WWII Films
by f. baez | created - 28 Dec 2012 | updated - 1 month ago | PublicThe 25 World War II Films I've liked the most.
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1. Casablanca (1942)
PG | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War
A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Votes: 606,165 | Gross: $1.02M
2. Landscape After Battle (1970)
109 min | Drama, History, Romance
The film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury the tormentors they find alive. They are ... See full summary »
Director: Andrzej Wajda | Stars: Daniel Olbrychski, Stanislawa Celinska, Aleksander Bardini, Tadeusz Janczar
Votes: 886
3. Life Is Beautiful (1997)
PG-13 | 116 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
When an open-minded Jewish waiter and his son become victims of the Holocaust, he uses a perfect mixture of will, humor and imagination to protect his son from the dangers around their camp.
Director: Roberto Benigni | Stars: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini, Giustino Durano
Votes: 743,416 | Gross: $57.60M
4. The Damned (1969)
R | 157 min | Drama, War
The dramatic collapse of a wealthy, industrialist/Junker family during the reign of the Third Reich.
Director: Luchino Visconti | Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger
Votes: 9,927 | Gross: $0.63M
5. We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974)
124 min | Comedy, Drama
Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.
Director: Ettore Scola | Stars: Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman, Stefania Sandrelli, Stefano Satta Flores
Votes: 7,294
6. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
R | 153 min | Adventure, Drama, War
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a plan to assassinate Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers coincides with a theatre owner's vengeful plans for the same.
Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Mélanie Laurent
Votes: 1,584,832 | Gross: $120.54M
7. The Stranger (1946)
Passed | 95 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi.
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Philip Merivale
Votes: 28,719
8. Night and Fog (1956)
TV-14 | 32 min | Documentary, Short, History
The history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.
Director: Alain Resnais | Stars: Michel Bouquet, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler
Votes: 21,472
9. It Happened in '43 (1960)
105 min | Drama, Romance, War
In the midst of World War II, the story of the affair of a young woman married to a man in a wheelchair, with a deserter from the Italian army, intertwines with that of the power grab of a ... See full summary »
Director: Florestano Vancini | Stars: Belinda Lee, Gabriele Ferzetti, Enrico Maria Salerno, Andrea Checchi
Votes: 453
10. Schindler's List (1993)
R | 195 min | Biography, Drama, History
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall
Votes: 1,451,267 | Gross: $96.90M
11. Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
R | 138 min | Drama, War
In 1944, an 18-year-old boy from small-town France collaborates with the Gestapo and subsequently falls in love with a Jewish girl.
Director: Louis Malle | Stars: Pierre Blaise, Aurore Clément, Holger Löwenadler, Therese Giehse
Votes: 7,714
12. Dunkirk (2017)
PG-13 | 106 min | Action, Drama, History
Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Commonwealth and Empire, and France are surrounded by the German Army and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Fionn Whitehead, Barry Keoghan, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
Votes: 740,370 | Gross: $188.37M
13. The Last Metro (1980)
PG | 131 min | Drama, Romance, War
In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Germans while doing both of their jobs.
Director: François Truffaut | Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Poiret, Andréa Ferréol
Votes: 15,825
14. From Here to Eternity (1953)
Passed | 118 min | Drama, Romance, War
At a U.S. Army base in 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his commanding officer's wife and top aide begin a tentative affair.
Director: Fred Zinnemann | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed
Votes: 50,832 | Gross: $30.50M
15. The Great Dictator (1940)
G | 125 min | Comedy, Drama, War
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner
Votes: 237,411 | Gross: $0.29M
16. Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)
R | 104 min | Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
Billy Pilgrim has mysteriously become unstuck in time. He goes on an uncontrollable trip back and forth from his birth in New York to life on a distant planet and back again to the horrors of the 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden.
Director: George Roy Hill | Stars: Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans
Votes: 13,913 | Gross: $0.57M
17. Downfall (2004)
R | 156 min | Biography, Drama, History
Traudl Junge, the final secretary for Adolf Hitler, tells of the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel | Stars: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler
Votes: 375,312 | Gross: $5.51M
18. Sophie's Choice (1982)
R | 150 min | Drama, Romance
Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.
Director: Alan J. Pakula | Stars: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin
Votes: 52,782 | Gross: $30.04M
19. Hostages (1943)
Approved | 88 min | Drama, War
A group of twenty-six Czechoslovakian citizens are jailed until a 50,000 crown reward by the Gestapo uncovers the supposed killer of a Nazi officer whom virtually everyone suspects committed suicide.
Director: Frank Tuttle | Stars: Luise Rainer, Arturo de Córdova, William Bendix, Paul Lukas
Votes: 102
20. Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
PG | 108 min | Biography, Drama, History
A dramatization based on eyewitness accounts of Hitler's final days in an underground bunker, his military henchmen, and his stormy relationship with Eva Braun.
Director: Ennio De Concini | Stars: Alec Guinness, Simon Ward, Adolfo Celi, Diane Cilento
Votes: 1,852 | Gross: $1.11M
21. The Two-Headed Spy (1958)
Approved | 93 min | Drama, Thriller, War
A long-entrenched British agent planted in the German Army is urged to continue his work during the Second World War, but struggles to keep secret his true identity from the Third Reich.
Director: André De Toth | Stars: Jack Hawkins, Gia Scala, Erik Schumann, Alexander Knox
Votes: 933
22. Rome, Open City (1945)
Not Rated | 103 min | Drama, Thriller, War
During the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944, the Resistance leader, Giorgio Manfredi, is chased by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a way to escape.
Director: Roberto Rossellini | Stars: Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi, Marcello Pagliero, Vito Annichiarico
Votes: 28,981
23. The Tin Drum (1979)
R | 142 min | Drama, War
In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.
Director: Volker Schlöndorff | Stars: David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Katharina Thalbach
Votes: 25,758
24. The Pianist (2002)
R | 150 min | Biography, Drama, Music
During WWII, acclaimed Polish musician Wladyslaw faces various struggles as he loses contact with his family. As the situation worsens, he hides in the ruins of Warsaw in order to survive.
Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Emilia Fox
Votes: 912,651 | Gross: $32.57M
25. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
R | 169 min | Drama, War
Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns
Votes: 1,496,929 | Gross: $216.54M
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