x IntroduCtIon
desperate glory,” as Wilfred Owen put it. They do so by making mortal combat a
sanitized and fascinating aural- visual spectacle, viewed in the comfort and safety
of the Cineplex auditorium or the family living room or on one’s iPhone, far removed
from the squalor, stench, terrifying dangers, and agonies of the real thing. At the
same time, conventional war films often afford short shrift to the wider context in
which combat occurs. Refusing to address why a war is being fought (and for whose
benefit), many war films are really narrowly focused survivalist pictures that show
soldiers fighting for one reason and one reason only: to stay alive and to ensure that
their brothers- in- arms survive— a morally unassailable rationale to be sure, but one
that also involves a pernicious kind of po liti cal myopia that needs to be interrogated
and called out. (Though well- made and often gripping, films like Black Hawk Down,
We Were Soldiers, American Sniper, and Lone Survivor are guilty of ideological eva-
sions and historical misrepre sen ta tions that subliminally glorify the business of
war by glorifying the warrior, an equation that is by no means inevitable, or even
log ical.)
On the other side of the divide, the greatest war films are always anti- war films,
especially the ones that emanate from actual combat veterans who have known
the true face of war and wish to educate the uninitiated to its horrors, for example,
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front), Humphrey Cobb (Paths of
Glory), Pierre Schoendoerffer (The 317th Platoon), Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-
Five), Lothar- Günther Buchheim (Das Boot), James Carabatsos (Hamburger Hill), and
Oliver Stone (Platoon), among many others. Films based in the real experience of
combat veterans are obviously better able to represent war’s deadly mayhem with-
out making it an exhilarating advertisement for more of the same in real life—
though no film is immune to grossly distorted viewer reception.
In sum, the war film genre is extremely variegated, rife with contradictions, and
layered with ideological complexities that have been treated in depth in dozens of
academic studies. The aim of this book is more modest: to pres ent a wide sam-
pling of the best of the genre and to provide sufficient background information
about how the film came into existence and how it relates to the real history it
purports to represent in either broad or very specific terms— the two things that
most often stimulate viewer curiosity.Se lection Criteria
Though many se lections for the greatest war films are obvious (e.g., Lawrence of
Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai), no two people could ever agree as to the top
100 entries in the war film genre. Tastes vary, as do under lying ideological biases
and agendas. At any rate, the film list I compiled for this book derives from a life-
time as a film buff, 30 years teaching film at the college level, writing several film
books, taking suggestions from friends and colleagues, and doing extensive
research, including a thorough review of the “best of” lists compiled by other film
critics and historians. Readers might find a few of the se lections herein quirky and
may strenuously object to certain omissions (e.g., Casablanca or Gone with the Wind,
which are essentially war time romances). All I can say is that I have tried my best