Back in 1999, despite scooping up five Oscars Saving Private Ryan narrowly missed out on winning Best Picture, causing one of the biggest shocks in award show history. Now the film has once again been snubbed to the top spot as a Letterboxd patron has ranked it only at number 3 on its list of the top 100 war films.
Here we take a look at the top 10, which is jam-packed with the classics, including Paths of Glory and All Quiet on the Western Front.
10. Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick and taken from a screenplay he co-wrote with Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford. The film is based on Hasford’s autobiographical novel The Short-Timers. The story follows a platoon of U.S. Marines through their boot camp training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina. It stars Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey and Vincent D’Onofrio among others.
9. Paths of Glory
Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s WW1 novel demonstrates the sheer brutality of trench warfare. The film shows officers ordering soldiers to fight in a battle they know they cannot win. Kubrick’s ability to depict the cost of humanity that this war had is what makes the film so impressively haunting. The final scene shows a rare moment of connection and vulnerability while a German singer performs, (Christiane Kubrick).
8. Lincoln
The 2012 American biographical historical drama film was directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Daniel Day-Lewis as United States President Abraham Lincoln. Sally Field, David Strathairn and Joseph Gordon-Levitt also feature in the film. The film focuses on Lincoln’s efforts to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude by having the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the United States House of Representatives in January 1865.
7. All Quiet on the Western Front
The 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front was directed by Lewis Milestone and is an American anti-war film based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. It highlights brutal realities of World War I through the experiences of young German soldiers and the horrors of trench warfare.
6.Letters from Iwo Jima
Directed by Clint Eastwood, this 2006 filmtells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. The film stars Ken Watanabe as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi and Kazunari Ninomiya as Saigo. It is the companion to Eastwood’s film Flags of Our Fathers, which tells the story of the same battle but from the American viewpoint.
5. The Pianist
The biographical film from 2002 was adapted from a memoir by the Polish-Jewish pianist, composer and Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman. The Pianist was directed by Roman Polanski, with a script by Ronald Harwood. The film starred Adrien Brody who went on to receive critical acclaim for his performance.
4. Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia was released in 1962 and it was based on the life of T.E. Lawrence and his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published in 1926. The biographical film tells the story of of T.E. Lawrence, an English officer that went on to unite and leas the diverse and warring Arab tribes during the First World War.
3. Saving Private Ryan
The end of the 20th century allowed for a period of reflection over what had happened in the middle of the century, most significantly, WW2. Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan focuses on the D-Day invasion of Normandy and follows a group of soldier’s experiences, led by Captain Miller, played by Tom Hanks.
2. Schindler’s List
This 1993 classic, starring Liam Neeson is a story of a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish–Jewish refugees from the Holocaust during the Second World War. The critics give it 98% and state: “Schindler’s List blends the abject horror of the Holocaust with Steven Spielberg’s signature tender humanism to create the director’s dramatic masterpiece.”
1. Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola’s loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness relays Conrad’s use of a river journey from South Vietnam to Cambodia as a trip into the most burrowing reaches of the human psyche. Martin Sheen stars as a special-ops soldier Captain Willard, charged with ending the career of the abusive Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando).