Top 10 War Movies
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, Lewis Milestone) — World War I
The aura of nobility — of collegiality among enemies, of jaunty salutes from one aerial ace to his rival on the other side — suffused many of the memorable films about the Great War. Recall the courtly relationship between a German officer and his French prisoners in Jean Renoir's La grande illusion. In the more realistic, or bitter, movies, the "war to end all wars" simply taught its survivors how to kill millions of young men more effectively the next time. Erich Maria Remarque's famed novel, filmed by Lewis Milestone, follows a group of young Germans who are seduced by their teacher into enlisting for the patriotism and glamour. Instantly they learn that the hell of war is paved with wretched ambiguities. The main character, Paul (Lew Ayres), shoots a French soldier, then tries desperately, weepingly, to save the man's life. Paul's will end — in one of the signature final shots in movie history — as his hand reaches outside a trench to capture a butterfly. Only the butterfly lives.