Best Of...

British cinema: War

49th Parallel (1941)
Michael Powell

Early in WWII, a German U-boat surfaces off the east coast of Canada. Only six members if its crew survive when RCAF bombers destroy the submarine in a fierce raid...   [More...]

A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Richard Attenborough

September, 1944. D-Day has come and gone but the allied advance has slowed to a crawl owing to over-extended supply lines...   [More...]

A Canterbury Tale (1944)
Michael Powell

One summer during WWII, three complete strangers are thrown together when they get off a train one evening at Chillingbourne village, several miles from Canterbury...   [More...]

A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
Ralph Thomas

In 1775, the banker Jarvis Lorry travels to Paris to be reunited with his old friend, Dr Alexandre Manette, who has been held prisoner in the Bastille for the last eighteen years...   [More...]

A Town Like Alice (1956)
Jack Lee

In 1942, Jean Paget is working in Malaya when the Japanese army begins to attack the country. In no time, she ends up with a party of women and children who are instructed to walk fifty miles to Kuala Lumpur, where they will be allowed to leave the country for Singapore...   [More...]

The African Queen (1951)
John Huston

In 1914, Rose Sayer assists her brother, the Reverend Samuel Sayer, in leading a missionary village in German East Africa...   [More...]

Atonement (2007)
Joe Wright

England, in the summer of 1935. Briony Tallis is a 13-year-old girl with an overactive imagination who lives in a large country house with her older sister Cecilia...   [More...]

Battle of Britain (1969)
Guy Hamilton

In the spring of 1940, British fighter pilots are waging a losing battle against the Nazis in continental Europe. Seeing that the fall of France to Germany is inevitable, Air Chief Marshal Dowding advises the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to withdraw all RAF fighters and prepare for a German attack on mainland Britain...   [More...]

The Battle of the River Plate (1956)
Michael Powell

November 1939. When his freighter, The Africa Shell, is sunk by the German pocket battleship Graf Spee, Captain Dove finds himself a prisoner of Captain Langsdorff...   [More...]

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
David Lean

During WWII, a contingent of British prisoners march into a Japanese camp run by the ruthless Colonel Saito, who intends using them to construct a railway bridge across the River Kwai...   [More...]

The Captive Heart (1946)
Basil Dearden

In August 1940, a German prisoner-of-war camp receives a fresh intake of captured British soldiers. These include Captain Hasek, a Czech soldier who, after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp, stole the uniform and papers from a dead British soldier named Captain Mitchell...   [More...]

Carry on Sergeant (1958)
Gerald Thomas

For the past six years, Sergeant Grimshaw has dreamed of turning out a champion platoon at his army training camp. So far the dream had eluded him, but this time, his last opportunity before he retires, he is certain he will succeed...   [More...]

Carve Her Name with Pride (1958)
Lewis Gilbert

London, 1940. On the pretext of celebrating Bastille Day with a Frenchman, Violet Bushell accosts Etienne Szabo, an officer in the French Foreign Legion, and invites him back to her home for dinner...   [More...]

The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift (1944)
Laurence Olivier

London, 1600. At the Globe Theatre, players are performing Shakespeare's Henry V to a packed house. The play opens in 1415...   [More...]

The Cockleshell Heroes (1955)
José Ferrer

During WWII, Major Stringer, an American officer recently assigned to the Royal Marines, devises a daring plan that will help to break Germany's blockade of Britain's sea lanes...   [More...]

The Colditz Story (1955)
Guy Hamilton

1942, Saxony. After an unsuccessful escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp, captured British army officers Pat Reid and Mac McGill are sent to Oflag IV-C, a castle prison that is reputedly escape-proof...   [More...]

Cottage to Let (1941)
Anthony Asquith

When Mrs Barrington puts her cottage up for let she gets far more than she bargained for. It is wartime and the cottage serves as a military hospital, although the only patient being treated on the premises is Flight Lieutenant Perry, who injured himself when he parachuted from his Spitfire...   [More...]

Cross of Iron (1977)
Sam Peckinpah

It is 1943 and Germany is losing the war on the Eastern Front. After a humiliating defeat at Stalingrad, German troops are in retreat, repelled by a determined Soviet fighting machine...   [More...]

The Cruel Sea (1953)
Charles Frend

At the beginning of WWII, Captain Ericson takes charge of a recently commissioned Royal Navy corvette, the Compass Rose, and immediately begins a series of trials with his inexperienced crew of raw recruits...   [More...]

The Dam Busters (1955)
Michael Anderson

In 1942, at the height of WWII, aircraft engineer Barnes Wallis has become obsessed with the idea of flooding the Ruhr valley by a single bombing raid on its dams...   [More...]

Dark Journey (1937)
Victor Saville

Towards the end of the First World War, Madeleine Goddard makes frequent trips between Paris and Stockholm, ostensibly to supply expensive dresses to her wealthy Swedish clientele...   [More...]

The Deer Hunter (1978)
Michael Cimino

A small working class town in Western Pennsylvania in the late 1960s. Michael, Nick and Steven are three close friends, in their late twenties, early thirties, who work at a steel mill...   [More...]

The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Robert Aldrich

England, 1944. On the eve of the Allied invasion of Normandy in WWII, Major John Reisman is offered a most unusual assignment...   [More...]

Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Stanley Kubrick

Convinced that the Communists are infiltrating his country, General Jack D. Ripper, the commander of a US military airbase, gives the order for a bomber wing to launch a first strike nuclear attack on the USSR...   [More...]

The Foreman Went to France (1942)
Charles Frend

June 1940. With the German armies poised to sweep into France, Fred Carrick, the foreman at a British munitions factory, takes it upon himself to recover three special purpose machines that have been loaned to the French...   [More...]

The Four Feathers (1939)
Zoltan Korda

In 1895, the British army is about to launch an attack against the Sudanese, ten years after General Gordon's humiliating defeat...   [More...]

La Grande vadrouille (1966)
Gérard Oury

In 1941, World War II has hardly begun when an English aeroplane is shot down whilst flying over Nazi occupied France. Fortunately, the three airmen who bail out manage to parachute to safety in the heart of Paris...   [More...]

The Guns of Navarone (1961)
J. Lee Thompson

It is 1943. Two thousand British soldiers are stranded on the island of Keros in the Aegean Sea and face certain death when the Germans launch an all-out assault on the region in a bid to draw neutral Turkey into the war...   [More...]

The Halfway House (1944)
Basil Dearden

June 1943. Ten disparate individuals badly in need of a rest arrive at a small hotel, The Halfway House, lost in the Welsh valleys...   [More...]

Henry V (1989)
Kenneth Branagh

Early in 15th century England, representatives of the Church urge the recently crowned King Henry V to invade France, since he has a legitimate claim to the country's throne...   [More...]



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