Image via Complex Original
We don’t often think of “war” as a film genre unto itself. So frequently, our favorite films set against the backdrop of war are filed under romance, drama, or even comedy. But considering its presence in the medium, it seems only fair we celebrate these poignant and pervasive films with a roundup of the best in class. We’ve done a Netflix deep dive to bring you the very best in World War I and World War II-themed movies for your binge-watching enjoyment.
In the WWI genre, I strongly recommend Atonement, a critically acclaimed (it earned a score of 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) English drama starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, and Benedict Cumberbatch. As if its cast weren’t enough of a sell, it’s directed by Joe Wright, the visionary behind Pan, Anna Karenina, and Pride & Prejudice, so you know you’re in for a treat.
Come the WWII-era films, Colin Firth and Jeremy Irvine give impressive performances in The Railway Man as the respective old and young versions of Eric Lomax, a veteran of the Pacific Theatre on whose biography the film was based. The award-winning, Jonathan Teplitzky-directed film boasts an all-star cast who include Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgård, so this is definitely one to watch. In Julia, Jane Fonda plays Lillian, a hero who smuggled $50,000 into Berlin via her hat and a box of candy in support of the anti-Nazi movement. Twin Sisters, Phoenix, and The Diary of Anne Frank join the list of WWII flicks to watch during what’s lingering of this chilly spring.
So strap in, and prepare to relive some of the most tumultuous times in history.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Director: Mark Herman
Stars: Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis, Asa Butterfield
A different kind of war story all together, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas takes us right outside of a never-named extermination camp. We see the film through the eyes of Bruno, an eight-year-old boy who's sad that he has to move from Berlin to the countryside after his father, Ralf, has been promoted. Bruno is curious and confused by his new surroundings and the film creates a sense of anxiety in the fact that we know all the horrors happening just a few steps away from Bruno’s comfortable home. Bored one day, Bruno wanders off and meets a boy, Shmuel, who is around his age. Shmuel lives on the inside of the fence and an innocent Bruno thinks he—and all the Jews he has met—are simply wearing pajamas. Without offering too many spoilers, the two quickly form of a friendship, which, as one can immediately sense, won’t end well for anyone. But what makes The Boy in the Striped Pajamas so powerful is the way in which we see the horrors of the camps begin to ruin Bruno’s family, who for so long looked the other way. They can't anymore.
Atonement
Director: Joe Wright
Stars: James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan, Vanessa Redgrave
Based on the novel by Ian McEwan, Atonement tells the story of star-crossed lovers Cecilia Tallis, a wealthy aristocrat, and Robbie Turner, the son of the Tallis’s housekeeper. It’s mostly a love story, sure, but their happily-ever-after is severely interrupted by the start of World War II. After Cecilia’s younger sister Briony spins a tale that first drives the couple apart, we cut to the heart of the war, which not only is devastating mainland Europe, but London as well. We see shots of Cecilia and Briony working as nurses in the city while Robbie, poor Robbie, is off in the trenches in France, trying to reach Dunkirk by foot and make his way back to Cecilia. While it’s Briony’s lie early on that keeps the two apart, it’s the brutality of the war all across the continent that ultimately keeps Robbie and Cecilia from ever reuniting. World War II was a merciless war and Atonement is true to that.
Naked Among Wolves
Director: Philipp Kadelbach
Stars: Florian Stetter, Peter Schneider, Sylvester Groth, Sabin Tambrea
Naked Among Wolves takes place entirely within the Buchenwald concentration camp, in 1945 near the end of World War II. Sensing their loss, the S.S. guards running the camp don’t know what to do and the prisoners, at least the ones we see, have slowly and secretly been preparing for the day they will be freed. Things grow complicated, however, when a camp prisoner discovers a Jewish child hiding inside a suitcase. The film chronicles the decision the prisoners must make in regards to the young boy. If they tell the S.S. he will surely be killed, but hiding him poses its own conflict and could derail all their attempts to bring about a huge uprising within the camp. Naked Among Wolves is the third adaptation of Bruno Apitz moving novel, which is very loosely based on his own experiences as a prisoner in Buchenwald. It’s this reason that probably makes the film so suffocating, tense, and ultimately affecting.
Remembrance
Director: Anna Justice
Stars: Alice Dwyer, Dagmar Manzel, Mateusz Damiecki
Remembrance takes place in two different time periods. One is in 1944 where we meet Tomasz, a savvy Polish resistance fighter who works from within a concentration camp. His job is to take photos of all the atrocities around him so that the world can see the true horrors of World War II. He’s also in love with Hannah Silberstein, a German Jew who is also in the camp. After Tomasz dresses up as a Nazi, the two escape and make their way to Tomasz’s untrustworthy mother’s home. It’s here where, for the first time, we see the two separated as Tomasz must go to Warsaw to deliver the photos. The film is cut with flash forwards to the 1970s, where we see that Hannah has survived the war and now lives in New York with her husband and daughter. We don’t know what happened to Tomasz and only the flashbacks allow us to piece things together. While it’s certainly another romance set with the WWII backdrop, the way Remembrance plays with time makes it an interesting and unique watch.
The English Patient
Director: Anthony Minghella
Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Kristin Scott Thomas
In this Best Picture winner, Ralph Fiennes plays an objectively dreamy cartographer whose life goes completely to shit. Before the start of the war, he’s mapping the Sahara desert—which sounds like the hottest, most boring job ever—when he’s joined by a British couple. He compromises the fidelity of the wife with his rugged, but angular good-looks and silent-type mystique. But then the husband finds out and attempts to kamikaze Fiennes with her inside the plane. He dies, Fiennes dodges and she survives, so Fiennes takes her to a cave and leaves to find help, which he fails to do because WWII has broken out and everyone is suspicious of everyone else. He ends up getting shot out of the air and deep-burned to unrecognizability where he is cared for by international treasure Juliette Binoche in her Oscar-winning portrayal of an art-loving French-Canadian nurse.
Morituri
Director: Bernhard Wicki
Stars: Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin, Trevor Howard
This mid-career Brando flop failed at the box office because people didn’t understand its Latin title. In it, he stars as a German pacifist who is blackmailed by the Allies into boarding a Nazi rubber-transporting ship and disabling it so they may snag the precious bendy substance. He gains the sympathy of fellow anti-Nazis on board, but when goose-stepping officers join the crew and get suspicious of Brando’s motivations, he’s forced into an unsuccessful mutiny that blows the ship. The unremarkable film did lead to a terrific cinema verite documentary by the Maysles brothers (Grey Gardens). The half-hour film follows Brando in all his lispy charming glory as he navigates a press junket by flirting with lady reporters, interviewing a black mother about civil rights and taking a manager to task about the hidden profit motivations of media—my man would have hated clickbait.
The Way Back
Director: Peter Weir
Stars: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan, Colin Farrell
In this survival adventure, an international crew of POWs escape from a Russian gulag in the middle of a torrential blizzard—otherwise known as Siberia’s everyday forecast. Directed by versatile auteur Peter Weir (Master and Commander, The Truman Show), Jim Sturgess plays the lead as a Polish officer who gets sent there after his wife betrays him. Supporting him, Ed Harris stars as a hardy American engineer; Colin Farrell as a tatted-up, Stalin-loving Russian criminal and Saoirse Ronan as a Polish orphan whose parents were killed by the communists. The rag-tag team run the gauntlet of nature’s tortures—shivering to near-death in a frozen forest, crossing the arid and beyond-barren Gobi Desert, then clambering up the goddamn Himalayas where they meet a Tibetan monk—which seems like the ideal person to run into after a multi-thousand mile trek through the most diabolical environs on the planet. Do not to get sent to Siberia. It is very hard to leave.
The Longest Day
Director: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki
Stars: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery
This gargantuan epic about the D-Day invasion ranks as the most comprehensive depiction of WWII ever put to film. Producer Darryl Zanuck consulted extensively with the men portrayed to imbue this titanic masterpiece with an undeniable authenticity. The huge all-star cast of silver screen stars includes John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum and Sean Connery alongside loads of super-talented French and German actors that portray the conflict from all sides. It reigned as the last of the black-and-white roadshow productions (a novelty Quentin Tarantino resurrected for The Hateful Eight) and ran for a staggering three hours. With a budget of ten million, the film was shot on-location whenever possible, employed 2,000 actual soldiers as extras and won the Academy Award for its innovative special effects—it held the title of most expensive black-and-white film until Schindler’s List. It’s the last performance Connery gave before he became James Bond—a role that he won after the casting director watched him walk down the street “striding like a panther”—which is my favorite description of anyone ever.
Into the White
Director: Petter Næss
Stars: Stig Henrik Hoff, David Kross, Florian Lukas, Lachlan Nieboer, Rupert Grint
In this Norwegian-helmed picture, Nazi and British fighter pilots crash land in the Scandinavian wilderness and by sheer luck happen upon the same (somehow) perfectly sealed and cozy cabin. At first, the Germans insist upon taking the Brits “prisoner,” which the Allies regard with impressively cheeky bemusement even when confronted with the possibility of getting capped. But, as tends to happen to people stranded in a blizzard, the two sides set aside their differing opinions on the Jews and begin to bond over booze and their shared isolation. The cramped drama failed to achieve much success, but the saving grace is Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint sporting a clunky accent from somewhere in the United Kingdom and singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” while taking a whizz and looking at the Northern Lights.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Director: Jon Jones
Stars: Kate Ashfield, Geoff Breton, Ron Cook
Remember when Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House and everyone whipped themselves into a tizzy about him saying “Hopefully, she would have been a belieber.” That was some bullshit. Here’s why: dude wrote that in the guest book. And then, the House’s facebook page shared his private note—narc move. Also, precocious and insightful as Anne was, she was still a young girl in the beginning throes of puberty. It’s unfathomable she wouldn’t have memorized “Boyfriend.” And yeah, it’s self-absorbed, but when you become an international popstar before you can drive—I think that’s just your default personality. Anyway, this BBC-produced docu-drama draws from Anne’s diary and depicts in elegant fashion the diary’s famous episodes like Anne smooching Peter Van Daan, the teeth pulling of his sister and the break-in that the Franks must silently endure lest they be spotted. The narration includes her most timeless musings, and the conclusion is the one, heart-wrenching moment that Anne couldn’t put in her diary.
The Railway Man
Director: Jonathan Teplitzky
Stars: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, Stellan Skarsgård
Colin Firth plays a WWII veteran of the Pacific Theatre who surrendered to the Japanese. Since giving up rendered a man lower than a dog in Japanese culture at the time, Firth’s character gets subjected to some truly heinous torture after his initial refusal to build a railway for the enemy. Decades later, he’s married a sympathetic and subdued Nicole Kidman, but then finds out that one of his captors escaped prosecution for his war crimes and still lives nearby. Driven by the horror of his past, Firth tracks the man down and must decide whether or not to return the monstrous behavior that broke him.
The Enemy Below
Director: Dick Powell
Stars: Robert Mitchum, Curt Jürgens
In this explosion-laden sea caper, it’s “Killer Sub vs Sub-Killer” as an American destroyer captain and a reluctantly Nazi U-boat commander attempt to blow the other up first. In a game of aquatic cat and mouse, they each land crunchy hits on the other before the American rope-a-dopes the German into thinking his ship is weaker than it is by setting small, contained fires on the poop deck. Confident, the German surfaces into a precarious position, then gets smacked by the big ship’s decisive torpedo. Ultimately, the savvy of the two captains breeds a mutual respect in this winner of Best Special Effects at the 1958 Oscars.
Saints and Soldiers
Director: Ryan Little
Stars: Corbin Allred, Alexander Niver, Kirby Heyborne, Lawrence Bagby, Peter Asle Holden
During the Malmedy massacre, German soldiers killed 84 unarmed American POWs. The gruesome moment marked the only time an atrocity of such scale had happened to Americans and kicks off this rather overtly religious WWII tale. Deacon, a noble Mormon, and Gould, a godless medic, escape the Nazi killing spree and must weave their way back behind American lines and aid a British pilot who has aerial photographs that will bolster the Allies’ attacks. Ultimately, Deacon meets his demise, but not before passing on the Book of Mormon to Gould—a gesture that only those who’ve spent a lifetime abstaining from drugs, coffee and alcohol will find unsanctimoniously touching.
Secrets of War
Director: Dennis Bots
Stars: Maas Bronkhuyzen, Joes Brauers, Michael Nierse
Two mischievous Dutch boys, Lambert and Tuur, have their idyllic childhood disrupted by the Nazi invasion. While their fathers split over whether to join or oppose their new Hugo-Boss-clad overlords, a new girl, Maartje, comes to town and forms a friendship triangle with the pre-prepubescents. When Lambert is getting pushed into becoming a Nazi Youth, Maartje reveals to Tuur that she’s not actually just visiting on vacation, but actually fleeing for the reason that people tend to flee the Nazis. The secret ends up tearing the two formerly eternal friends—another of the many sucky things that resulted from WWII.
Female Agents
Director: Jean-Paul Salomé
Stars: Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu, Marie Gillain, Déborah Francois, Mortiz Bleibtreu
As its title suggests, Female Agents poses a different, even refreshing kind of war tale. It follows a woman who, initially part of the French Resistance, is recruited by a secret English spy organization called the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She's given out a series of missions and must recruit woman in all different positions to help her carry them out. There were actual female resistance fighters during World War II so the film is a unique, albeit dramatized tale, about a group of heroes rarely seen in the media. In addition to this, the SEO was real and Jean-Paul Salomé, the director of the film, was apparently inspired by a woman who was actually part of the service set out on bringing down the Germans.
Julia
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Starring: Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards
Did you know Lillian Hellman (of The Children’s Hour and Little Foxes fame) once smuggled $50,000 into Berlin via her hat and a box of candy? And that she did it in support of her old friend and the anti-nazi movement? So goes the plot of Julia, at least, the 1977 film based on one chapter of Hellman’s Pentimento. Sure, some claim that the plot was fictionalised, but what great fiction that is: intrigue, suspense, train rides, typewriters tossed through windows! More than anything, Julia is worth watching for its performances. WWII flicks were as award-bait-y in the 70s as they are now, and this was the first film in six years to win both best supporting actor and actress at the academy awards. Star Jane Fonda also got herself a Best Actress nom. But most notable is Meryl Streep, in her film debut. If you’re in the mood for hollywood history as much as military, Julia is one to check out.
Twin Sisters
Director: Ben Sombogaart
Starring: Thekla Reuten, Nadja Uhl, Ellen Vogel
The “twins get separated as children” plotline (and the “dubiously intentioned adult intercepted all their letters” plotline) is something of a dramatic cliche, but Twin Sisters still stands out, if only for its less than perfect reunion. Director Ben Sombogaart sets the stakes high in his intense hypothetical: could you still love your sister if her husband was a Nazi and yours was a Jew who died in the holocaust? This 2002 Dutch film finds its answer in the lives of Lotte and Anna, each shipped off to different relatives in the 1920s, following the deaths of their parents. Shown first as girls, then young adults, then old women, Twin Sisters (or De Tweeling) charts the physical and emotional distance in Lotte and Anna’s relationship. It’s interesting to see how the two sides of the war manifest in the two sisters. Maybe Sombogaart’s sentimentality would feel too much anywhere else, but in a WWII movie, the balance is just right.
Phoenix
Director: Christian Petzold
Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf
Beautiful, tense, and complex, Phoenix isn’t content to be yet another moody post-war romance. After suffering a bullet wound to the face and undergoing reconstructive surgery, holocaust survivor Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) returns to the world as an uncanny version of her former self. Upon finding her husband (who fails to recognize her), she begins an intricate deception, determined to find out if he was the one who betrayed her to the Nazis. The plot alone is enough to make Phoenix worth your time, but Petzold’s direction, Fromm’s cinematography and Hoss’s performance are equally stunning. It’s no surprise that so many reviews liken this German film to the works of Hitchcock (“noir-ish” is an apt genre title) but Phoenix, despite its setting and style, never feels dated. Here, the rubble of reconstruction proves just as fraught and harrowing as the war itself.
Flame & Citron
Director: Ole Christian Madsen
Starring: Thure Lindhardt, Mads Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade
Most movies about Nazis aren’t interested in moral ambiguity. Maybe more so than any other conflict in history, WWII is seen as a clear case of Good versus Evil. This is a convenient narrative, and a comforting one, but convenience and comfort don’t make for very good art — which is why most Allies v. Axis dramas end up as boring rehashes. Thankfully, Madsen’s portrait of two Danish resistance fighters allows itself some time for the grey. Nazi-fighting folk heros “Flammen” (Thure Lindhardt) and “Citronen” (Mads Mikkelsen) prove complex heros, shooting down German occupiers in a violent defense of their home country. Madsen courts old tropes (the femme fatale, the Butch Cassidy style bullet bromance) but melds them in new ways. The Danish director spent eight years researching the events Flame & Citron depicts, and his dedication pays off: Flame & Citron is a lot of things, and none of them are convenient, comfortable or done half-way.
Twelve O'Clock High
Director: Henry King
Starring: Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill
Twelve O’Clock High is a war movie from 1949, and it watches like one. There’s lots of men being men, American integrity, and rag-tag group reformation. But it’s allowed to be all of those things because Twelve O’Clock High is also a classic. Starring OG heartthrob Gregory Peck as General Frank Savage (in a bit of nominative determinism, Savage proves an especially harsh and antagonistic leader), we watch the plucky 918th Bomb Group get whipped into shape and brought to victory. It’s satisfying and surprisingly deep, and is frequently praised for its depiction of the psychological pressures of wartime command. When we say “classic,” we don’t just mean “black and white” — the Library of Congress selected King’s film for preservation in 1988 in the National Film Registry on the grounds that it was “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” And if you find yourself especially attached to the 918 Bomb Group, you can catch up on their later adventures in the Twelve O’Clock High TV show, too.