Wooden Crosses (Les Croix de Bois)

Directed by Raymond Bernard
Casts: Pierre Blanchard, Gabriel Gabrio, Charles Vanel
1932

Les Croix de Bois (Wooden Crosses) may well be the most powerful anti-war film ever made; certainly it is the grimmest and most uncompromising. Starting with an impressionistic shot of a gloomy hillside studded with white grave markings, the film delineates the hopelessness and horror of war in such explicit terms that at times it's nearly impossible to watch. Set during WWI, the story concentrates on a handful of French draftees, including an idealistic student named Demachy (Pierre Blanchard). Marching off to war with joyful patriotic fervor, the men are quickly disillusioned by the appalling realities of total warfare. When they aren't enduring ten nonstop days of enemy bombardment, the soldiers must sweat out the horrible realization that their trenches are being mined from underground. Nor are they given any relief during those rare lulls in fighting. At one point, the men are yanked away from a much-needed furlough to march in a victory parade for the entertainment of their callous, fat-cat superior officers. One by one, the men are killed off, until only Demachy remains — but, tragically, not for long. Such was the impact of Les Croix de Bois, that, when it was shown on French television in the 1970s, a WWI survivor who watched the film for the first time was so overwhelmed by despair that he committed suicide. Generous portions of the film's battle sequences were later incorporated in the 1934 John Ford film The World Moves On and the 1936 Howard Hawks production - The Road to Glory.

Forbidden Games

Directed by Rene Clement
Starring:Brigitte Fossey, Georges Poujouly, Lucien Hubert
1952

One of the first films to see the horrors of war through the eyes of children, Forbidden Games was a critical smash, winning prizes from the New York Film Critics, the British Academy, and the Venice Film Festival. Adapted by Francois Boyer, director Rene Clement, and two others from Boyer's novel, the story focuses on Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), a five-year-old refugee from Paris taken in by a peasant family after her parents are killed during a bombardment of a civilian convoy. Michel Dolle (Georges Pujouly), the family's 11-year-old son, becomes her best friend, and they create a cemetery in which Paulette's dog is interred, along with other animals and insects, some of whom the children kill themselves. The Dolle family is too busy feuding with the Gouards, their neighbors, to notice the absence of the children. Eventually, authorities locate Paulette and insist that she be placed in an orphanage for legal adoption. Unsentimental and yet heartbreaking, Forbidden Games demonstrates the strategies of children who witness war to deal with the constant presence of death. It's also a bitter condemnation of the selfishness of adults who could offer their charges more love and protection.

Awards:
1952 Venice International Film Festival Lion of San Marco for Best Film
1952 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion
1952 New York Film Critics Circle Best Foreign Film

Sophie's Choice

Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Casts: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol
1982

Meryll Streep received an Academy Award for her portrayal of Sophie Zaistowska in this drama set in in 1947 post world war II. Kevin Kline plays her lover, Nathan. The story revolves around Sophie's struggle as a Polish-Catholic immigrant in the U. S. who had survived the Nazi concentration camp. The lovers' drama unfolds through the observation of a friend and would-be writer, Stingo (Peter MacNicol). As the trio grows closer, Stingo discovers the hidden truths that they harbor, resulting in a narrative that is both captivating and moving.

Undoubtedly, Meryll was the perfect choice for Sophie. Her performance as Sophie Zawistowska was ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time!

Awards:
1982 Academy Best Actress
1982 LA Film Critics Association Best Actress
1982 National Board of Review of Motion Picture Best Actress
1982 New York Film Critics Circle Best Cinematography
1982 New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress
1983 Golden Globe Best Actress (in Drama)

Germany Year Zero

Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Starring:Edmund Meschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraude Hinze
1947

This is the world of 12-year old Edmund, a child who has known only upheaval and violence. He struggles for survival in the bombed-out-ruins of Berlin. His father is suffering from malnutrition and a fatal illness. His brother is a former Nazi soldier hiding to avoid arrest. And his sister has turned to prostitution. Edmund comes upon a former teacher hwo provides him with records of Hitler's speeches that cn be bartered on the black market and drums into the boy a classic piece of Nazi propaganda about the importance of having the courage to let the weak be destroyed. Under the teacher's influence, the confused young protagonist heads down a tragic path. He murders his father and himself.

Filled with haunting image and unforgettable perforamnces by real citizens, Rossellini suggests the damage which had been done to an entire generation through the relentless brainwashing of fascism.

Kanal

Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring:Wienczyslaw Glinski, Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar
1957

“Watch them closely, for these are the last hours of their lives,” announces a narrator, foretelling the tragedy that unfolds as a war-ravaged company of Home Army resistance fighters tries to escape the Nazi onslaught through the sewers of Warsaw. Determined to survive, the men and women slog through the hellish labyrinth, piercing the darkness with the strength of their individual spirits. Based on true events, Kanal was the first film ever made about the Warsaw Uprising and brought director Andrzej Wajda to the attention of international audiences, earning the Special Jury Prize in Cannes in 1957.

Mediterraneo

Directed by Gabriel Salvatores
Casts: Diego Abatantuono, Claudio Bigagli, Giuseppe Cederna, Vanna Barba, Memo Dini, Gigio Alberti, Ugo Conti
1991

This 1991 comedy by Gabriele Salvatores was knocked for not being deep enough, but it is what it is, and it's actually an easygoing, sunny movie about eight Italian soldiers who manage to strand themselves on a tiny Greek island paradise during World War II. The sort of mutts who would shoot a donkey for not knowing the proper password, these clumsy warriors become a comic variation on the Lotus Eaters of myth, their fighting spirit evaporated in the midst of so much beauty and sexual availability among the local women. There are also sundry opportunities for the men to find another purpose for their lives (one particularly artistic fellow works on the restoration of a church, for example). Amid the sometimes coarse jokes and gratuitous nudity, there are subtle themes about the contrast between what men are truly like in their natural state versus what they are like as killers.

Award:
1992 Oscar Best Foreign Language Film

Twenty-Four Eyes (Ijushi No Hitomi)

Directed by Kinoshita Keisuke
Starring Hideki Goko, Hideko Takamine, Yukio Watanabe, Makoto Miyagawa, Takero Terashita
1954

Twenty-Four Eyes is a chronicle of a teacher and her pupils in a small inland sea village beginning in 1928 and carrying through twenty years of their joys and sorrow. The village is quite and peaceful but its harmony is soon broken by the war. The school teacher is forced to resign when books she believes are good for the children are condemned as "Red" literature. Many boys are sent to off to the war. After the war is over, the teacher returns to her job and gathers with some of her old students to reminisce her husband and the boys who died in the war.

Twenty-Four Eyes is a haunting, compassionately realized, and profoundly affecting portrait of humanism, innocence, and the personal toll of war. Filmed from a low camera angle, and using exquisitely composed crane, long, and medium shots, Keisuke Kinoshita visually conveys a sense of distance that, in turn, reflects the innocence of the children's perspective and the seeming insularity of the villagers: the long bicycle commute; the children's outdoor activities singing folksongs; Miss Oishi traversing the empty school yard after being admonished for broaching the subject of communism in class. The lives of the people in the island are presented in a very touching and sincere reserved camera style.

This is one of Kinoshita's masterpieces.

Award:
1955 Best Foreign Film Golden Globe

Destiny of Man

Directed by Sergei Bondarchuck
StarringStarring:Sergei Bondarchuk, Zinaida Kirienko, Pavlik Boriskin
1959

This was Sergei Bondarchuck's debut feature which he not only directed but also acted the main part of Andrei Sokolov in the screen adaptation of Nobel Prize winning author Mikhail Sholokov's novel.

Beautifully crafted and acted, the film is a moving account of an ordinary Soviet citizen - Anfrei Sokolov - during the desperate fight to protect the motherland from Nazi invasion during World War II.

In the course of the struggle, Sokolov is captured by the German invaders and dispatched to a concentration camp in which the inmates are mercilessly worked and ill-treated. The only thing that urges him to cling on to his life is the thought of being reunited with his family when the war is over.

Essentialy a morality tale of humanity ultimately winning over evil adversity, the film, on its 1961 release (2 years after it was made), was a great worldwide success and an eye-opener to western audiences who assumed Soviet directors could not break free from their propaganda yokes, and launched Bondarchuk onto further landmark films asuch as They Fought for their Motherland, Waterloo and War and Peace.

Award:
1959 Moscow International Film Festival Grand Prize

The Pianist

Directed by Roman Polanski
Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox
2002

An adaptation based on the autobiography of the acclaimed Polish composer, Wladyslaw Szpilman, who detailed his survival during World War II, and narrowly escaped a roundup that sent his family to a death camp. A composer and pianist, Szpilman played the last live music heard over Polish radio airwaves before Nazi artillery hit. There, in Poland, Szpilman struggled to stay alive--even when cast away from those he loved. He spent the duration of the war hiding in the ruins of Warsaw and scavenging for food and shelter. Szpilman eventually reclaimed his artistic gifts, and confronted his fears--with aid from the unlikeliest of sources.

2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Sound Jean-Marie Blondel
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Sound Gerard Hardy
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Sound Dean Humphreys
2002 European Film Academy Best European Cinematographer Pawel Edelman
2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Cinematography (Runner-up)Pawel Edelman
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Cinematography Pawel Edelman
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Production Design Allan Starski
2002 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or
2002 Cannes International Film Festival Palme d'Or
2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Director Roman Polanski
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Director Roman Polanski
2002 Academy Best Director Roman Polanski
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Original Score Wojciech Kilar
2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Screenplay Ronald Harwood
2002 Academy Best Adapted Screenplay Ronald Harwood
2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Actor Adrien Brody
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Actor Adrien Brody
2002 Academy Best Actor Adrien Brody
2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Picture
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best French Film
2002 National Board of Review#7 Film of the Year

Fateless

Directed by Lajos Koltai
2006
Casts: Marcell Nagy, Aron Dimeny, Andras M. Kecskes

Set in 1944, as Hitler's Final Solution becomes policy throughout Europe, Fateless is the semi-autobiography tale of a 14-year old Jewish boy from Budapest, who finds himself swept up by events beyond his comprehension. A normal teen who has never felt particularly connected to his religion, he is suddenly separated from his family as part of the rushed and random deportation of his city's large Jewish population. Brought to a concentration camp, his existence becomes a surreal adventure in adversity and adaptation, and he is never quite sure if he is the victim of his captors, or of an absurd destiny that metes out salvation and suffering arbitrarily.

This is Holocaust. The drama of Schindler's List and The Pianist, rolled into one...

The Birth of a Nation

1915

Directed by D.W. Griffith

Starring Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish

A pivotal moment in Film history. Birth of a Nation was the first important feature length film. After Birth, nothing was the same: not the way the audiences watched movies, not the ways filmmakers created them.

The film tackled the sensitive issues towards black slaves. This was ciriticized by modern audiences and was picketed. Despite protests, Birth sold more tickets than any other movie, a record that stood for decades, and President W. Wilson famously compared it to "history written in lighting". That judgment has lasted.

It remains to this day one of the most shown most controversial films ever made. None-the-less it also remains a visionary film that still merits examination. And Griffith remains one of the cinemas greatest directors.

Grave of the Fireflies

Directed by: Isao Takahata
1988

In the aftermath of a World War II bombing, two orphaned children struggle to survive in the Japanese countryside. To Seita and his four-year-old sister, the helplessness and indifference of their countrymen is even more painful than the enemy raids. Through dessperation, hunger and grief, these children's lives are as heartbreakingly fragile as their spirit and love is inspiring. Grave of the Fireflies is a tale of the true tragedy of war and innocence lost, not only of the abandoned young, but of an entire nation.

I was teary-eyed after watching this film. Maybe because I immersed myself (I mean my kids) too much into the situation/s that the main characters have been through. I must say that this is the best animated film I ever saw to this date and the only war film that really made me focus my attention into. I watched it together with my wife and my kids and believe me, it just struck us... leaving us all teary-eyed. You can watch the trailer below.

Casablanca

Directed by Michael Curtiz
1942
Starring:Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid

One of the most beloved American films, this captivating wartime adventure of romance and intrigue from director Michael Curtiz defies standard categorization. Simply put, it is the story of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a world-weary ex-freedom fighter who runs a nightclub in Casablanca during the early part of WWII. Despite pressure from the local authorities, notably the crafty Capt. Renault (Claude Rains), Rick's café has become a haven for refugees looking to purchase illicit letters of transit which will allow them to escape to America. One day, to Rick's great surprise, he is approached by the famed rebel Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and his wife, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), Rick's true love who deserted him when the Nazis invaded Paris. She still wants Victor to escape to America, but now that she's renewed her love for Rick, she wants to stay behind in Casablanca. "You must do the thinking for both of us," she says to Rick. He does, and his plan brings the story to its satisfyingly logical, if not entirely happy, conclusion. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

The Night Porter

Directed by Liliana Cavani
1974
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Philippe Leroy

On a global scale, Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter sharply divided critics upon release. Reviewers generally fell into two camps -- the Euro critics, who almost unanimously hailed it as a masterpiece -- and the über-P.C. American commentators, such as Pauline Kael, who referred to it in the New Yorker as "proof that women can make junk just as well as men." Roger Ebert even went so far as to blast the film, damning it "as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering." Brushing these criticisms aside for a second, The Night Porter, over three decades later, feels strongest in retrospect because Cavani manages -- in two hours -- to deeply engrave one of the most credible portraits of sadomasochistic bondage ever committed to celluloid, outside of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. Cavani uses the Nazi mystique to climb deeply into the womb of sadomasochism, exposing the inner sicknesses and depravity inherent in S & M -- so deeply that the viewing experience becomes palpable, sweat-inducing, and wickedly uncomfortable. The director's refusal to become sexually gratuitous or explicit is exactly the point; she begins with the widely accepted conviction that sadomasochism is sexual and digs deeper, plunging into the pathological core of the dominance/submission dynamic. The film gradually becomes a dark immersion into the psyches of two individuals who enjoy giving and receiving pain, and an orchestra of sadomasochistic nuance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the picture's final act; the band of Nazis intent on hunting down the renegade Max becomes not merely a gripping plot device, but -- in Cavani's hands, a manipulative ploy -- a deus ex machina that the director uses to strip bare the core of sadomasochistic yearning. Trapped by their pursuers in a barren apartment, Max and Lucia gradually, imperceptibly starve themselves to death, clinging psychologically (and physically) to one other and growing wan and emaciated; at one point, Lucia walks barefoot over broken glass, lacerating the soles of her feet -- an act that single-handedly reveals her need (and desire) for self-abuse. Cavani has, in a few brilliant strokes, stripped away the sex and reduced her two diseased lovers to the core of pathological need. Criticisms of this as disgusting or depraved are moot, for it remains utterly, chillingly, and peerlessly real.
The wonderful paradox in The Night Porter, of course, is that the film's presentation and context are deliberately unreal -- an irony that completely eluded critics like Ebert, who slammed the picture's historical inaccuracies. As David Mamet has noted, motion pictures may be dreamscapes by default, but Cavani heightens the dream effect in Porter, dramatically playing up the nightmarish aspects of her onscreen imagery as she toys liberally with historical detail -- as in her visceral glimpse of a Nazi carnival torture ride for Jewish girls (an image whose lightning-flash appearance -- and absence of explicit violence -- render it almost subliminal). In the end, the critics' need to attack Cavani as historically inaccurate become moot because The Night Porter never even attempts historical accuracy. Cavani has a different agenda altogether. Like Last Tango in Paris (with which it deserves comparison), The Night Porter is one of those gutsy films that extracts deep insights into pathology by constructing an unreal psychosexual phantasmagoria onscreen as a vehicle. The picture's depth and credibility on a psychopathological level thus could not possibly exist without the artificiality of the context that delivers it, fully justifying any contextual liberties that Cavani may take with her material, historical or otherwise. This forces us to look at the film's Nazi mythos allegorically instead of literally, exempting Cavani from accusations of Holocaust trivialization. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Ivan's Childhood

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Cast: Kolya Burlyaev, I Tarkoskaya, Valentin zubkov, Y. Zharikov,
1962

The debut feature from the great Andrei Tarkovsky, Ivan’s Childhood is an evocative, poetic journey through the shadows and shards of one boy’s war-torn youth. Moving back and forth between the traumatic realities of WWII and the serene moments of family life before the conflict began, Tarkovsky’s film remains one of the most jarring and unforgettable depictions of the impact of violence on children in wartime.

When I discovered the first films of Tarkovsky, it was a miracle. I suddenly found myself before a door to which I had never had the key.a room which I had always wished to penetrate and wherein he felt perfectly at ease. Someone was able to express what I had always wished to say without knowing how. For me Tarkovsky is the greatest filmmaker (Ingmar Bergman).

This is a DVD to own. "Ivan's Childhood" is Tarkovsky's first and arguably his most famous film. Based on Vladimir Bogomolov's early novella, "Ivan" (that is, "John") (1957), the film achieved wide acclaim outside Russia. It was produced at the risky time when Premier Khrushchev's era was ending and fundamentalist Marxists were ascendant again, restricting freedom in the arts; it is, as one observer wrote, "one of the harshest, morally complex versions of the war in Soviet film." It won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. With this debut film, Tarkovsky established an international reputation that has influenced many other filmmakers.

Awards:
1962 Venice Film Festval
- Best Actor
- Best Picture
- Best Director