The year 2020 commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. But though the war ended 75 years ago, it continues to live on in popular culture and to inspire Hollywood to this day (hence Army vet Steve Rogers’s return to active duty in the Marvel Cinematic Universe starting with 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger).
Hollywood often gets history wrong (c’mon, did anyone really find John Wayne believable as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror?), but a few silver screen features did accurately depict life during and after the war, at least according to Rob Citino, Senior Historian at the National World War II Museum, who picked four films that “got it right” in a recent Time magazine profile: Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953), Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1943), and William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
These four films look at the war effort from diverse points of view, from the “moral front” of Casablanca (which justifies the U.S.’s eventual involvement) and the “forgotten front” of Stalag 17’s prisoners-of-war continuing the fight behind the lines, to the American “home front” depicted in The More the Merrier and The Best Years of Our Lives.
Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives - which won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Best Screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood), and an Honorary Oscar to non-professional actor Harold Russell for “bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans” - is now available to stream for free on Kanopy using your library card. You can also watch all four films on YouTube.
1. The Best Years of Our Lives
Historian Rob Citino calls The Best Years of Our Lives “maybe the best film made about World War II, because it’s about what happens after those 16 million men and women came back home. Some of them bore psychic scars and others bore physical scars, like Harold Russell.” Robert E. Sherwood’s Oscar-winning screenplay (adapted from Mackinley Kantor’s novel Glory For Me) about three returning veterans—middle-aged infantry officer Al (Fredric March), hardened bomber pilot Fred (Dana Andrews), and young disabled soldier Homer (Harold Russell, a Navy sailor who lost both hands during the war)—captured the hopes, fears, and vulnerabilities of the returning G.I.’s and was one of the first glimpses of the emotional challenges returning veterans might face on the “Home Front.”
As director Wyler commented, “No man can walk right into the house after two or three years [of war] and pick up his life as before.” And that’s why Citino credits the film’s enduring power to Russell’s performance: “He has prosthetic hooks, and watching him dress, watching him drink a cup of coffee, watching him try not to notice the stares of the people on the street—it’s devastating.”
2. Casablanca
You must remember this: though Humphrey Bogart’s cynical American cafe boss Rick Blaine claims “I stick my neck out for nobody,” he ends up doing just that, risking his safety and sacrificing his personal happiness (in the form of Ingrid Bergman) to help a French resistance fighter (Paul Heinreid) escape the clutches of the Nazis and lead a global struggle against fascism. That’s why Citino praises Casablanca for expressing “a high truth” about World War II: “...that this was a moral conflict, that you had to be sure you were on the side of the right guys, and in this case, the right side happened to be on the side of the Allies.” Rick Blaine’s change of heart mirrors America’s response to the war after Pearl Harbor. Or as Citino puts it, “We don’t pick a fight with anyone unless we see someone being picked on, and then we step in.”
3. Stalag 17
Watching men in captivity is not as exciting or dramatic as watching them in battle, which may explain why there are so few Hollywood movies about POWs. But Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 is the exception to the rule, masterfully showing how men with too much time on their hands strive to survive - the boredom, the confinement, the uncertainty - without going stir-crazy. The stellar cast includes Otto Preminger, Peter Graves, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, and Richard Erdman.
But what makes the film really succeed is star William Holden, who Citino suggests maybe the first great American anti-hero and “one of the most unforgettable characters in American cinema.” Holden’s cynical black marketeer character Sgt. J.J. Sefton never claims to be a hero, but when the going gets tough he doesn’t shy away from decisive action. Accused of being an informer, he exposes and eliminates the real rat in a clever way that doesn’t risk retaliation from the Germans. “He doesn’t spout patriotic slogans. He doesn’t salute the flag...he just wants to survive this.” And in the end, survival is really just another kind of victory.
4. The More the Merrier
Those who didn’t serve overseas helped at home by working in war-time industries, an effort that led millions of Americans to relocate to strategic centers like Washington D.C. The resulting housing shortage in Washington provided the framework for George Stevens’s screwball comedy starring Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Charles Coburn as an oddball trio sharing a cramped apartment. As he shoots around doors, windows, and walls, Stevens gives an intimate sense of what it’s like to live in make-shift surroundings when fate throws people - who otherwise wouldn’t know each - together.
As Citino quips, “The war is in the background, but, by and large, this is a movie about human relationships and social change during the war. It’s also hilarious.” No argument there. Charles Coburn won an Oscar for his supporting role as match-maker Mr. Dingle. The film was remade in 1966 as Walk Don’t Run, with Cary Grant, Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton in the leads and the setting changed to Tokyo during the 1964 Summer Olympics. (Unfortunately, something was lost in this translation.)
There have been countless other good feature films about the war in more recent times, so if Citino’s list inspires you, check out more critically acclaimed WWII films, from Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book (2006) to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009), Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima (both 2006), and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017). And if you like anime, be sure to see Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises (2013).
Want to learn more about the war this Veteran’s Day? There are hundreds of documentaries about WWII streaming on Kanopy, including two of the best: ITV’s award-winning 11-volume The World At War and Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s seven-volume The War.