The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[swo17]

The Passion of Joan of Arc(Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928): While there are no battles here, it is a biography of a famous general.
Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson, 1961): See the Dreyer above.

I was mulling these over earlier, and I think this list might be a case where Marco de Gastyne's Saint Joan the Maid might win out over the other great Joan of Arc adaptations for focusing more attention on her military career. Though I'd need to re-watch it before committing to putting it on my list.

The Rivette version is also more battle-focused.

Also, how has no one mentioned Napoleon yet in this thread?

[domino harvey]

Francis Ford Coppola edited our posts

[bamwc2]

Also, how has no one mentioned Napoleon yet in this thread?

Oh, I thought about it, but I didn't mention it since I'm limiting myself to discussing films that I've seen. The post from Criterion lat year(?) has left me with the faintest sliver of hope that it'll become available before the project is over.

[swo17]

If that actually happens, I'll eat Napoleon's hat.

[colinr0380]

The Passion of Joan of Arc(Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928): While there are no battles here, it is a biography of a famous general.
Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson, 1961): See the Dreyer above.

I was mulling these over earlier, and I think this list might be a case where Marco de Gastyne's Saint Joan the Maid might win out over the other great Joan of Arc adaptations for focusing more attention on her military career. Though I'd need to re-watch it before committing to putting it on my list.

The Rivette version is also more battle-focused.

Also, how has no one mentioned Napoleon yet in this thread?

Don't forget to throw in Henry VI Part I - I'll try and post on it tomorrow in the BBC Shakespeare thread, but that BBC adaptation of the play features Brenda Blethyn as a Yorkshire accented Jeanne la Pucelle!

[bamwc2]

IMDB lists Theo Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze as a drama/war film, but the synopsis doesn't sound like it has anything to do with war. Can someone who's familiar with the film please clarify?

[Lemmy Caution]

Confidence (Istvan Szabo) – One of the most chillingly paranoid films ever made, as well it should be.

This was an interesting claustrophobic film.
I was a little uncertain about the end.
He starts looking for her, so was it safe for him to come back so soon?
Or was he just testing her, and no one really came for him?
I guess it also could have been a false alarm (maybe they really came for the old guy instead).

Not likely to make my list, but Szabo's next film Mephisto almost certainly will.
I probably should re-watch it, again, but I think it has one of the great endings.
And Klaus Maria Brandauer gives a tremendous performance.
Interesting how Szabo followed a resistance film with a collaboration film.

[TMDaines]

Is Mephisto really a war film?

[bamwc2]

Viewing log:

The Alamo (John Wayne, 1960): John Wayne directs and costars (along with the always great Richard Widmark) in this bloated, hagiographic film about the Battle of the Alamo. Gen. Santa Anna leads a Mexican force that vastly outguns the ragtag assemblage of Texan troops in a siege of the mission that nevertheless causes significant losses on their side. Of course the film is filled with historical inaccuracies and intentional distortions that are there to reinforce Wayne's right wing view of the world. The battle scenes are well handled, but the overall film is just a mess of boring speeches and overwrought patriotism. I say skip it.

The Clock (Vincente Minnelli and Fred Zinnemann, 1945): Starring two actors who died way too young, Minnelli's dramedy tells the story of a GI (Robert Walker) who spends his last days before being shipped off to Europe exploring New York for the first time. Overwhelmed by the sight so of the big city, he meets up with secretary Alice Maybery (Judy Garland) who acts as his tour guide at first, but soon falls for his charms and agrees to a quicky marriage. While the film could have ended on an entirely happy note, it wisely acknowledged the uncertain future that both figures faced: him in combat, her on the home front, and both newly wedded to someone that they barely know with the prospects of never seeing again. Both actors are charmingly naive in their roles, and my affection for the film was certainly helped along by the fact that my fraternal grandparents met and married in pretty much the same way (albeit in Chicago instead of New York). It's far from a great film, but it is decent enough for as a minor diversion.

The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Sueo Ito, et al., 1946): Commissioned by the US armed forces to document the aftermath of the atomic bombings, this film is truly remarkable. The history of the film apparently begins with Japanese documentarians who took it upon themselves to begin shooting footage of the ruins, but were quickly shut down by the occupying forces only to have their film confiscated and edited together with footage shot by the Americans and English narration added. When I say that the material is remarkable, I don't mean that footage of the destruction or mutilated human bodies is itself of that much interest. Quite simply anyone who's taken a high school American history course has seen this sort of footage before. While it still is shocking, I've become jaded to much of the impact. Someone learning of the events for the first time, may have a different reaction. However, I was truly taken aback by the detached scientifically minded narration, seeming untouched by the radical human toll of the bombing. With much of the resulting conclusions incorrect, the investigators always seem more interested in say, the effects of sweet potato growth than they do with the badly burned soldier or the young child dying of radiation sickness shown in the previous scene. I'm not sure that it'll make my list, but it should be considered a must see for anyone working on this project.

Guadalcanal Diary (Lewis Seiler, 1943): With an ensemble cast (of which only Anthony Quinn stands out today), the film tells the story of the taking of Guadalcanal by American troops during the Pacific campaign. Starting with the first naval troops who landed on the island in 1942, we're treated to the grueling battles until the Japanese forces are vanquished over a year later and the marines relieve the initial forces. A surprisingly high number of characters don't make it to the final scene, but we're treated to all of their back stories. And this is where I think that the film's greatest flaw lies. In trying to balance between the personal lives of the seamen and the story of the conflict itself, the film suffers for its lack of focus. I think that I enjoyed this a bit more than Domino did (it worked well for me when the focus was on the war), but it's not going to make my list.

The Story of G.I. Joe (William Wellman, 1945): The film manages to mostly pull off what Guadalcanal Diary couldn't, crafting a highly personal account of the soldiers fighting in WWII. The film's success stems mainly from Burgess Meredith's character Ernie Pyle, a folksy war correspondent who writes biographies of the men of the 18th Infantry, Company C as they battle their way from early losses in Northern Africa through to the conquest of Italy. Playing Lt. Walker, the commanding officer of Company C, Robert Mitchum also provides a stand out performance that would go a long way in his quest to transition from background player in the oaters to a full fledged star. Like many of the war films of the era, it's a propaganda piece, but one that still works well in the end.

[domino harvey]

The Clock is definitely one of the many incidental soldier stories I forgot about when compiling a list, but like you I mostly only find the film okay and it's in no danger of making my list, but it is a pleasant enough diversion. Robert Walker's so much better utilized in Bataan and Since You Went Away (where he features in arguably the most famous "weepie" scene of all time).

And you are indeed a charitable man to find praise in the Alamo and Guadalcanal Diary! My memory of the former is of its endlessness and but of course, the HTF brigade is clamoring for a restored version of the film with even more footage. "...and such small portions!"

[colinr0380]

I do seem to remember though that for all of the John Wayne film's failings and jingoism it plays a little better than the John Lee Hancock 2004 Alamo film, which I seem to remember just degenerated into endlessly repeated shots of cannons firing! (the 2004 version seems to be influenced in its structure a bit by Zulu but without the modulations in the futile battles).

[Red Screamer]

Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978)
I was gladly surprised to find such an intelligent and moving film. This material easily could have been made into a trite war romance, but the great trio of performances and Hal Ashby, as usual, add spadefuls of subtly, originality and personality. Only direction as compassionate and thoughtful as Ashby's could make the audience care for and empathize with all of these characters. This causes the film to become especially stirring, and, the last 20 minutes or so, increasingly more difficult to watch. Fonda, Dern and Voight are all very believable and at their best here. The only complaint I have with the film is with the soundtrack. Although it works brilliantly at times (Out of Time, Sympathy for the Devil, Maniac Depression), for the most part it seems to be randomly assembled 60s hits without any rhyme or reason. There's probably more Mick Jagger in Coming Home than in Performance. The film deserves better and it's especially disappointing due to Ashby's usual standard of great soundtracks. In spite of the tired pop songs, this is a great film and highly recommended.

Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)
A hilarious and deeply disturbing satire of war and wartime propaganda. The violence is sickening, the acting is awful, the story is overwrought and the end results are really something special. One of my favorite aspects of Starship Troopers is how even though it's "propaganda", it can't truly hide the hideous traces of war. For example, we see several amputee war veterans throughout the picture. The allusions to Triumph of the Will are very well done and show the level of intelligence and awareness behind the production. A lock for my list.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
This film is very wise about the way people deal with war and how it affects those who aren't directly involved. M.Gustave helps create a tranquil haven for the guests of The Grand Budapest and this has the effect of sheltering them from the events occurring outside. Even the hotel itself changes drastically pre, during, and post-war.

SpoilerShow

The war ends up destroying not only the once great country of Zubrowka but even their currency, Klübecks

Anderson also includes several spoofs of or references to other war films. In particular the hotel shootout, in addition to being hysterically funny, shows the confusion and ridiculous escalation of war. Gareth Higgins of The Film Talk correlates this film's tone and themes to Inglourious Basterds and La Règle du jeu, and I think those comparisons are quite apt. I would add, however, To Be or Not to Be especially for the way Anderson humanizes Edward Norton's Lutz officer. If I can fully justify this being a war film, it will surely make my list.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

The Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976): In a rather timely viewing based on world events, the film tells the story of a young soldier who is sent to a remote desert station to guard against an expected upcoming invasion by Tartar forces. As time mounts and the forces never seem to arrive, the morale and sanity of the soldiers stationed there begins to decline and the film turns into a somewhat interesting examination of angst and fear. It has too many pacing issues to qualify as great, but it's worth checking out.

In Harm's Way (Otto Preminger, 1965): John Wayne plays Captain Rock Torrey a Navy hero who initially faces disciplinary charges for victorious, but reckless conduct during the bombing of Pearl harbor. Fates change, and by the end of the film his work leading an attack against a marauding Japanese naval fleet wins him the thanks of a grateful nation in this fairly standard fare from Preminger. There's nothing too remarkable going on here with both Wayne and Kirk Douglas (along with a slew of famous actors relegated to bit parts) doing some good work here, but it never adds up to anything greater than the sum of its parts.

Hearts of the World (D.W. Griffith, 1918): Griffith delivers another old timey WWI tale made during the conflict in this tale of romance in a small French village torn asunder by the German invasion and occupation. As is to be expected from Griffith, the bad guys here are over the top mustache twirling villains. This time they live up to the "Hun" moniker by treating the villagers as play things, with the French army predictably launching a successful counterstrike that results in a happy ending. It's not great drama, nor should it ever be mistaken for one of Griffith's top films, but it is decent enough material for a very minor recommendation.

The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (John Gianvito, 2001): John Gianvito's nearly three hour peon to its own self-righteousness is an exercise in how much ham fisted liberal guilt one can take while being bludgeoned with the message that "war is bad, guys"! I say this as a dedicated leftist and peacenik. This film is the antithesis of how to effectively convey a point of view to your audience. Aping far superior films in its structure, The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein tells the stories of three individuals whose lives were torn apart by Operation Desert Storm. The titular Fernanda Hussein's elementary school age children are murdered by a group of bigots because of their last name. A teenage boy becomes homeless after too many fights with his father over the war. A returning soldier haunted by what he saw develops PTSD and becomes a rapist. Needless to say subtlety is not Gianvito's strong point. I almost felt the need to watch Fox News afterwards to cleanse my palette. This stinker of a film has exactly one good scene. With numerous and mostly unnecessary diversions, there is a good montage of jingoistic products made during the war that highlight the racism and silence of dissension that occurred in 1991. But it's not worth seeing this stillbirth just for that.

S.V.D. - Soyuz velikogo dela (Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, 1927): Kozintesev was responsible for some of my favorite Soviet films of the 1960s, but this was my first film by him from any other era. Here he and his co-director stick with one of the nation's officially sanctioned topics: 1825's Decemberist Revolution. The film features a dissatisfied imperial soldier who shifts loyalty from the czar to the radical group, The Union of the Great Cause. Like all Soviet films of its day, this work is meant to extol the virtues of the Bolshevik Revolution. However, this particular title stands above most from its era in its inventive use of many of the same techniques that Eisenstein was rightfully lauded for. I actually think that it ranks very nicely against other Soviet works of the silent era.

Thomas l'imposteur (Georges Franju, 1965): Based on a novel and script by the great Jean Cocteau, the film tells the story of Guillaume Thomas de Fontenoy (Fabrice Rouleau) a sixteen year old French private in The First World War who lies to impress wealthy widow/philanthropist Princesse de Bormes (Emmanuelle Riva) who spends her days helping wounded soldiers recuperate. Feeling guilt over his misdeeds, Thomas returns to the front lines with the predictably fatalistic results that one would expect from Cocteau. What can I say about this? It's a war story as told by two of Frances greatest artists that is very loosely based on one of their experiences. It's almost certain to make my list.

Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (Kinji Fukasaku, 1972): Another fantastic film from a director who has been a major rediscovery for me this past year. This time the story focuses on a the widow of a Japanese WWII soldier who has been consistently denied benefits since her husband is officially listed as executed for desertion. The film follows her as she finds and talks to surviving members of his squadron and learns the awful truth about what happened to them in the final days of the war as they were isolated on New Guinea. The reveals are truly shocking and lead up to one of the most brutally angry endings that I've ever seen in a war film told from the Japanese perspective. Wow!

[swo17]

For your consideration...

War-Torn Histories

Zvenigora (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1928) – not my SPOTLIGHT
If I were allowed two Spotlight titles, this would be one of my two Spotlight titles. But I'm only allowed one Spotlight title so this is not my Spotlight title. Hopefully, this not being one of my Spotlight titles will not cause it to go unnoticed. The first and most visually experimental installment in Dovzhenko's War Trilogy takes a surreal trip through Ukrainian history (much of it fraught with war) in what was then an effort to rally a battle cry among the people (to protect the "treasure" of their nation's heritage) but to modern eyes, it plays more like a treatise against the horrors of war.

Red Psalm (Miklós Jancsó, 1972)
Collective healing through song and dance.

The Hunters (Theo Angelopoulos, 1977)
A surreal, symbolic trudge through Greek history is triggered when a group of hunters discover a metaphysical impossibility—the freshly deceased corpse of a soldier from an old war.

The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman, 2009)
Tragicomic history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict filled with wonderful moments like the Tati-esque interaction between a man and a tank.

My Joy (Sergei Loznitsa, 2010)
It's not the main thrust of the film, but there are substantial flashbacks here to scenes from World War II. Like other elements of the film, their exact significance to the story is something of a mystery.

Occupation and Resistance/Life in a War Zone

Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
The Marx Brothers: the only force more chaotic and destructive than war itself.

Happiness (Aleksandr Medvedkin, 1935)
Keaton-esque slapstick is the only thing left to make life tolerable after being invaded by the Creepy Mask Army.

The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
I've always considered this to be a war film without a war, exposing the complacency and civilized violence in society that would allow war to erupt in the first place.

The Black Book/Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann, 1949)
The French Revolution as visually evocative noir.

A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
Don't forget that this prison escape film is about a resistance fighter imprisoned by Nazis, and that its theme of personal liberation might also extend to the plight of an occupied populace.

Bariera (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1966)
The fundamental absurdity of life under totalitarian rule is taken literally here, in a series of bizarre sequences that at times appear menacing at first only to be revealed as playful, or vice versa.

Coach to Vienna (Karel Kachyňa, 1966)
Two soldiers fleeing their doom abduct a woman and embark on a rather awkward road trip.

Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2000)
How to cheer up the Hungarian locals while under Soviet occupation? Cart in a dead whale!

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
The world has essentially become a battlefield, which Clive Owen must deftly navigate in order to preserve the last hope for humanity. Or have I just described every post-apocalyptic film ever?

Love, the Bomb

The Mysterious X/Sealed Orders (Benjamin Christensen, 1914)
A marriage is disrupted by war and spy intrigue in this visually inventive silent.

Waterloo Bridge (James Whale, 1931)
A soldier on a brief furlough spends a memorable night with a prostitute while London crumbles around them. Available on the first Forbidden Hollywood collection, though it's more adult than salacious.

Senso (Luchino Visconti, 1954)
An Austrian soldier and an Italian countess have maybe five minutes of lovers' bliss together, and then spend the remainder of the film miserably failing at trying to recapture that moment.

The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)
Basically everything Kalatozov and Urusevsky touched was a full course meal for the eyes. Here is their war film.

The Forty-first (Grigori Chukhrai, 1956)
Romance between troops, though unfortunately for them on opposite sides of combat. Urusevsky also shot this one (in color) and it's visually sumptuous in a whole different way.

Léon Morin, Priest (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961)
In occupied France, a fragile young woman distracts herself from the world outside by toying with a priest's devotions, but gradually finds herself getting entangled in his web of charms. You can cut the sexual tension with a bayonet!

The White Bird Marked with Black (Yuri Ilyenko, 1971)
I mostly just love how weird and pretty this thing is, but it also happens to be a love story set during wartime.

Archangel (Guy Maddin, 1990)
Maddin's surreal take on old Russian propaganda films.

The Nuclear Threat

Krakatit (Otakar Vávra, 1949) -- SPOTLIGHT
A scientist creates an imaginary equivalent of the atomic bomb, and then spends the remainder of the film trying to keep it out of the wrong hands, a task that proves especially difficult when you live in the realm of dreams. (Note: Make sure to get this particular 2-film version. There's another 3-film version put out by the same company that doesn't have English subs.)

Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)
The straight dramatic version of Dr. Strangelove, and it's a bleak nailbiter, showing that even when cooler heads prevail, human error will get the best of us.

Crossroads (Bruce Conner, 1976)
Named after the U.S. operation to test the atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll, Conner finds wonder in the form of the mushroom cloud.

Support the Troops!

Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)
This is focused more on the struggles of Depression-era performers, though don't forget that substantial effort here goes toward the production of a Broadway show about "forgotten men" back from the war.

I Dood It (Vincente Minnelli, 1943)
Another film with a showstopping finale dedicated to the troops, though there's also Red Skelton's Civil War play that gets interrupted by a bomb scare from a Nazi saboteur.

Blitz Wolf (Tex Avery, 1942)
Do you agree that Hitler's affront to the world was a bit like the story of the Three Little Pigs? If so, buy some stamps and help skin that skunk across the pond!

The Geisha Boy (Frank Tashlin, 1958)
Jerry Lewis joins the USO and strikes up a tender relationship with a fatherless Japanese boy. Which is to say nothing of his relationship with a real-life cartoon rabbit.

Eat the Troops!

For these first two films, maybe the presence of cannibalism constitutes a spoiler?

SpoilerShow

Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)
Because eating the meat raw would be uncivilized.

Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (Kinji Fukasaku, 1972)
A war widow goes about investigating the cause of her husband's death and learns all sorts of unsettling things about what happened during the war.

Ravenous (Antonia Bird, 1999)
A disgraced Army captain is transferred to a remote way station along with other outcasts like Dickie Bennett and Robert Quarles. Bored out of their minds, the soldiers take up America's favorite pastime.

The Scars of War

The More the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943)
One of the most harrowing indirect effects of war on the people back home was the great housing crisis of WWII, in which unwilling citizens were zanily forced to share living quarters with each other and endure all sorts of associated shenanigans. One of my very favorite comedies.

Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann, 1948)
A seemingly happy, mild mannered family man begins to be stalked by a mysterious man with a limp and a terrible secret from the war. One of my very favorite noirs.

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
The original "soldier fresh home from the war has difficulty coping with everyday life" film.

Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
Many films focus on the struggles of soldiers or civilians that were directly impacted by the war. This one rather poignantly shows how everyone is impacted as a citizen of the world, across boundaries between countries and across generations of time.

Half Life (Dennis O'Rourke, 1986)
A pretty damning exposé of how the U.S. bombing of Bikini Atoll was a deliberate effort to test the effects of nuclear weapons on human beings.

Good Old Times

Though set in times too old to depict modern warfare, or even in times of legend, films like Die Nibelungen, Ivan the Terrible Part I, Throne of Blood, Ran, or Marketa Lazarová feature enough battle scenes, I think, to be worthy of consideration.

[bamwc2]

Thanks, Swo. There are a few on your list that I forgot, a few that I wasn't sure about qualifying, and some more that I've yet to see. I was worried at the beginning of the project that I wouldn't be able to find enough unseen war films to ride out the project, but there have been so many good sounding suggestions so far that that now seem foolish.

[swo17]

I'm with zedz in that I will be submitting at least three top 50s.

[zedz]

My consideration of your consideration:

For your consideration...

The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman, 2009)
Tragicomic history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict filled with wonderful moments like the Tati-esque interaction between a man and a tank.

Great film and one I hadn't considered including.

My Joy (Sergei Loznitsa, 2010)
It's not the main thrust of the film, but there are substantial flashbacks here to scenes from World War II. Like other elements of the film, their exact significance to the story is something of a mystery.

An even greater film, but not one that I could classify as a war movie based on a couple of flashbacks. His follow-up is a bonafide war movie, though, and a great one.

The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
I've always considered this to be a war film without a war, exposing the complacency and civilized violence in society that would allow war to erupt in the first place.

Uh-oh, this is where you're starting to lose me. Sure, this is a key film of the immediate pre-war period, but no way is it a war movie.

The Black Book/Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann, 1949)
The French Revolution as visually evocative noir.

This has been mentioned before, and I'll take it under advisement, even though I've never really thought of it as a war movie. It's terrific, and everybody should see it, at any rate.

A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
Don't forget that this prison escape film is about a resistance fighter imprisoned by Nazis, and that its theme of personal liberation might also extend to the plight of an occupied populace.

Somebody suggested this to me in a PM, and it definitely qualifies, though I don't think I'll vote for it as the war setting seems incidental to me. I don't think the film would be much different if it were set in peacetime (except for adding a few moral ambiguities). It's a prisoner-during-war movie rather than a prisoner-of-war one.

Bariera (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1966)
The fundamental absurdity of life under totalitarian rule is taken literally here, in a series of bizarre sequences that at times appear menacing at first only to be revealed as playful, or vice versa.

Now this is WAY too loosey-goosey a definition of the genre for me. So basically any Czech, Polish, Hungarian film made between the 40s and the 80s is ipso facto a war movie now?

Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2000)
How to cheer up the Hungarian locals while under Soviet occupation? Cart in a dead whale!

I guess so, but let's stretch that another couple of decades!

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
The world has essentially become a battlefield, which Clive Owen must deftly navigate in order to preserve the last hope for humanity. Or have I just described every post-apocalyptic film ever?

Yep. Just about anything can be classified as a 'war' if you strain your metaphors hard enough. I'm going to vote for that great 'war on semantics (and mild recreational drug use)' movie Police, Adjective and the classic 'war on pretentious Broadway productions (and conventions for age-appropriate relationships)' musical The Band Wagon. Come to think of it, 'That's Entertainment' does include a mention of Hamlet, and that play does include a military invasion at the end of it, so of course it qualifies!

I don't know, I think if you're going to take the concept of genre seriously, you need to have a definition of the genre that's more rigorous than "an x film is a film that contains some reference to x". A horror movie isn't just a movie in which something horrible happens, and a science-fiction film isn't just a fiction film in which science has some bearing on the plot, so why should the same laxity apply to this genre? "War movie" may be a less well-defined genre than the musical or the western, but there must be some boundaries that work for you, that you can formulate and discuss, and against which you can measure discrete films but which don't open the floodgates to any film you happen to like.

[zedz]

I'm with zedz in that I will be submitting at least three top 50s.

I look forward to the musings of "sow17" and "71ows". I'm a little more strapped for sobriquets, myself ("dezz" and "edzz", I guess).

[domino harvey]

I didn't bother to include I Dood It in my initial culling but it does have one of my favorite Homefront jokes in the scene where Red Skeleton is doing his wacky schtick inside a swanky restaurant and he mentions butter and the whole restaurant turns their attention to him Pace Picante Sauce commercial-style

I think swo just made a list so he could get a nickname

I'm a little more strapped for sobriquets, myself ("dezz" and "edzz", I guess).

ZZ Ed

[swo17]

Yep. Just about anything can be classified as a 'war' if you strain your metaphors hard enough. I'm going to vote for that great 'war on semantics (and mild recreational drug use)' movie Police, Adjective and the classic 'war on pretentious Broadway productions (and conventions for age-appropriate relationships)' musical The Band Wagon. Come to think of it, 'That's Entertainment' does include a mention of Hamlet, and that play does include a military invasion at the end of it, so of course it qualifies!

I don't know, I think if you're going to take the concept of genre seriously, you need to have a definition of the genre that's more rigorous than "an x film is a film that contains some reference to x".

I'm not doing anything with metaphorical wars. Most of the films I mentioned that you seem to take issue with involve either one country occupying another by force or people living under the constant threat of death from heavy artillery.

Also, for whatever it's worth, my anagram friends and I were calling The Rules of the Game a war film long before there was ever such a thing as a war list. I suppose my reasoning here is somewhat similar to domino's for calling Irma la Douce a musical.

Your point about a war or occupation setting being incidental to the main story of certain films is worth further consideration though.

[domino harvey]

I am actually with you on Rules of the Game being a war film, and you're hardly the first to call it one, but I think you're misremembering my Irma La Douce comments if you're using them to defend including a contentious title:

I feel like we need to embrace the spirit of the list more with the next round. To give a personal example, when teaching musicals last year, I finished the unit with Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce, which of course is a Broadway musical adaptation with all the music numbers excised. We examined how it remained a musical in all ways, stylistically, narratively, &c but one, and it to my eyes is a musical. But at the same time, I can't in good conscience make the argument here that it's a musical and should be eligible, regardless of my personal affinity for the film. Yeah, you could try to shoehorn in Mulholland Dr or something because there's a singing scene, but why are you? That seems to be almost willfully missing the point of a musical list. I still more or less abide by the Vote For It rule, but I wonder if we can't all just agree to take a few personal hits from our contestable favorites at the service of a more stable list-making and discussion process?

[swo17]

Well, I remembered the first half of that to the letter!

[zedz]

Most of the films I mentioned that you seem to take issue with involve . . . people living under the constant threat of death from heavy artillery.

Doesn't that include any Hollywood action movie of the last thirty years?

As I recall, Children of Men involves a repressive government and a secret 'terrorist' group. No military invasion or anything, not even any involvement of a foreign state. If that's a war film, why not The Parallax View?

[zedz]

I'm a little more strapped for sobriquets, myself ("dezz" and "edzz", I guess).

ZZ Ed

I'm sorry I didn't think of that off the (ZZ) Top of my (ZZ) Ed.

[swo17]

As I recall, Children of Men involves a repressive government and a secret 'terrorist' group. No military invasion or anything, not even any involvement of a foreign state. If that's a war film, why not The Parallax View?

You're not wrong. But I guess when I came up with the subheading "Life in a War Zone," it was one of the first things that came to mind.