World War One: Moving Pictures

Winner of two Oscars for Best Picture and Director in 1930, "All Quiet on the Western Front" remains a stunning and timely film. Based on Erich Maria Remarque's classic anti-war novel, the movie follows a group of patriotic German schoolboys as they are urged to enlist in WWI, and shows how their initially idealistic spirits are forever changed by the brutal reality of death and dismemberment, suffering and sorrow. Amazon.

Inspired by true events, tells the story of the Lafayette Escadrille, a group of American men who volunteered to fight for the French before the U.S. entered World War I and became the country's first fighter pilots.

Loosely based on true episodes, this film tells the story of German, French, and Scottish soldiers in the bloody trenches of World War I and the miraculous Christmas Eve truce they unexpectedly forge. Follows a French lieutenant, a Scottish priest, and a German tenor and his beloved Danish soprano as music and the spirit of Christmas create bonds between enemies.

The story of T.E. Lawrence, the heroic and troubled man who organized the Arab nations to fight the OttomanTurks in World War I and then, having reached a pinnacle of power in Mideast politics, retired to postwar military obscurity. Directed by David Lean, and starring Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness and Omar Sharif, this movie won seven Oscars in 1963.

The desolation, cynicism, and futility of war are embodied in this film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and based on a novel that took as its subject a real incident from WWI. Three innocent French soldiers are tried and convicted of cowardice, after their battalion fails to take a heavily fortified German position. Colonel Dax, a lawyer in civilian life, attempts to defend the men, who were chosen by a random drawing of lots. The General Staff, comfortable and safe behind the lines, demands they be executed to inspire the troops remaining in the trenches. Critical of the military hierarchy, and the class divisions that inspire the antipathy of common soldiers for the officer class, the film is renowned for its depiction of the callous treatment of the condemned men, taking their lives in so arbitrary a fashion.

Set in rural England and Europe during the First World War, the story begins with the friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets; British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter.