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Top War Films (#1-100)

Rank Title Year Director(s) War Overall
Rank
1 Casablanca 1942 Michael Curtiz World War II 2
2 Lawrence of Arabia 1962 David Lean World War I 8
3 Gone with the Wind 1939 Victor Fleming American Civil War 11
4 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola Vietnam War 17
5 Schindler's List 1993 Steven Spielberg World War II 22
6 The General 1927 Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton American Civil War 42
7 The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 David Lean World War II 52
8 The Battleship Potemkin 1925 Sergei M. Eisenstein Russian Revolution 65
9 Saving Private Ryan 1998 Steven Spielberg World War II 67
10 The African Queen 1951 John Huston World War I 71
11 The Deer Hunter 1978 Michael Cimino Vietnam War 72
12 The Grand Illusion 1937 Jean Renoir World War I 89
13 Braveheart 1995 Mel Gibson Wars of Scottish Independence 94
14 Platoon 1986 Oliver Stone Vietnam War 111
15 The Birth of a Nation 1915 D.W. Griffith American Civil War 112
16 M*A*S*H 1970 Robert Altman Korean War 117
17 All Quiet on the Western Front 1930 Lewis Milestone World War I 119
18 Paths of Glory 1957 Stanley Kubrick World War I 144
19 From Here to Eternity 1953 Fred Zinnemann World War II 152
20 Doctor Zhivago 1965 David Lean Russian Civil War 167
21 The Great Escape 1963 John Sturges World War II 175
22 Ran 1985 Akira Kurosawa Fictitious Japanese Civil War 177
23 Patton 1970 Franklin J. Schaffner World War II 178
24 Napoléon 1927 Abel Gance Napoleonic Wars 194
25 To Be or Not to Be 1942 Ernst Lubitsch World War II 197
26 Spartacus 1960 Stanley Kubrick Third Servile War 198
27 Andrei Rublev 1969 Andrei Tarkovsky Tatar Raid 200
28 Open City 1945 Roberto Rossellini World War II 210
29 The English Patient 1996 Anthony Minghella World War II 214
30 Stairway to Heaven 1946 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger World War II 242
31 Das Boot 1981 Wolfgang Petersen World War II 243
32 Life Is Beautiful 1997 Roberto Benigni World War II 248
33 Hiroshima mon amour 1959 Alain Resnais World War II 281
34 Henry V 1944 Laurence Olivier Hundred Years' War 286
35 The Battle of Algiers 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo Algerian War of Independence 292
36 Full Metal Jacket 1987 Stanley Kubrick Vietnam War 302
37 To Have and Have Not 1944 Howard Hawks World War II 332
38 Glory 1989 Edward Zwick American Civil War 358
39 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 1943 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Boer War, World War I, and World War II 368
40 Alexander Nevsky 1938 Sergei M. Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev Northern Crusades 383
41 Gunga Din 1939 George Stevens Thuggee Uprising 388
42 The Great Dictator 1940 Charles Chaplin World War I 392
43 Zulu 1964 Cy Endfield Anglo-Zulu War 407
44 Ashes and Diamonds 1958 Andrzej Wajda World War II 416
45 The Leopard 1963 Luchino Visconti Italian Unification 420
46 Barry Lyndon 1975 Stanley Kubrick Seven Years War 423
47 Triumph of the Will 1935 Leni Riefenstahl 432
48 The Big Parade 1925 King Vidor World War I 444
49 The Last of the Mohicans 1992 Michael Mann French and Indian War 467
50 The Thin Red Line 1998 Terrence Malick World War II 490
51 The Sorrow and the Pity 1969 Marcel Ophüls World War II 502
52 Stalag 17 1953 Billy Wilder World War II 508
53 The Longest Day 1962 Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki World War II 536
54 The Killing Fields 1984 Roland Joffé Cambodian Civil War 544
55 The Tin Drum 1979 Volker Schlöndorff World War II 561
56 A Man Escaped 1956 Robert Bresson World War II 565
57 Come and See 1985 Elem Klimov World War II 570
58 The Big Red One 1980 Samuel Fuller World War II 575
59 The Caine Mutiny 1954 Edward Dmytryk World War II 577
60 Throne of Blood 1957 Akira Kurosawa Fictitious Japanese Civil War 581
61 The Pianist 2002 Roman Polanski World War II 586
62 Gallipoli 1981 Peter Weir World War I 590
63 Forbidden Games 1952 René Clément World War II 597
64 Gilda 1946 Charles Vidor World War II 614
65 Paisan 1946 Roberto Rossellini World War II 616
66 The Dirty Dozen 1967 Robert Aldrich World War II 632
67 Born on the Fourth of July 1989 Oliver Stone Vietnam War 678
68 Mister Roberts 1955 John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy World War II 681
69 Les Vampires 1915 Louis Feuillade 697
70 Little Big Man 1970 Arthur Penn Indian Wars 699
71 Mrs. Miniver 1942 William Wyler World War II 701
72 Twelve O'Clock High 1949 Henry King World War II 704
73 Little Women 1994 Gillian Armstrong American Civil War 715
74 Closely Watched Trains 1966 Jirí Menzel World War II 716
75 Three Kings 1999 David O. Russell Operation Desert Storm 722
76 War and Peace 1967 Sergei Bondarchuk Napoleonic Wars 734
77 In Which We Serve 1942 Noel Coward and David Lean World War II 764
78 1900 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci 814
79 'Breaker' Morant 1980 Bruce Beresford Boer War 815
80 Henry V 1989 Kenneth Branagh Hundred Years' War 822
81 Chimes at Midnight 1965 Orson Welles Hundred Years' War 841
82 Foreign Correspondent 1940 Alfred Hitchcock World War II 882
83 The Guns of Navarone 1961 J. Lee Thompson World War II 885
84 Seven Beauties 1975 Lina Wertmüller World War II 887
85 The Diary of Anne Frank 1959 George Stevens World War II 912
86 The Shop on Main Street 1965 Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos World War II 916
87 Sergeant York 1941 Howard Hawks World War I 923
88 Wings 1927 William A. Wellman World War I 934
89 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis 1970 Vittorio De Sica World War II 942
90 Hope and Glory 1987 John Boorman World War II 994
91 Black Hawk Down 2001 Ridley Scott Somali Civil War 1006
92 Kagemusha 1980 Akira Kurosawa Fictitious Japanese Civil War 1007
93 Medium Cool 1969 Haskell Wexler Vietnam War 1012
94 Good Morning, Vietnam 1987 Barry Levinson Vietnam War 1013
95 Hotel Rwanda 2004 Terry George Rwandan Genocide 1028
96 Sands of Iwo Jima 1949 Allan Dwan World War II 1046
97 Senso 1954 Luchino Visconti Italian Unification 1079
98 Empire of the Sun 1987 Steven Spielberg World War II 1089
99 South Pacific 1958 Joshua Logan World War II 1105
100 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World 2003 Peter Weir Napoleonic Wars 1121
Go to the next 103 war films
This page was last modified on March 7, 2008