10 Greatest World War II Movies of the Last 100 Years, Ranked

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A man stares at a burning shipwreck in Dunkirk

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World War II was one of the most consequential events of the 20th century. Its devastating effects have reverberated throughout history and influenced every facet of culture. Films about WWII were being made while it was still raging on, and they haven't subsided since. Some of the greatest filmmakers of all time have used the war to tell epic stories of heroism as well as intimate dramas of pain and suffering. So tremendous was the conflict and its effects that there are practically no limits to the number of stories that could be told about or around it.

There have been spy thrillers, action movies, romances, massive epics, and films in just about every other genre imaginable made about WWII, and they all bring something special to the screen. Love and loss, sacrifice and betrayal — the war saw the worst and the best of humanity and, likewise, the films made about it explore both extremes of our capability for tremendous good and evil. Going back through 100 years of cinema, or, more accurately, 87 years to the official beginning of the war, there are literally hundreds of great films that have been made about it, but these ten might just be the greatest.

10 'The Best Years of Our Lives' (1946)

Harold Russell and Cathy O'Donnell as Homer Parrish and Wilma Cameron, talking solemnly in The Best Years of Our Lives

While a great many of the films made about WWII focus on combat, fewer of them shine a spotlight on the long-term effects of it on those who came home from battle. Post-traumatic stress disorder wasn't even a term that was used when veterans of WWII came back to their lives from fighting overseas, and even less was known about how to properly address it. The psychological and physical damage caused by the war was put front and center in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives, a drama following three servicemen as they readjust to life as civilians after the war.

Fredric March won an Oscar for his portrayal of a veteran struggling with alcoholism, as did Harold Russell, who was a non-professional actor and real-life veteran who had lost both of his hands in the war, which led Wyler to change a role in the film specifically for him to play. Dana Andrews rounds out the trio as an airman who suffers from recurring nightmares. The cast is uniformly terrific, and the film is surprisingly sensitive in portraying its characters' struggles without collapsing into maudlin sentiment. Ahead of its time and a landmark film for its depiction of soldiers' trauma, The Best Years of Our Lives came out only one year after the end of the war and continues to compel.

9 'Das Boot' (1981)

A man inside a sub yelling in Das Boot (1981)

Submarine warfare offers all kinds of potential for claustrophobic white-knuckle thrills, and there have been quite a few of those set during WWII, ranging from the comedic (Operation Petticoat) to the horrific (Below). There are really only two submarine films set during WWII that could possibly compete as the best, and while the American Run Silent, Run Deep is a taut, tense classic, there are simply few films as authentically intense as Wolfgang Petersen's German epic Das Boot. Based on a real U-boat and the experiences of its crew during the war, the film captures their physical and mental strain amid its high-octane sequences of naval combat.

Production was laborious, with Petersen and his cast and crew enduring a year-long shoot in painstaking recreations of the U-boat. The film was also shot in sequence, to allow the appearance of the cast members to authentically change and wear down to mimic their characters. It's incredibly effective, and their exhaustion is palpable on screen, which only furthers their character's sense of desperation. Petersen was known as a director of epic scale and action, as displayed in his later Hollywood efforts like Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, and Troy, but those more polished films pale in comparison to the raw intensity of Das Boot.

8 'Dunkirk' (2017)

Tommy crawling on a beach surrounded by smoke and other soldiers in Dunkirk

Like Das Boot did on water, many WWII films have sought to capture the destructive spectacle of war on land. Large-scale films with explosive battle sequences have been a mainstay of the war genre, but the best of them make sure never to lose sight of the human cost. Films like Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge, and Letters from Iwo Jima all put the harrowing action of war on full display, but if there's one director who does spectacle like no other, it's Christopher Nolan. Indeed, his WWII film Dunkirk gave audiences all the suspense and destruction from the land, sea and air.

Focusing on the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, the film weaves together three separate perspectives set not only in different arenas, but also over varying timeframes. The nonlinear narrative structure is far more than a gimmick, and allows Nolan to create an escalating tension as the cause and effect of each storyline impacts the others with increasing volatility. With the director's penchant for practical effects and a sparse screenplay that features minimal dialogue, Dunkirk puts the experience of battle front and center, creating a spectacle of war that is stripped to the bone and free of any mawkishness.

7 'The Great Escape' (1963)

Steve McQueen on a motorbike looking ahead in The Great Escape - 1963

While war films can try and recreate the horrors of battle, they can also be great sources of escapism. This sort of action-adventure brand of WWII movie is usually best exemplified by men-on-a-mission films like The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, or The Dirty Dozen, which also inspired the more exploitative Inglourious Basterds. Those are all guaranteed good times, but if there's one film that offers the greatest and most literal escapism, it's the prisoner-of-war adventure The Great Escape.

Based on the true story of a real-life prison break by soldiers from a German POW camp, the film is a highly fictionalized retelling made with the intent to entertain above all else. With an international cast of stars including James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough, and James Garner, the film is a boy's adventure of the highest order. Steve McQueen exudes cool as the cooler king, a devil-may-care pilot turned prisoner who also gets the film's most iconic sequence as he tries to outrun Nazis on a motorcycle and make a daring jump over a barbed-wire fence. It may not get points for historical accuracy, but it's the most fun WWII will ever be.

6 'Casablanca' (1942)

If there's a form of escapism that audiences love just as much as high adventure, it's good old-fashioned romance. These romances can be tragic, as in Atonement, or erotic, as in Black Book, or, most moving of all, unrequited in the classic Casablanca. The best kind of Golden Age Hollywood studio picture, Casablanca pairs Humphrey Bogart with Ingrid Bergman as two former lovers whose paths cross again in the titular city, controlled by Vichy France.

Bogart's Rick is the classic American anti-hero and cynic, concerned with little else than running his nightclub without incident. He finds his apathetic tendencies tested when Begrman's Ilsa walks into his gin joint with her husband, a resistance leader and Nazi fugitive, in tow, looking for Rick's help in securing letters of transit. With endlessly quotable dialogue, pitch-perfect performances, and atmospheric direction by Michael Curtiz, Casablanca is a classic that has endured and will continue to do so as a pure masterpiece of romance amid war.

5 'Grave of the Fireflies' (1988)

Seita and Setsuko in a field of fireflies in Grave of the Fireflies - 1988

Grave of the Fireflies is as heartwrenching a war film as has ever been made, and perhaps one of the most unique for being animated and told from the Japanese side, focusing solely on a civilian perspective. Directed by Isao Takahata for the legendary Studio Ghibli, the film follows a brother and sister in the final days of the Pacific War as they struggle to survive after the devastation of their home and the death of their mother during a bombing raid.

Depicting the devastation that war can bring upon the most vulnerable of a population, Grave of the Fireflies is a slow and sad descent that few will ever want to watch more than once, but it is important viewing all the same for how hauntingly it conveys its horrors without the bloodshed of more bombastic anti-war movies. Like the best of its World War II contemporaries, Grave of the Fireflies is vital viewing that is impossible to forget.

4 'Schindler's List' (1993)

Liam Neeson looking emotional in Schindler's List

No event in WWII was more devastating than the Holocaust, and its horrors have served as an influence for a number of films. In fact, these films have become so synonymous with award recognition that many of them give off a foul cynicism in their exploitation of the tragic subject matter. The best of them, though, transcend to give voice to those lives lost and to take account of those who perpetrated the greatest of horrors: The Zone of Interest, Son of Saul, The Pianist, and the preeminent Schindler's List.

A passion project of Steven Spielberg's for many years, the blockbuster director tried to hand the reins over to several different directors, afraid that he wasn't up to the task himself, but he eventually decided to helm it himself after witnessing the rise of neo-Nazism and Holocaust deniers. As a chronicle of the real-life Oskar Schindler, a Nazi industrialist who saved the lives of over a thousand Jewish refugees by employing them as part of his workforce, Spielberg intended to depict the Holocaust in stark and unflinching detail. The film had the intended effect, as it is a harrowing viewing experience with few cinematic equals, and undeniably the most powerful film in all of Spielberg's storied career.

3 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' (1957)

Colonel Nicholson standing in front of a group of soldiers in The Bridge on the River Kwai

POW films are a small but integral part of WWII cinema, with the aforementioned The Great Escape, Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, Stalag 17, and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence all capturing different aspects of the subject, but none as vividly as David Lean's epic The Bridge on the River Kwai. Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle, the film is an entirely fictional dramatization inspired by the building of the Burma Railway by captured Allied troops. It has no fidelity to historical fact, but is nonetheless a compelling, complex drama about the conflict of honor and duty amidst the futility of war.

Ordered by their Japanese captors to construct the bridge, Alec Guinness' colonel becomes obsessed with its perfection, which he believes will be a testament to his military's superiority, but which only becomes a testament to his madness. Far from a black and white narrative of heroics and sacrifice, the film is a devastating portrayal of the damaged psyches of men bound to their sense of duty when all others have been stripped away from them. All that and shot with the grandeur associated with Lean as a director, The Bridge on the River Kwai is an epic on a human scale.

2 'Army of Shadows' (1969)

A man tied to a chair sits and a man sitting a desk in 'Army of Shadows'

If there's any subgenre of war film that is most actively engaged in the grey morality that comes forth during conflict, it's the spy and espionage thriller. Films where characters deal in deception and for whom the ends justify the violent means, like Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, or Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange, though none offer as unvarnished a look at war's secret side as Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. Following a small group of French Resistance members, the film doesn't paint a romantic or adventurous portrait of their exploits, but rather one marred with death and compromise.

Army of Shadows was notorious upon its release, with many French critics being overly negative towards the film due to the political climate at the time. This cold reception also meant the film was scarcely distributed internationally, with American audiences only gaining wide access to it almost forty years later, in 2006. The release led to a revival of appreciation for the film as a complex masterpiece that isn't afraid to pull back the curtain on the violence and hard decisions inherent to resistance under fascist regimes.

1 'Come and See' (1985)

Aleksei Kravchenko looking at the camera in Come and See

As harrowing a war film as has ever been made, Come and See is as much a horror movie as anything else, depicting the Nazi occupation of Byelorussia and its associated atrocities through the eyes of a teenage boy. Directed by Elem Klimov, whose wife, filmmaker Larisa Shepitko, made the similarly harrowing The Ascent, Come and See is both surreal and all too real in its grim depictions of the violence and brutality of war.

Following young Flyora, played by Aleksei Kravchenko, as he joins the Soviet partisans in defiance of the occupying Nazis, the film subjects both him and the viewer to the full force of the horrors of war, bearing witness to massacres, sexual assault, and the desensitizing cycles of violence. Come and See is an aural and visual assault that is more emotionally discombobulating than any explosively violent war film could ever be. It's a war film that encapsulates its futile destruction and makes an impassioned plea for the end of suffering.

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