THE TEN BEST WAR FILMS

Movies about war have been around forever and many great films were very popular even during the silent film era such as The Big Parade about World War l starring John Gilbert. War films were extremely popular during World War ll and many of them were filled with emotional scenes and dialogue that were used to urge the American people to buy war bonds and to do all they could to support the nation’s fight against the enemy.

Many fantastic films were made during this period with stars such as John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray and Van Johnson in movies called Battle Cry, The White Cliffs of Dover and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Starting with the 1950s, however, movies began to look back at these wars more in depth, as with the precision of a microscope, in an attempt to analyze what happened and why they happened.

The Ten Best Movies of the 1970s

The 1970s showed continuing tension in the cold war with the Soviet Union but The Vietnam War was finally coming to a close. Richard Nixon became the first man to ever resign from the presidency in 1974 beginning a period of time when citizens no longer trusted their government. There were gasoline shortages in the United States so massive that people would have to wait in long lines for hours in order to fill their gas tanks and some people ran out of gas while they were waiting. And the King of Rock & Roll died in 1979.

The film industry was still going strong bolstered by the continued rise of independent producers and the wave of the new, young and innovative writer/directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg who were taking over the film industry. The movie moguls of the old Hollywood system were losing control over the industry as their struggling studios were being taken over by huge business conglomerates.

The following list must necessarily leave out many fantastic films that appeared during the decade and the only way to narrow the list for me was to judge the impact that they had on movie goers and society. We may have to change future lists from ten to twenty! Here goes!