War Films

I know this is a little off-topic, but has anyone else noticed that in many war films, anytime you see soldiers running through a bombed out city, there's always a piano sitting in the middle of the street (SPR, Band of Brothers, Big Red One, etc)? What is the meaning of this convention - if any?
 
Well long time ago before the internet existed and even TVs and videos didn´t exist for that matter either.

A lot more people had pianos at home. So its not unusual that there would be a piano somewere in a city during WW2.

And of course it a filmmaking way to show that there had been life in the city before the bombings.

My favourite war movies often bring something new a the table.

Platoon, it gives you a realistic felling of vietnam. The only thing i dont like is that the character that got killed before they enter the village didn´t have much on screen before he was killed. So we didnt get that emotional as we could have been. It would been better if we got as angry as barnes were of the killing (almost)

Saving Private Ryan, I dont think the whole movie is as good as the combatscenes. But those scenes are the most realistic ive ever encountered before.

Band of brothers. better than SPR but with its 10h story and much more character development its much better. And that its based on a true story.

Black Hawk Down. My favorite war film as a whole. The film is perfect balanced between character, picture sound music. And that its non stop action after 30 minutes. Ridley Scott is the king.

We were soldiers, nice with a vietnam movie that wasn´t to gung ho or that it didn´t potray all americans like war criminals.

A bridge too far. The best warfilm that showed the a battle from the top to the bottom.
 
My favorite war movies are (in no real order)


Saving Private Ryan
Black Hawk Down
The Pianist


I know the last one is not really a "combat" war movie but it shows life during the war and is amazingly beautiful to watch...
 
I forgot about the stabbing scene in SPR, that is INTENSE!

I also agree that if Band of Brothers is allowed into this competition, it should be crowned King. I think it is the finest story ever committed to film. i.e. the best moving image production in history.

In a recent TV survey in Britain, SPR won the title of best war film. 2 of my other favourites are Schindler's List and Empire of the Sun. Spielberg = demi god.



Right, hands up, who cried during the last episode of BoBros?


...my Grandson asked me if I was a hero during the war.

I said "No, but I served in a company of heros."

[FADE TO BLACK]
 
I wouldnt say that I cried (sergants don´t cry ;) ). But the end was emotional I remembered. When you heard those veterans speak at the end.
 
LOL DM - Yes, there is a Piano everywhere! Good eyes!

Movieswede

Good insight with Platoon. When Manny is killed you are correct; we don't know him at all. It should have been a charcter we liked or had relations with; at this point in the film we're like "Who?"

However (and I am only thinking of this as I type) the character of Chris (Sheen) is telling the story and he doesn't know Manny. Perhaps this is the intent of the filmmaker? I was on a ship with 150 people in the USCG and knew about 10 people in reality; the rest were just crew to me (Deckhands/Eng/Officers)

Band of Brothers is indeed one of the finer cinematic experiences I have ever witnessed. I have watched the entire series so many times (box set) and still intent to when I get the junkie going. I cannot even wait for BOB 2 (Pac War)
 
favorite new war film GODZILLA: FINAL WARS sweet fights. and interesting characters brought to you by Ryuhei Kitamura. :-D
 
I think we shouldnt forgett sci fi movies either.

Aliens is a nice war movie.

Starship tropper is a great war satire. They studied many german propaganda movies before they made this one.
 
Sci-fi war movies definitely have their place, but we wouldn't be able to discuss the criteria that John laid out for us if we included Sci-Fi as a subject. How would we discuss campaign, players, etc. in a fictional setting?

You guys remember the battle of Ramidian Alpha 4? Oh, probably because I just made it up. :laugh:

We should probably keep this discussion to history.

My two cents.

Chris
 
Yes but starship troppers were based on german propgandafilm (WW2)

and aliens was based on vietnam.

By making scifi you can tell an old story from a different viewpoint because you can leave politics out of it and concentrate on the story and the characters.

Im not saying we should turn this discussion into a scifi war movie discussion. But dont dissmiss Scifi movies, they are very retro in some aspects.
 
I'm not dismissing Sci-Fi at all. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find a larger Sci-Fi fan than yours truly, but in my opinion it doesn't fit into the paradigm of this thread. The idea is not to discuss war movies, it's to make the ideal war movie in an online setting. Like a script treatment if you will. So we need to discuss history so that everyone is on the same page. After we've defined our subject, then we can put it into a futuristic setting if that's what everyone wants.

I've been putting some thought into this and it's been more difficult than I imagined it would be. So many of the key moments of history have already been covered in film. I think though, that if I were to make a war movie I would focus on the time right before the Battle of Bull Run.

As I said eariler, most of my war history knowledge is focused around the Civil War, and one thing that I've always found amazing is how excited everyone was to go to war in 1860 and 1861. Everyone thought that the war would amount to nothing more than a handful of guys on a battlefield. Families even camped out on the battleground to have a picnic and watch this little war. It then exploded into a four year long bloodbath. This would be my area, with a particular focus on the mentality of the time. I haven't isolated my key players in the film, but I probably wouldn't follow a soldier, rather a typical family of the time (but the only son of the family would not go off to war, how many times have we had to watch that scene?). I think it would make great cinema to show the change in a person from "Oh, this is great, let's get some guns and a sandwich and take care of this dispute" to "My god what have we done?"

Not a traditional war movie in the sense of titles we've discussed in this thread, but this idea was sparked whem someone mentioned Empire of the Sun, a film that I've always found compelling. The war sort of happens in the background of a very personal story.

Anyway, just thinking out loud....
 
Well I think there is a lot of untold war stories. But hollywood prefer war stories were the actors can speak english. And of course an american audience (about half of a movies income) prefer war stories that involves USA.

Of course my historical knowledge is mostly about WW2 so my movie would include USA as well ;)

The problem with old battles (before ww2) they were a little bit boring when people gathered at one place and then shoot each other. A bridge too far filmed one of the more interesting battles of ww2. That film really got most aspects of war in just 2 hours.
 
What was that Pacific Thetare battle where Civillan workers were involved in helping defend with the marines? ****, I'll Google it
 
MovieSwede said:
Of course my historical knowledge is mostly about WW2 so my movie would include USA as well ;)
Click to expand...

What about everything that happened before 7th Dec 1941?????

North Africa? Stalingrad? The Americans weren't everywhere.
 
I love learning more and more about the Eastern front during WWII. The Germans and Russians had some amazing battles, but here in the US, we don't hear much about it. The Red Army kicked some serious ass...
 
Despite my previous post, I would not make a war film (well WW2 at least) that did not feature the Americans. War films cost a lot of money, and the USA is a big market place... shame things have to work like that, well most of the time - Das Boot got away with it and is very refreshing as a result.
 
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