10 Best Movies WW1: Classic Films of the Great War

The First World War, ignited on 28 July 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, reshaped the global landscape. Dubbed ‘the war to end all wars’, it began with Austria-Hungary’s preparations to invade Serbia, escalating rapidly. By Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on 4 August, as German forces moved into neutral Belgium, the sentiment captured by British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey resonated deeply: “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” Over four devastating years, nearly 17 million lives were lost, leaving an indelible mark on history and culture, including cinema. Filmmakers grappled with the conflict’s immense scale, horror, and human cost, producing some of the most powerful and enduring works in film history. Exploring the Best Movies Ww1 offers insight into how cinema has depicted this pivotal era.

One notable early example is Frank Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms (1932), the first adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s seminal novel. While Charles Vidor’s 1957 version with Rock Hudson is more widely known, Borzage’s earlier film offers a distinct interpretation. Borzage diverges from Hemingway’s spare, muscular prose, opting instead for his signature swooningly romantic, sensually expressionistic style. Gary Cooper, delivering a standout performance, plays the American soldier drawn to nurse Helen Hayes, a newly bereaved widow caught in another romance she feels powerless against. Aided by Charles Lang’s exquisite cinematography, Borzage constructs images and sequences with staggering virtuosity, culminating in a transcendent climax reminiscent of Carl Dreyer. Though perhaps not a purely faithful Hemingway adaptation, it remains one of the finest films about the generation scarred by the war. As we delve into the cinematic portrayals of this era, here are ten classic films set during the dark years of World War I that stand out.

1. Shoulder Arms (1918)

Director: Charles Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp with Edna Purviance in the WWI comedy Shoulder Arms (1918)

“I was worried about getting an idea for my second picture,” Charlie Chaplin wrote in his autobiography. “Then the thought came to me: why not a comedy about the war? I told several friends of my intention, but they shook their heads. Said [Cecil B.] De Mille: ‘It’s dangerous at this time to make fun of the war.’ Dangerous or not, the idea excited me.” Despite his initial excitement, Chaplin harboured reservations about the final film and nearly shelved it. However, Shoulder Arms became a massive success. Its positive reception might have encouraged him to push comedic boundaries further with his later wartime satire, The Great Dictator (1940). The film features an extended dream sequence where Chaplin’s iconic Little Tramp transforms into a hero, saving France and the girl (played by frequent co-star Edna Purviance) from the Kaiser. The Tramp captures the German leader and sends him packing with a boot from his ‘Awkward Squad’ private. Famously, when his superior asks how he captured thirteen enemy soldiers in the flooded trenches, Charlie delivers the timeless line: “I surrounded them.”

2. The Big Parade (1925)

Director: King Vidor

Soldiers advance through a stark, war-torn landscape in King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925)

King Vidor’s The Big Parade was the highest-grossing film of the silent era, an epic constructed from intimate moments. Its influence echoes in diverse war films like Mario Monicelli’s La grande guerra (1959) and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987). Yet, its formal complexity and unhurried narrative structure remain remarkably innovative. The film dedicates nearly 90 minutes to establishing relationships and romance during the soldiers’ relatively peaceful arrival in France before plunging into the conflict. When the call to arms finally arrives – “It had begun!” – the subsequent ten-minute sequence depicting the lovers’ parting stands as a masterclass in cinematic construction and heart-wrenching emotion. The first combat sequence, showing men marching through a forest under enemy fire, is breathtakingly simple yet unnerving. The stark visual of charred trees framing the approach to the battlefield serves as one of cinema’s most evocative depictions of the gateway to hell.

3. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Director: Lewis Milestone

German soldiers navigate the desolate trenches in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front is widely regarded as a quintessential WWI picture, and its raw emotional power is undeniable, driven by its potent anti-war message. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s classic 1929 novel, the film follows a group of idealistic young German students whose patriotic fervor quickly evaporates when confronted with the brutal reality of trench warfare. Technically innovative for its time, the film’s relentless portrayal of both the horror and the mind-numbing monotony of front-line life ensures it retains its impact decades later. All Quiet on the Western Front earned immediate acclaim as a humanist classic, making history as the first film to win Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Director. Interestingly, it wasn’t the only significant 1930 film offering a German perspective on the war. G.W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918, released just six months later, presented an arguably even starker vision of hell, capturing the everyday insanity of trench life with visceral immediacy, though it remains less accessible than Milestone’s landmark film.

4. Hell’s Angels (1930)

Director: Howard Hughes

Vintage black and yellow poster art for Howard Hughes's aviation epic Hell's Angels (1930)

William A. Wellman’s Wings (1927), the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar, ignited a passion for aviation spectacles in late 1920s and early 30s cinema. Its standard for aerial choreography was so high that director Tony Scott cited it as research material for Top Gun (1986) nearly six decades later. However, no filmmaker pursued this obsession further than Howard Hughes. Hell’s Angels became the most expensive film of its era, a record it held for almost twenty years. Hughes’s goal was straightforward: surpass Wings. The breathtaking intensity of the Zeppelin sequence alone suggests he succeeded. While Hughes clearly prioritized the aerial action (delegating dialogue scenes to James Whale), Hell’s Angels offers more than just its legendary production story, later dramatized by Martin Scorsese in The Aviator (2004). Even after more than 80 years, this ambitious independent blockbuster retains its power to astound and impress with its sheer scale and spectacle.

5. The Lost Patrol (1934)

Director: John Ford

Victor McLaglen and Boris Karloff under duress in the desert setting of The Lost Patrol (1934)

Despite its vast, sun-scorched desert setting (Arizona standing in for Mesopotamia), John Ford’s The Lost Patrol exudes a claustrophobic intensity through the tightly-wound psychological breakdown of its characters. Victor McLaglen plays the sergeant thrust into command after his officer is killed by an unseen sniper. Stranded, the patrol seeks refuge in an oasis, described alternately as the ‘Garden of Eden’ and the ‘Devil’s Backyard’. Here, the men meet their fates one by one, picked off by an invisible enemy. “I’m here amongst great soldiers, the kind you read about in Kipling… They’re so modest, they don’t even see the glory in it,” remarks a young recruit early on. Ford finds little glory in the madness and suspicion that quickly engulf the trapped soldiers. Instead, he highlights the irony of empty gestures, epitomized by McLaglen’s character’s final, maniacal assault, and the slow, doomed march of Boris Karloff’s zealous Sanders, stripped to rags and clutching a makeshift crucifix.

6. The Road to Glory (1936)

Director: Howard Hawks

A wounded soldier is tended to by a nurse in Howard Hawks's WWI drama The Road to Glory (1936)

Setting aside its somewhat sentimental ending, Howard Hawks’s The Road to Glory represents a significant improvement over his earlier WWI film collaboration with writer William Faulkner, Today We Live (1933). While perhaps not reaching the heights of Hawks’s superior (and harder-to-find) aviation war picture, The Dawn Patrol (1930), The Road to Glory benefits immensely from the cinematography of Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane). It ranks among Hawks’s darker works, retaining his characteristic authorial touches (like the obligatory piano scene), though perhaps less seamlessly integrated than in his finest films. The central love triangle dynamic echoes his earlier film Tiger Shark (1932). Although doses of humor lighten the somber atmosphere, the film’s most memorable elements are its strikingly bleak images: a soldier screaming, entangled in barbed wire surrounded by the corpses of failed rescuers, is mercifully shot; a squadron retreats from a position above a German mine, looking back at the explosion that seals the fate of those left behind. The humor and romance feel fragile here, underscoring that these men of action are acutely aware of death’s constant presence.

7. La Grande Illusion (1937)

Director: Jean Renoir

French prisoners of war inspect a comrade in theatrical drag in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937)

Jean Renoir’s 1937 masterpiece, La Grande Illusion, is not only considered the ultimate anti-war statement but also consistently ranks among the greatest films ever made. Its profound humanism, however, drew ire from powerful detractors. Notably, the Nazi Party, under Goebbels’ orders, labeled it ‘Cinematic Public Enemy Number One’ and sought to destroy all prints. Even French authorities banned it after WWII began, fearing its impact on morale. Renoir, one of cinema’s great humanists, crafts a manifesto for dignity amidst pervasive inhumanity. Set in a German prisoner-of-war camp away from the front lines, the film uses this microcosm to explore social class, ideology, and shared humanity. La Grande Illusion examines nobility – both the crumbling aristocratic social order and the fundamental codes of human decency that emerge even in war. The ‘grand illusion,’ Renoir suggests, is the belief that preserving the former, rather than upholding the latter, is what truly matters.

8. Paths of Glory (1957)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax navigates the trenches in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957)

While Stanley Kubrick would later deploy biting satire more overtly against the military machine in Dr. Strangelove (1964), his characteristic cynicism is equally potent in the earlier Paths of Glory, albeit expressed in a more somber key. Alongside Spartacus (1960), it might initially appear as one of Kubrick’s more conventional star vehicles, but closer examination reveals it as a subversion of that very form. Kirk Douglas stars as Colonel Dax, a principled French officer tasked with defending three soldiers randomly selected from his regiment and charged with cowardice after a failed, suicidal attack on a German stronghold. The ensuing kangaroo court provides a platform for Douglas’s impassioned denunciation of the “mockery of all human justice.” However, Dax’s limited victory over one arrogant general proves hollow against the cynical manipulations of the higher command, personified by Adolphe Menjou’s slick General Broulard. Kubrick’s signature tracking shots and masterful depiction of battlefield chaos create indelible images, but it’s the film’s dark humor and devastating final scene that deliver the most lasting impact.

9. La grande guerra (1959)

Director: Mario Monicelli

Italian soldiers march in formation in Mario Monicelli's WWI film La grande guerra (1959)

Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, Mario Monicelli’s La grande guerra (The Great War) is a masterpiece of WWI cinema deserving wider recognition. Controversial and subject to cuts upon its initial release due to its cynical perspective on patriotism, Monicelli’s film expertly blends comedy and tragedy. It follows two incorrigible slackers attempting to avoid danger and responsibility by any means necessary while serving on the Italian front against Austrian forces. What starts as witty banter between the mismatched pair gradually darkens, culminating in a finale of ruthless emotional power. Monicelli utilizes sweeping takes across a broad canvas – the battle scenes are particularly remarkable – but his sharp attention to detail truly brings the film to life. From the officers’ futile attempts to boost morale to the vivid characterizations given to even minor supporting roles, La grande guerra offers a rich and complex portrayal of life during wartime.

10. King and Country (1964)

Director: Joseph Losey

Dirk Bogarde defends Tom Courtenay in a trench courtroom scene from King and Country (1964)

Perhaps the most chillingly bleak film on this list, King and Country, directed by American expatriate Joseph Losey, examines the court-martial of Private Hamp (Tom Courtenay), a young soldier who simply walked away from the Western Front, intending to go home to London. The central question is whether he suffered from shell shock or was merely a deserter. Captain Hargreaves (Dirk Bogarde) is assigned to defend Hamp before the trench tribunal, attempting to save him from execution by firing squad. “A man can only take so much. So much blood, so much filth, so much dying,” Bogarde argues to the court. Losey fills his cramped, claustrophobic frames with decay and rot, portraying the trenches as a cesspit teeming with vermin and death. A palpable fog of despair hangs over the proceedings, highlighting issues of duty, class, and the psychological toll of war. The opening moments, fading between the skeletal remains of a soldier and Courtenay on his bunk, foreshadow a grim outcome, yet the pervasive atmosphere of decay does little to prepare the viewer for the harrowing, botched execution that concludes this devastating film.

These ten films represent some of the Best Movies Ww1 produced, offering diverse perspectives on the conflict – from satire and romance to harrowing realism and profound humanism. They capture the shock, the loss, and the enduring questions left by the Great War. Cinema continues to revisit this period, with other notable films like the silent epic Wings (1927), the poignant Australian drama Gallipoli (1981), David Lean’s sprawling Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Powell and Pressburger’s unique character study The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) also providing essential viewing for understanding the war’s cinematic legacy. Each film, in its own way, contributes to our collective memory of a conflict that irrevocably changed the world, demonstrating the power of film to explore history’s darkest chapters.