Peace and War


Films suggested by Friends in the area of peace and war: films showing the destructiveness of wars and the humanity of those caught up in them.


Peaceweb's Movies with a Conscience


Last updated: November 21, 1997
* Apocalypse Now
USA, 1979, Drama, D: Frances Ford Coppola, Original Book: The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad; Stars: Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, 150 m
A US special agent is sent up-river into Cambodia during the Vietnam War to kill a rogue officer.

* Belle Epoque
Spain, 1992, Comedy, D: Fernando Trueba, Stars: Fernando Fernan Gomez, Jorge Sanz, 109 m
At the time of the Spanish Civil War, a deserter is taken in by a farmer and wooed by his four daughters.

* Born on the Fourth of July
USA, 1989, Drama, D: Oliver Stone, Stars: Tom Cruise, Bryan Larkin, 140 m
Ron Kovic, a soldier paralyzed in the Vietnam War, becomes an anti-war organizer.

* Burmese Harp, The [Biruma no Tategoto]
Japan, 1956, B&W, Drama, D: Kon Ichikawa, Stars: Jun Hamamura, Yunosuke Ito, 116 m
After W.W. II, a Japanese soldier with a harp is sent to convince his fellow soldiers in Burma to surrender.

* Colonel Chabert, Le
France, 1994, Drama, D: Yves Angelo, Stars: Gerard Depardieu, Fanny Ardent, 110 m
A French Colonel, presumed dead, straggles back from Napoleon's Russian campaign to find his wife has taken his fortune and remarried.

* Coming Home
USA, 1978, Drama, D: Hal Ashby, Stars: Jane Fonda, Jon Voigt, Bruce Dern, 127 m
A woman falls in love with a disabled Vietnam vet who campaigns against the War while her husband is in Vietnam.

* Europa Europa [Hitlerjunge Salomon]
Germany/Poland, 1990, Drama, D: Agnieszka Holland, Stars: Solomon Perel, Marco Hofschneider, 113 m
A young Soviet Jew, captured by Hitler's Army, pretends to be German to save his life and is taken to an elite Hitler Youth School in Germany.

* For the Boys
USA, 1991, D: Mark Rydell, Stars: Bette Midler, James Caan, George Segal, 148 m
Dixie, an unknown singer, gets her chance with star Eddie in the USO in WW II, then has to face Korea, McCarthyism, and Vietnam.

* For Whom the Bell Tolls
USA, 1943, Drama, D: Sam Wood, Original Book: Ernest Hemingway, Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, 170 m
A young soldier fighting for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, has one night of romance before battle.

* Full Metal Jacket
USA, 1979, Drama, D: Stanley Kubrick, Original Book: The Short Timers, by Gustav Hasford, Stars: Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, 116 m
Marine basic training on Paris Island cuts to the realities of combat in Vietnam.

* Glory
USA, 1989, Drama, D: Edward Zwick, Stars: Denzel Washington, Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, 122 m
Robert G. Shaw, the white colonel commanding the first African-American brigade to fight for the Union in the Civil War, faces the prejudice of his fellow officers and Confederate orders to shoot him on sight.

* Gallipoli
Australia, 1981, Drama, D: Peter Weir, Stars: Mel GIbson, Mark Lee, Harold Baigent, 110 m
A young Australian runner, training for the Olympics, signs up for the Great War. He ends up on the beaches under Turkish guns in the middle of one of the bloodiest battles of that war.

* Heimat - Eine deutsche Chronik
West Germany, 1984, Drama, D: Edgar Reitz, Stars: Eva Maria Bayerswalter, Gabriele Blum, Roland Bongard, 924 m
A family in the town of Schabbach on the Rhine goes from 1920s poverty to the rise of Hitler and W.W.II to West Germany prosperity.

* Zweite Heimat, die - Chronik einer Jugend in 13 Filmen
Germany, 1992, Drama, D: Edgar Reitz, Stars: Henry Arnold, Eva Maria Bayerswalter, Edith Behleit, Johanna Bittenbinder, 1532 m
The story of Hermann Simon of Schabbach and his friends, from the start of university to the end of his marriage, from 1962 to 1972.

* Henry V
UK, 1989, Drama, D: Kenneth Branagh, Stars: Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Simon Shepherd, 137 m
On his way to the Battle of Agincourt against the French, Henry V rallies his dispirited troops and confronts his own doubts.

* In Country
USA, 1989, Drama, D: Norman Jewison, Stars: Emily Lloyd, Bruce Willis, 120 m
A girl whose father died as a US soldier in Vietnam, finds his diary and comes to terms with his life and that war.

* Johnny Shiloh
USA, 1963, Drama, D: James Nielson, Stars: Kevin Corcoran, Brian Keith, 90 m
A young man loses his family in the Civil War and tags along with the army.

* Killing Fields, The
UK, 1984, Drama, D Roland Joffe, Stars: Sam Waterson, Haing S. Ngor, 141 m
Dith Pran, aide to NYT journalist Sydney Schanberg in Vietnam, stays behind as the war ends, and the horror of Pol Pot's Cambodia unfolds.

* Little Big Man
USA, 1970, Drama, D: Arthur Penn, Original Book: Thomas Berger, Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, 150 m
Jack Crab, and adopted Indian now 121 years old, reminisces about his days as the sole survivor of Custer's Last Stand.

* Midnight Clear, A
USA, 1991, Drama, D: Keith Gordon, Stars: Peter Berg, Kevin Dillon, 107 m
At Christmas, 1944, US and German soldiers lose the desire to fight and change to the mock combat of a snowball fight..

* Paths of Glory
USA, 1957, Drama, D: Stanley Kubrick, Original Book: Humphrey Cobb, Stars: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, 86 m
Sent on a mission impossible, French soldiers mutiny in W.W.I, Their unit commander must deal with them and a foolhardy general.

* Red Badge of Courage
USA, 1951, Drama, D: John Huston, Original Book: Stephen Crane, Stars: Smith Ballew, Whit Bissell, 69 m
A soldier in the Civil War vacillates between courage and cowardice, and rallies to fight again.

* Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, The
USA, 1966, Comedy, D: Norman Jewison, Original Book: The Off-Islanders, by Nathaniel Benchley, Stars: Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Sainte, Alan Arkin, 120 m
A Russian submarine lands off New England during the Cold War and negotiates with the town.

* Salvador
USA, 1986, Drama, D: Oliver Stone, Stars: James Woods, James Belushi, John Savage, 123 m
A freelance journalist goes into the jungles of El Salvador to interview the rebels and gets caught between them and the government.

* Search, The
USA, 1948, Drama, D: Fred Zimmerman, Stars: Montgomery Clift, Ivan Jandl, Aline MacMahon, 105 m
After W.W. II, a boy is cared for in Berlin by Clift while the boy's mother searches for him in Displaced Persons' camps across Europe.

* Sergeant York
USA, 1941, D: Humphrey Hawks, Stars: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, 134 m
A pacifist, drafted in the US Army in W.W.I, turns into a military hero.

* Slaughterhouse Five
USA, 1972, D: George Roy Hill, Stars: Michael Sacks, Ron Liebman, Valerie Perrine, John Dehner, Holly Near, 104 m
Billy PIlgrim emerges from a POW camp in Dresden after the fire-bombing in W.W. II to become adrift in time.

* Sorrow and the Pity, The (Le Chagrin et la Pitie)
Switzerland, 1970, Documentary, D: Marcel Ophuls, 260 m
The stories of survivors of W.W. II in Clermont-Ferrand, France - both collaborators and resisters to Petain and the German Occupiers.

* Summer of My German Soldier, The
USA, 1978, D: Mike Nichols, Original Book: Bette Green, Stars: Bruce Davison, Esther Rolle, Michael Constantine, Barbara Barrie, 100 m
In Georgia in W.W.II, a teenage Jewish girl and an escaped German POW start a wartime romance.

* War, The
USA, 1994, D: Jon Avnet, Stars: Elijah Wood, Kevin Costner, Mare Winningham, 127 m
A Southern US veteran, psychologically injured by the Vietnam War, tries to teach his children peace.


Sign our visitors book: contact us at [email protected]

Read our visitors book.


This page accessed times since November 21, 1997


Co-ordinator: Carl Stieren, Peace and Social Concerns Committee, [email protected]
Peace and Social Concerns Committee, Ottawa Monthly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends, 91A Fourth Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 2L1 CANADA
Revised November 21, 1997