Germans and saving the lives of many of his men who were under heavy fire.Read More »

Synopsis:
Set just outside Stalingrad in the winter of 1942, this compelling wartime drama tells the tale of a contingent of German soldiers caught in a Russian vise. Headed by Gen. Paulus (Wilhelm Borchert), the other officers and foot soldiers are slowly surrounded by Russian troops on the offensive. The battles that ensue as a result of the entrapment are depicted via the experiences of individual officers and enlisted men — the full story emerges through the eyes of each of these soldiers. There is also a subsidiary tale about a friendship between a Russian woman (Sonia Zieman) and a German officer that ultimately saves the man’s life.Read More »

Lively comedy sending up British stiff-upper-lip prisoner-of-war dramas, starring James Robertson Justice as Sir Ernest Pease, a bombastic scientist who ends up in a German PoW camp during World War II. The inmates, led by Jimmy Cooper and Jock Everett, are forced to help him escape.Read More »

IMDB:
A US Army sergeant who participated in the First World War now leads a rifle squad in the same division in which he’d served, the First Infantry. The squad participates in combat action from storming Vichy French Africa into the long siege of Sicily and Italy, into D-Day at Omaha Beach, and onward through the push to Germany. Along the way the squad gets involved in several incidents with civilians, such as a French woman about to give birth and also in a firefight in an insane asylum. Throughout the war the Sergeant has engaged in a mini-battle of wills with Pvt. Griff, a semi-pacifist whose convictions are destroyed in a horrific scene amid the human genocide of a concentration camp in 1945.Read More »