Editing War film (section)

=== Postwar ===
{{further|List of World War II films}}
[[File:Shooting of a scene from A bridge too far.jpg|thumb|right|Shooting a scene from ''[[A Bridge Too Far (1977 film)|A Bridge Too Far]]'' on location in [[Deventer]], Netherlands, 1977]]

According to Andrew Pulver of ''The Guardian'', the public fascination with war films became an "obsession", with over 200 war films produced in each decade of the 1950s and 1960s.<ref name=Pulver /> War film production in the United Kingdom and United States reached its zenith in the mid-1950s.{{Sfn|Mayer|2003|p=83}} Its popularity in the United Kingdom was brought on by the critical and commercial success of  [[Charles Frend]]'s ''[[The Cruel Sea (1953 film)|The Cruel Sea]]'' (1953).{{Sfn|Mayer|2003|p=83}} Like others of the period, ''The Cruel Sea'' was based on a bestselling novel, in this case the former naval commander [[Nicholas Monsarrat]]'s story of the [[battle of the Atlantic]].<ref>{{Cite news |last1=A. W. |title=The Cruel Sea (1953) The Screen in Review; Monsarrat's 'The Cruel Sea', a Graphic Record of Valor, Opens at Fine Arts |url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9406E3D61731E53BBC4952DFBE668388649EDE |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=14 March 2015 |date=11 August 1953}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58094591 |title=From London |newspaper=[[The Mail (Adelaide)|The Mail]] |location=Adelaide|date=9 January 1954 |access-date=10 July 2012 |page=50 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}</ref> Others, like ''[[The Dam Busters (film)|The Dam Busters]]'' (1954), with its exciting tale of the inventor [[Barnes Wallis]]'s unorthodox [[bouncing bomb]] and its distinctive [[theme music]], were true stories. ''The Dam Busters'' became the most popular film in Britain in 1955,<ref>{{"'}}The Dam Busters{{'"}}. ''The Times'' [London, England], 29 December 1955, p. 12.<!--Access date removed. Meaningless without providing the URL it relates --></ref> and remained a favourite as of 2015 with a 100% score on [[Rotten Tomatoes]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Dam Busters (1954) |url=http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dam_busters/ |website=Rotten Tomatoes |access-date=8 March 2015}}</ref> though, partly because it celebrated an "exclusively British [victory]", it failed in the American market.<ref name="Ramsden2003">{{Cite book |author=John Ramsden |title=The Dam Busters: A British Film Guide |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VIwOnhtH9UUC&pg=PA128 |year=2003 |publisher=I.B. Tauris |isbn=978-1-86064-636-2 |page=118}}</ref> A large number of war films were made in the 1955–1958 period in particular. In 1957 alone, ''[[Bitter Victory]]'', ''[[Count Five and Die]]'', ''[[The Enemy Below]]'', ''[[Ill Met by Moonlight (film)|Ill Met by Moonlight]]'', ''[[Men in War]]'', ''[[The One That Got Away (1957 film)|The One That Got Away]]'', and ''[[Seven Thunders (film)|Seven Thunders]]'', and the highly successful, critically acclaimed pictures ''[[The Bridge on the River Kwai]]'' (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year{{sfn|Monaco|1992|p=96}}) and ''[[Paths of Glory]]'' were released.{{sfn|Wojik-Andrews|2002|p=76}} Some, such as ''Bitter Victory'', focused more on the psychological battle between officers and egotism rather than events during the war.{{Sfn|DiLeo|2010|p=196}} ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' brought a new complexity to the war picture, with a sense of moral uncertainty surrounding war. By the end of the decade the "sense of shared achievement" which had been common in war films "began to evaporate", according to Pulver.<ref name=Pulver />

[[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] films in the 1950s and 1960s could display spectacular heroics or self-sacrifice, as in the popular ''[[Sands of Iwo Jima]]'' (1949) starring [[John Wayne]]. U.S. Marines considered ''Sands of Iwo Jima'' visually authentic, but found Lewis Milestone's ''[[Battle Cry (film)|Battle Cry]]'' (1955), with its attention to the lives of the men, the more realistic film.{{sfn|Suid|2002|pp=116–135}} The formula for a successful war film consisted, according to Lawrence Suid, of a small group of ethnically diverse men; an unreasonable senior officer; cowards became heroic, or died.{{sfn|Suid|2002|pp=116–135}} Jeanine Basinger suggests that a traditional war film should have a hero, a group, and an objective, and that the group should contain "an Italian, a Jew, a cynical complainer from Brooklyn, a sharpshooter from the mountains, a midwesterner (nicknamed by his state, 'Iowa' or 'Dakota'), and a character who must be initiated in some way".<ref name=AHA-Basinger /> Films based on real [[commando]] missions, like [[Gift Horse (film)|''The Gift Horse'']] (1952) based on the [[St. Nazaire Raid]], and ''[[Ill Met by Moonlight (film)|Ill Met by Moonlight]]'' (1956) based on the capture of the German commander of Crete, inspired fictional adventure films such as ''[[The Guns of Navarone (film)|The Guns of Navarone]]'' (1961), ''[[The Train (1964 film)|The Train]]'' (1964), and ''[[Where Eagles Dare]]'' (1968). These used the war as a backdrop for spectacular action.<ref name=Pulver>{{Cite news |last1=Pulver |first1=Andrew |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/17/why-so-obsessed-second-world-war-films |title=Why are we so obsessed with films about the second world war? |newspaper=The Guardian |access-date=7 March 2015 |date=17 July 2014}}</ref>

[[File:Tora Fire Break 08.JPG|thumb|left|Supposed realism: the [[Commemorative Air Force]]'s [[Gulf Coast Wing]]'s ''[[Tora! Tora! Tora!]]'' team simulating the [[attack on Pearl Harbor]] with a wall of fire instead of explosions, using planes such as [[T-6 Texan]]s converted to resemble [[Mitsubishi A6M Zero]]s, and generating smoke<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Goebel |first1=Greg |title=The Mitsubishi A6M Zero |url=http://www.airvectors.net/avzero.html |access-date=15 March 2015 |date=1 March 2015 |quote=A large number of flyable Zero replicas exist. These were modified from North American AT-6 Texans for the 1969 movie 'TORA TORA TORA', about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The replicas are surprisingly convincing, though they are still clearly fakes, since the Texan is a chubbier aircraft than the slender Zero. 25 of these bogus Zeroes were built}}</ref>{{efn|Further, two of the aircraft are still carrying their weapons after the attack.}} 2008]]

[[Darryl F. Zanuck]] produced the 178 minute documentary drama ''[[The Longest Day (film)|The Longest Day]]'' (1962), based on the first day of the [[D-Day landings]], achieving commercial success and Oscars.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Longest Day (1962) Awards |publisher=Turner Classic Movies, A Time Warner Company | url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/81774/the-longest-day | access-date = 7 March 2015}}</ref> It was followed by large-scale but thoughtful films like [[Andrei Tarkovsky]]'s ''[[Ivan's Childhood]]'' (1962), and quasi-[[Documentary film|documentary]] all-star epics filmed in Europe such as ''[[Battle of the Bulge (1965 film)|Battle of the Bulge]]'' (1965), ''[[Battle of Britain (film)|Battle of Britain]]'' (1969), ''[[The Battle of Neretva]]'' (1969), ''[[Midway (1976 film)|Midway]]'' (1976), and ''[[A Bridge Too Far (1977 film)|A Bridge Too Far]]'' (1977). In Lawrence Suid's view, ''The Longest Day'' "served as the model for all subsequent combat spectaculars".{{sfn|Suid|2002|pp=188–189}} However, its cost also made it the last of the traditional war films, while the controversy around the help given by the U.S. Army and Zanuck's "disregard for Pentagon relations" changed the way that Hollywood and the Army collaborated.{{sfn|Suid|2002|pp=188–189}}

Zanuck, by then an executive at [[20th Century Fox]], set up an American–Japanese co-production for [[Richard Fleischer]]'s ''[[Tora! Tora! Tora!]]'' (1970) to depict what "really happened on December 7, 1941" in the surprise [[attack on Pearl Harbor]].{{sfn|Parish|1990|pp=411–412}}{{sfn|Orriss|1984|pp=194–195}} The film, panned by [[Roger Ebert]]<ref>{{Cite journal | author=Ebert, Roger | url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19701012/REVIEWS/10120301/1023 | title=Tora! Tora! Tora! (review) | journal=Chicago Sun-Times | date=12 October 1970 | access-date=15 March 2015 | archive-date=11 March 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130311201839/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19701012%2FREVIEWS%2F10120301%2F1023 | url-status=dead }}</ref> and ''[[The New York Times]]'',<ref>{{Cite journal| author=Canby, Vincent |url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE7DC1E38E73ABC4C51DFBF66838B669EDE |title=Movies: Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) |journal=The New York Times | date=4 September 1970 |access-date=15 March 2015}}</ref> was a major success in Japan.{{sfn|Parish|1990|pp=411–412}} Its realistic-looking attack footage was reused in later films such as ''[[Midway (1976 film)|Midway]]'' (1976), ''[[The Final Countdown (film)|The Final Countdown]]'' (1980), and ''[[Australia (2008 film)|Australia]]'' (2008).{{sfn|Dolan |1985|p=87}} The story was revisited in ''[[Pearl Harbor (film)|Pearl Harbor]]'' (2001), described by ''The New York Times'' as a "noisy, expensive and very long new blockbuster", with the comment that "for all its epic pretensions (as if epic were a matter of running time, tumescent music and earnest voice-over pronouncements), the movie works best as a bang-and-boom action picture".<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Scott |first1=A. O. |title='Pearl Harbor': War Is Hell, but Very Pretty |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/25/arts/25PEAR.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=8 March 2015 |date=25 May 2001}}</ref>

[[Steven Spielberg]]'s ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'' (1998) uses hand-held camera, sound design, staging, and increased audio-visual detail to defamiliarise viewers accustomed to conventional combat films, so as to create what film historian Stuart Bender calls "reported realism", whether or not the portrayal is genuinely more realistic.{{sfn|Bender|2013|p=ix}} Jeanine Basinger notes that critics experienced it as "groundbreaking and anti-generic", with, in James Wolcott's words, a "desire to bury the cornball, recruiting poster legend of John Wayne: to get it right this time"; and that combat films have always been "grounded in the need to help an audience understand and accept war".<ref name=AHA-Basinger /> Its success revived interest in World War II films.<ref name="Stein2004">{{Cite book |last=Stein |first=Howard F. |title=Beneath the Crust of Culture: Psychoanalytic Anthropology and the Cultural Unconscious in American Life |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mTxfvLvjeGEC&pg=PA6 |year=2004 |publisher=Rodopi |isbn=90-420-0818-0 |page=6 |quote=Chris Vognar writes<!--2002-->: 'Saving Private Ryan wasn't just a great movie: it was also the cultural touchstone for the country's revived interest in World War II.'}}</ref> Others tried to portray the reality of the war, as in  [[Joseph Vilsmaier]]'s ''[[Stalingrad (1993 film)|Stalingrad]]'' (1993), which ''The New York Times'' said "goes about as far as a movie can go in depicting modern warfare as a stomach-turning form of mass slaughter".<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Holden |first1=Stephen |title=Stalingrad (1992) Film Review; In War's Horrors, Chaos May Rank With Carnage |url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=990CE5DA163EF937A15756C0A963958260 |newspaper=New York Times |access-date=8 March 2015 |date=24 May 1995}}</ref>