The season of overeating and slumping in front of the TV —also known as Christmas—is here. But what to watch? Judging by broadcasters’ schedules, and their prominence on streaming platforms, war films are enduringly popular. Often long, and usually immersive, they are also excellent post-prandial fare. To help readers choose, The Economist has created a list of the best.
In making our choices, we weighed several factors, including authenticity, originality, intelligence and wit. And this is not merely an arbitrary selection from our editors; we asked military enthusiasts who read The War Room, our newsletter on defence and international security, for their nominations and got scores of replies.
“Paths of Glory” (1957)
Stanley Kubrick’s film about the duplicity and incompetence of the French generals during the first world war was considered so subversive that it was was not shown in France until 1975. Adapted from a novel by Humphrey Cobb, it tells the story of three soldiers who were shot for cowardice after a futile assault on an impregnable German stronghold on the western front. But the trio were not cowards; officers made them scapegoats in order to cover up their own cravenness and brutality. It may be the oldest film on the list, but it remains as pertinent, and shocking, as ever.
“Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964)
Some may question whether Kubrick’s second entry on this list is a war film at all. But we could not leave it out as our military newsletter gets its name from the film’s most famous line: “You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!” The screenwriters brilliantly satirise “Mutually Assured Destruction”, “missile gaps”, “doomsday devices” and all the other sinister jargon that flowed out of cold-war think-tanks such as the Rand Corporation. Dr Strangelove himself, played by Peter Sellers, is one of cinema’s most memorable creations.
“The Battle of Algiers” (1966)
A depiction of the conflict between Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) and French colonial authorities in the 1950s. Gillo Pontecorvo, an Italian director, gave the film the feel of a newsreel by shooting it in black and white and using mostly non-professional actors. Many had themselves lived through the battle in the Casbah, where the film was actually shot, giving the movie a visceral authenticity. Contrary to its reputation, “The Battle of Algiers” is not a straightforwardly anti-French film. Although paratroopers torture Algerians, the FLN blows up plenty of innocent, and often very young, Europeans. There is brutality and cruelty on both sides.
“Apocalypse Now” (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola’s sprawling psychological epic remains the best take on the Vietnam war. Very loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness”, the film follows an American special-forces officer, played by Martin Sheen, on his mission to assassinate a renegade colonel, played by a bloated Marlon Brando, who has gone insane deep in the jungle. Mr Coppola’s grand theme, not fashionable when he made the movie, is of wholesome American values—and military discipline—disintegrating in South-East Asia. The script is replete with black humour. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” purrs Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) as the jungle ignites around him.
“Das Boot” (1981)
A West German production, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, this is a tense, compelling account of the Battle of the Atlantic during the second world war. “Wolfpacks” of German submarines hunted Allied merchant ships to try to sink the vital food and military supplies that kept Britain going in the war. Plenty of films have been made on a sub, but none has better captured the claustrophobia, nor the effects of almost constant stress on a painfully young crew. Petersen heightened the authenticity by filming “Das Boot” over a year, allowing beards and hair to grow and bodies to lose weight.
“Saving Private Ryan” (1998)
The first 23 minutes of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece set the benchmark for the war films that came after it. In recreating the American assault on Omaha Beach on June 6th 1944, the director brought audiences closer than ever before to the fear, horror and confusion of combat. The aural landscape of the beach, designed by Gary Rydstrom, is particularly immersive and harrowing; bullets thud into bodies or ricochet off the steel of the tank obstacles. The film concludes as a patriotic tribute to the “Greatest Generation”, but it is the beginning that stays in the soul.
“Zero Dark Thirty” (2012)
Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the “war on terror” and the hunt for Osama bin Laden stirred controversy on its release because of its long, gruesome scenes of CIA interrogators torturing al-Qaeda suspects. Maya, played by a superb Jessica Chastain, appears to be as enthusiastic a torturer as her male colleagues. She manages to track down bin Laden from the scraps of information she gleans from her victims—but do the means justify the end? The assault by Navy SEALs on bin Laden’s hideout provides an adrenaline-driven climax to one of the most intelligent war films ever made.
Several other classics were suggested for this list, but didn’t quite make the final cut. So, an honourable mention to a few of those, most significantly “The Thin Red Line” (1998), “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957), “A Bridge Too Far” (1977), “Battle of Britain” (1969) and “Platoon” (1986).
