We’re collaborating with @SWSilents and @BristolCathedra with the showing of the classic French anti-war film J’accuse (1919), 1 November: https://bristol-cathedral.co.uk/whats-on/jaccuse. As we approach the centenary of the end of the First World War, here’s some more classic films 1/20

After making Birth of a Nation - a huge success, but rightly condemned on race grounds and its portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan - D W Griffith made Intolerance in 1916 which looked at brutality through the ages and ended with a plea for tolerance. 2/20

After the war the public grew tired of war films. In 1925 King Vidor made The Big Parade
telling the story of an ordinary American doughboy and his comrades in France. Regarded as a risky venture, its success led to more films about the war. 3/20

Wings (1927) - about the US combat pilot experience - was a romantic story with remarkable and realistic air sequences. Hell’s Angels (1930) is another great aviation war drama. 4/20

In 1930 came All Quiet on the Western Front, in which the greatest of all books about the First World War became the greatest film about the war. Here’s a rerelease trailer: 5/20

After All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque wrote The Road Back and Three Comrades. The Road Back was made into a film by James Whale in 1937 after much opposition from Nazis and changes by censors:
6/20

Three Comrades was released in 1938. It told the story of the post-war period in Germany and the rise of Nazism (though did not name them). Another politically controversial film.
7/20

Both All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Back were rereleased in 1939 with an added narration about Hitler and the Second World War. 8/20

In 1930 G W Pabst released Westfront 1918 - the German story of the war. Like All Quiet on the Western Front it focussed on the impact of the war on the ordinary soldier. The Nazis hated this film.
9/20

A year later Pabst released Kameradschaft where German miners rescue trapped French miners stuck along the border between France and Germany. It was Pabst’s plea for tolerance and peace between people and nations.
10/20

James Whale made Journey’s End in Hollywood in 1930. Based on the successful stage play by R C Sherriff, it looked at the officer class and how they suffered the burdens of the war in the trenches.
11/20

The impact of the war infected some musicals and crime films throughout this period. One of the best moments is in Gold Diggers of 1933 and the Forgotten Man song: 12/20

A second great French film about the war - which contains no battlefield shots - is Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937). A film of great humanity which showed that it was class that divided people, not nations.
13/20

A more romantic view of war is in the remake of The Dawn Patrol (1938), though it portrays throughout the impact on military commanders sending young men to death.
14/20

After the Second World War Stanley Kubrick made Paths of Glory (1957) a brilliant film about military incompetence and brutality, leavened with a brief moving moment of humanity. 15/20

There’s been much good TV on the war. BBC’s The Great War is a fine documentary series that made excellent use of archive material. Blackadder Goes Forth is a funny, ultimately tragic, story which draws on the whole war film and literary history.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4w-2j6Q0Qj7DtmB-YsnpK_WUlPs3MNCu 16/20

A British film from 1964 worth watching is King and Country about a soldier who left his battalion and is on trial for desertion.
17/20

Another good British film is the satirical musical Oh! what a lovely War (1964). Here’s the title song:
18/20

And a fine film - showing the Australian side of the war, from idealism to disillusionment - is Gallipoli (1981). Fifty years earlier Tell England told this story from the British side. 19/20

There are many more - hundreds more - but these are some of the best films about the war and a few are some of the greatest films ever made. 20/20