The Movieforums Top 100 War Movies Countdown

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love was #93 on the MoFo Top 100 of the 1950s. Patton was actually the only of the Best Picture Oscar winners NOT to make the MoFo '70s List.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Cool, my first time guessing a clue correctly! Patton is a movie I love. George C. Scott gave the performance of a lifetime (although I also love other roles of his) and justly won Best Actor for it. It's #15 on my ballot.

#4 1917 Forward! #31
#7 The Longest Day Hit the beach! #36
#8 Hacksaw Ridge On point #67
#10 The Hurt Locker Bombs away! #58
#12 Dunkirk Retreat! #47
#15 Patton "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"
#18 The Dirty Dozen #32
#21 Tora! Tora! Tora! In the vanguard #63

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

Great pair-no votes!

Another from my list. The Human Condition trilogy was my 2,3,4. So pleased all made it. Obviously I wish they were higher but I know the time commitment for s daunting for people. Don’t let it be. Instead of watching 4 mediocre movies this week, watch 3 of the greatest ever.

Patton was fine. Scott is great in it.

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Letterboxd

More donuts for me. Patton is the only BP winner from the 1970's I haven't seen.


Seen: 28/74

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Human Condition I was my number 11. On my list: Despite being a little slow and episodic at the start, the movie's in-depth study of humanity from several angles leads to a powerful final act that leaves a very bittersweet but still satisfying taste long afterwards.

NOW you can be extremley pleased

Human Condition 1 is well deserving of the list.

I haven't seen Patton.

2. Jojo Rabbit (2019)
4. To Be or Not To Be (1942)
5. Wings (1927)
9. The General (1926)
11. 1917 (2019)
13. The Killing Fields (1984)
14. Grand Illusion (1937)
16. Patton (1970)
19. The Caine Mutiny (1954)
21. Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

28. Patton - Yeah, this is a really great film - probably not in contention for me because I haven't seen it start to finish in a long while. Is it wrong for me to say my favourite scene in the film is the one where he slaps the shell-shocked soldier? "You're just a g*damned coward!" Let me be clear - my heart stops beating for a split-second when I see that him react like that. I see this old-school master blinded by his blunt black or white methodology and philosophy, and have such difficulty witnessing the debasement of a soldier psychologically wounded. He was a great strategist, and closer to the German mindset than his own Allied commanders - he actually wanted to take on the Soviet Union, which would have fulfilled one of Adolf Hitler's last wishes. Yeah, a fascinating man, and a performance for the ages from George C. Scott. Writing about it, I'm kind of convincing myself that maybe I should have at least given it a watch, because then it might have figured more strongly in my considerations voting-wise. Anyway - it's here, and that's the main thing.

27. The Human Condition I: No Greater Love - How many times throughout the ages has someone decided to better a system by being a part of it - thus able to contribute to it's improvement from a much better vantage point? Our protagonist in The Human Condition, Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) thinks he's onto a winner when he avoids having to fight a war he's at odds with, and help an occupied forced labor camp in Manchuria become, at the very least, humane. If you know anything about the way the Japanese behaved when it came to their occupation on the Chinese mainland you'll know just how crazy that proposition is. The central irony is that away from the battlefield, Kaji will fearlessly fight, and fight, and fight - even though he's facing a tsunami alone, with a mere bucket to hold back an ocean of malevolent cultural imperialism, and the darker side of human nature. But - the movie itself tells it better than anyone can. No Greater Love was #15 on my ballot.

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Seen : 54/74
I'd never even heard of :12/74
Movies that had been on my radar, but I haven't seen yet : 8/74
Films from my list : 9

#27 - My #15 - The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959)
#31 - My #20 - 1917 (2019)
#33 - My #2 - The Ascent (1977)
#34 - My #4 - The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (1961)
#38 - My #23 - Glory (1989)
#49 - My #24 - The Guns of Navarone (1961)
#51 - My #7 - The Human Condition II : Road to Eternity (1959)
#70 - My #14 - The Caine Mutiny (1954)
#74 - My #16 - Shoah (1985)

Overlooked films : Breaker Morant, Fail-Safe, Night and Fog

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Hints


26: Oh, alright. I'll put on some underwear.


25: Verse 2 of Poker Face.

25. The Deer Hunter

The Allies would've never endured the human carnage that taking on the Soviet Union in 1945 would've entailed. Still Patton had the right idea about the Soviet Union, they enslaved part of the world just like the Nazis were trying to do. War sucks. Millions die to defeat the evil tyranny of a fascist Nazi regime only to have another evil empire capture a large part of Europe.

It's sad - England and France went to war for Poland, and then in the end, the whole reason they went was suddenly being conspicuously ignored, with Poland still enslaved.

I wonder what difference the edge of having the ability to create atom bombs would have had on a United States/France/England attack on the Soviet Union in 1945. What effect would dropping a bomb on Moscow have had? That sounds too terrible. Maybe Minsk.

26. Braveheart

25. Inglourious Basterds

25. The Deer Hunter

From the last few days of reveals only one title has been on my list...



Melville's Army of Shadows was in my Top Ten at number nine, good for seventeen of its 149 points. This was my write up from the MoFo Top 100 Foreign Films countdown...I think L'armée des Ombres (1969) is Jean-Pierre Melville's masterpiece, which is saying a lot because he made so much great cinema. This at times almost documentary-like portrayal of some of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation is quietly powerful and mesmerizing. It seems to be at least partially a reaction to not only James Bond movies but even something like The Guns of Navarone and other military mission movies. While the idea of a slick secret agent is a fun fantasy and certainly there were soldiers and other specialists risking their lives in covert and deadly operations during the Second World War, the French Resistance - and by extension any such actors in other nations and any conflict - were mostly "normal", unassuming citizens compelled into service by circumstance. The characters played by Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse, and Jean-Pierre Cassel have no hand-to-hand combat training, are not munitions experts, they are not well-armed, and are often working on very sketchy information. But they persist because to surrender without doing whatever they can is a fate worse than death.

And while I call the tone sometimes almost documentary-like, it does still have that special Melville atmosphere that can be dreamlike. Those two qualities of reality and surreality would seem to be at odds, but that they work so well together is part of the unique appeal of Army of Shadows. That the film was misunderstood and suppressed for so many decades is nuts. Like most Americans I did not see Army of Shadows until the 2006 restoration and re-release on the big screen. I was blown away.


That makes eight that my votes contributed to.

HOLDEN'S BALLOT
7. Fires on the Plain (#59)
9. Army of Shadows (#29)
10. Waltz with Bashir (#45)
14. MASH (#39)
15. Rome, Open City (#37)
16. Letters from Iwo Jima (#60)
19. The Ascent (#33)
21. The Killing Fields (#69)
25. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (DNP)

At this point I'll only have 3 of my 25 miss

I have ten more coming for sure, three that surely aren't, and three others I honestly can't tell anymore.