16 unforgettable World War I movies, ranked

Our picks span nearly a century of film history.

At the time, it was known as The War to End All Wars. (Spoiler: that did not hold true.)

From 1914 to 1918, the world went bananas and governments sent people to die in a whole new gruesome and mechanized way. The trenches, the dum-dum bullets, the mustard gas, shell shock. None of this was good! But World War I, as it is now called, did at least inspire some quality motion pictures. Hardly worth it for the boys whose lungs were set aflame at Ypres, but if nothing else the events of the day expanded the language of cinema.

Here are the best World War I movies and where you can currently stream them. And we’re not including season four of Blackadder because that’s TV.

‘Wings’. (Donaldson Collection/Getty)

No silent film appears on more lists than this one, but that’s because Wings is the first Academy Award winner for Best Picture, then called Outstanding Picture. (People forget that in that inaugural year, there was also an award for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, which went to Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, a much more lasting project.)

Still, there’s Wings, forever carved in marble as the first biggie. Is it good? Yeah, sure, it’s fine. Two fighter pilots are vying for the heart of the same gal (Clara Bow), but they put aside their differences for the fight. The action sequences were groundbreaking (or skybreaking?) for their day.

Where to watch Wings: Tubi

Donald Sutherland and Timothy Bottoms in ‘Johnny Got His Gun’. (Everett)

Released just as the 1960s counterculture was waking up to its hangover, Johnny Got His Gun was directed by Dalton Trumbo, adapting his own anti-war novel from 1939.

In Johnny Got His Gun, Timothy Bottoms is a WWI casualty — blind, deaf, mute, limbless, faceless — hallucinating in a hospital bed, reflecting on how war was sold to him as propaganda. He reaches the outside world by twitching out messages in Morse code, begging for the release of death. Not upbeat!

The movie helped inspire Metallica’s 1989 song “One,” and clips from this film were incorporated into its grim music video, inspiring a bit of a revival for the movie on VHS.

Where to watch Johnny Got His Gun: Amazon Prime Video

‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ (2022). (Netflix)

German author Erich Maria Remarque helped define the anti-war novel with his drawn-from-personal-experience tale of horror, All Quiet on the Western Front. Its first film adaptation appears later on this list, but the recent version, albeit not for the squeamish, is worth watching as well.

Director Edward Berger (who would later make the much more fun papal drama Conclave) shoots his film in German and details a soldier’s growing disillusionment as he realizes his life isn’t worth anything to his government.

The battle scenes are unbearable, with howling men being turned into hamburger as generals look on from far away. Berger’s film won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score.

Where to watch All Quiet on the Western Front (2022): Netflix

Read the entire article on the Entertainment Weekly website.
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