The 21 best World War I movies of all time

From ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ to ‘Gallipoli’: Great War films ranked by historical accuracy

he most historically complex wars have the greatest filmographies… discuss. Where World War II flicks have often been a showcase for straightforward heroism, the films of the Great War, like those of Vietnam, have had fewer moral certainties to work with. Filtered through the prism of filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Lewis Milestone, King Vidor, GW Pabst and others, the attritional grind of trench warfare has spawned more masterpieces than any other historic event – not to mention the Blackadder Goes Forth. Even 1917, the closest the cinema of World War I has to a Saving Private Ryan, ends with a bunch of men sent foolishly over the top to an unknown fate.

But which of these films have shown the conflict like it was and which have taken major liberties or just reinforced its myths? To help rank the best Great War films, we asked military historian and host of the Old Front Line podcast Paul Reed to dig into the most realistic depictions of the war on the big screen.

Best World War I movies

21. A Very Long Engagement (2004)

Photograph: Warner Bros.

Based on Sébastien Japrisot 1993 novel, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s romantic epic delves into two underexplored aspects of the conflict from the French perspective: the harsh punishment meted out to soldiers deemed to have failed in their duties – here represented by Gaspard Ulliel’s poilu, sent into no man’s line after being accused of self-mutilation – and the fiancée (Audrey Tautou) who tries to find him after the guns fell silent in 1918. It’s more than Amélie with howitzers, says Reed, who calls it ‘a really good picture of the French experience of the war’.

The expert view: ‘There’s lots of real scenarios in this: the French sentenced a huge number of men to death during the First World War, although they didn’t throw men out into no man’s land – that’s a fiction of the movie. It’s set in this troglodyte world filmed with a half-light filter where everything looks dark, and the battle scenes are incredibly realistic. I know the filmmakers engaged a lot of small collectors and museums to provide the real kit. It gives a really good snapshot of what the French experience of the war was like.’

20. Shoulder Arms (1919)

Photograph: Alpha Video

Charlie Chaplin’s war effort consisted of a caper that sent him into the trenches to great comic effect. The Little Tramp turns Little Doughboy as Charlie, an American soldier adjusting haplessly to life on the Western Front, before channeling his inner Sergeant York – reluctantly – and capturing the Kaiser. Surprisingly, Chaplin’s on-screen antics aren’t entirely historically inaccurate, although there’s no evidence anyone used French cheese as a hand grenade.

The expert view: ‘The trench scenes are actually quite realistic, although it’s the beginning of what I’d called a “Hollywood trench” – a wide and straight trench for the dolly to go up and tracking shots. The kit is all contemporary: there’s a scene with a smelly cheese through the post and he puts on a French-style gas mask which was issued in great numbers to the Americans. It is a comedy but it gives us a view of what the Americans thought of the war.’

19. The Dawn Patrol (1938)

Photograph: Alamy

This all-star war flick sees Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and a young David Niven, whose own father was killed at Gallipoli, taking to the skies above the Western Front and confronting the harsh realities of air combat: an endless stream of young, callow pilots being sent up and shot down in short order. With spectacular aerial scenes and a realistic air of fatalism permeating the story, it’s an impressive depiction of the war in the skies.

The expert view: ‘This is the first proper attempt to reflect the war in the air and it’s very convincing on how sharp and deadly air combat was – they built planes that were loosely based on originals – and the stress [it placed] on pilots. Basil Rathbone, the squadron commander had been in the Great War himself as an ordinary soldier. The only downside with Dawn Patrol is that you can see it was filmed in America. It doesn’t look anything like the Western Front.’

→ Read the entire article on the Time Out website.
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