So I broke my hand the other day, and I won't be able to play until it heals unfortunately. So, since I've got netflix, I wanna watch some movies on WWI as I think that war was far more entertaining from a historical perspective than WWII. Anyone know of any good ones?
Well, I'm personally more of a WWII guy. But you should try: All Quiet on the Western Front Farewell to Arms But read here: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Warfilm.html#wwI
Watch Alvin York, that's one of my favorite movies of all time. He was a great hero. BTW - I live near his house.
i'm not sure specifically about movies, but there is a great video series from the late 80's called war by gwynne dyer. it is a documentary about war in general ( and he covers ww1 ). gwynne dyer is a very interesting person with a viewpoint that will cause you to think things a little differently. he is an expat canadian living in london uk and writes a syndicated column dealing with war and politics. if you go to his website and check the archives a lot of his articles are there. i don't know if you'll find this stuff on netflix, but if you are a war afficionado this is pretty good.
I remember that I really didn't enjoy the movie Gallipoli, and haven't seen it in over 20 years, but there's one scene in there that just sums up that WWI mindset of the commanders. The guys are getting completely slaughtered, the field commanders are calling saying they're getting slaughtered, but the commander received one report saying a marker had been seen in the Turkish trenches... so he kept sending waves out despite the reality of getting 5 yards out of the trench. It's that sort of thought process that explains how many people were killed during WWI at campaigns like Gallipoli and the Somme.
"Paths of Glory" and "Gallipoli" are both excellent. Not fun, though. WWI movies are generally pretty much downers.
+1 for Gallipoli. The generalship of WWI has been described collectively as "some of the dimmest minds to ever lead men to war"... Brutal, stupid, and bloody.
You know,in museums here there are 2 bulets that hit each other on the head that are from Gallipoli.There are many bullets like that,what a horrific war that is. I'm a war movie fanatic and The Lost Batallion is the best war movie I've watched action-wise.
I've read stuff about the Gallipoli campaign about it being so hot, and the flies so bad that bodies killed in the morning were bloated and black by mid-afternoon that they would call truces to bury bodies. I can't imagine how bad WWI was.
I believe the title of the film was 'Sergeant York.' The Bill Murray remake of The Razor's Edge has a bit of WW-I in it. The Blue Max is OK if you like aviation.
From an historical perspective, World War I is interesting and possibly even more interesting than World War II. It is truly an "inadvertent" war and its origins are still being studied and debated. The war also marks the beginning of the modern era. A lot of the screwed up things we see in the world today can be at least indirectly traced back to World War I. Anyone who wants to thoroughly study both the origins and consequences of World War I would have quite a lot to study.
There were times when no truces would or could be called and waves of attacking troops would have to stumble through sections of no-mans land where bodies had been pilling up for months. (this is in reference to the Western Front) Can you imagine stepping on/in, over and around skeletons and rotting corpses while someone is shooting and lobbing explosives at you?? ugh god... It must have been so incredibly horrible that I don't think there's a movie made that will ever capture that madnes.
There is a horror movie I saw a few months ago called Deathwatch. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286306/ It's not the greatest... but interesting enough for a viewing.