Kitch’s Top 5 World War One Movies: Honourable Mentions

As we approach April 25, 1915 - one hundred years since the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli - I started thinking about great films about World War One, and came up with my Top Five, which I'll post here over the next few days.

First, though, some movies that didn't quite make the cut.

The Lost Battalion (2001): A made-for-television movie that's far better than it sounds. Starring Rick Schroeder of NYPD Blue fame, it tells the story of Major Charles White
Whittlesey and the United States 77th Battalion during ferocious fighting in the Argonne Forest in October of 1918, in which no fewer than seven men, includding Whittlesey himself, won the Medal of Honour. It's a brutal and uncompromising look at perhaps the most spectacular achievement of American forces in the Great War.

War Horse (2011): Steven Spielberg's emotional tale based on a children's novel of the same man, it tells the story of a young Englishman who enlists to fight in the First World War after his favourite horse, Joey, is sold to the cavalry, and is eventually captured by the Germans. Fneaturing some harrowing scenes at the Second Battle of the Somme, War Horse was Nominated for six Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and five BAFTAs. One of my favourite Spielberg movies. Brilliantly put together.

Passchendaele (2008): A Canadian film about the battle of the same name, taking place in November 1917, and evidently as harrowing an experience for the Canadian troops as for our Australians. Sergeant Michael Dunne is sent home to Calgary after the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where he meets a beautiful nurse, who is unpopular in town because her father, a German, was killed at Vimy Ridge, on the opposite side. A heavy film that you have to work hard to find at your local video shop. Well worth the effort, though.

Chunuk Bair (1992): A low-budget New Zealand film adapted from a stage play. Whilst the Australians attacked Lone Pine and the Nek during the August Offensive at Gallipoli, the New Zealanders were tasked with taking the heights of Chunuk Bair - it is said whoever controls that summit controls the battle. Chunuk Bair tells the story of the Wellington Rifles who face impossible odds in what is, at least in Australia, an overlooked facet of the battle. Another hard one to find in Australia.