World War 2 has just ended and the world was desperate for healing and remembrance. That created the era of the war movie. Many excellent movies were made that depicted the largest war in the history of mankind. Below is a list of the top 6 World War 2 movies ever made.
Number 6: “The Caine Mutiny” (1954). A fictional account of a mutiny aboard the US minesweeper, the USS Caine. Based on the Herman Wouk novel of the same name, Humphrey Bogart plays the unstable Commander Queeg, who loses control of his ship during a storm.
Number 5: “Operation Pacific” (1951). John Wayne plays Lt. Commander Gifford, the captain of a submarine serving in the Pacific Ocean. The crew of the USS Thunderfish led by Gifford must not only battle the Japanese fleet, but also faulty torpedo design.
Number 4: “The Flying Leathernecks” (1951). John Wayne stars as a Marine pilot during the Battle of Guadalcanal. He must lead a rag tag squadron of outnumbered Marine pilots as they battle Japanese forces during the war.
Number 3: “Run Silent, Run Deep” (1958). This film tells the story of submarine warfare in the Pacific. Clark Gable plays Commander Richardson, in command of an American submarine. Richardson must battle the Japanese fleet as he searches for the enemy destroyer that had sunk his prior ship.
Number 2: “Stalag 17″ (1953). Tells the story of a German prison of war camp and the prisoners held by them. William Holden plays Sefton, a scheming prisoner who runs a black market trading operation. He suspects that one member of his barracks is a German infiltrator who is feeding information to the camp commanders. Unfortunately, the rest of the barracks suspects that he is the German spy.
Number 1: “Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957). This award winning film tells the story of a captured British Battalion in the early days of World War 2. This battalion is led by Lt Colonel Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness) and is charged by its Japanese captors to build a bridge over the Kwai River in Southeast Asia. The film depicts the horrendous conditions that the British suffered, but the film primarily focuses on the battle of wills between Nicholson and the Japanese Commander, Saito.
The 1950s had many other excellent war films. Other films that could make a top movie list include “From Here to Eternity”, “The Desert Rats”, “Above Us, The Waves”, “To Hell and Back” and “The Enemy Below”.