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112-473: Secret Mission is a 1942 British war film directed by Harold French and starring Hugh Williams , James Mason , Nancy Price , Carla Lehmann and Roland Culver . British Army Major Peter Garnett ( Hugh Williams ) assembles a team consisting of Captain ‘Red’ Gowan ( Roland Culver ), Private ‘Nobby’ Clark ( Michael Wilding ), and Raoul de Carnot ( James Mason ), a member of the Free French forces , during

224-486: A Godzilla -like robot version of Barbra Streisand . Maltin voiced himself in the Freakazoid! episode "Island of Dr. Mystico", in which the titular villain, Dr. Mystico, abducted him to make use of his film knowledge. Maltin was one of the few people to appear as a "guest star" on Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its original run; during a Season Nine episode, he joins Pearl Forrester in torturing Mike Nelson and

336-546: A " Stiff-upper-lip WW2 drama" that is "Well paced dramatically," but whose "comical touches seem awkwardly out of place"; while the Radio Times noted, "There's a modicum of excitement" in the efforts of the various characters "to glean information about Nazi invasion plans. But the comic subplot involving Wilding and his French wife, and the romance that develops between Williams and Mason's sister (Carla Lehmann), are embarrassingly twee. Credit to director Harold French for keeping

448-556: A "war propaganda film ". A 1978 Mondadori poll placed Alexander Nevsky among the world's 100 best motion pictures. Leonard Maltin He has written books on animation and the history of film. He has also hosted numerous specials and provided commentary for several films. In 2021, he released his memoir, Starstruck: My Unlikely Road to Hollywood . He received the Robert Osborne Award from Turner Classic Movies in 2022. Maltin

560-525: A British family on the home front; Edge of Darkness (1943) showed Norwegian resistance fighters, and The North Star (1943) showed the Soviet Union and its Communist Party . Towards the end of the war popular books provided higher quality and more serious stories for films such as Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Mervyn LeRoy 's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and John Ford 's They Were Expendable (1945). The Soviet Union, too, appreciated

672-632: A Japanese perspective. These "generally fail to explain the cause of the war". In the decades immediately after the Second World War, Japanese films often focused on human tragedy rather than combat, such as The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959). From the late 1990s, films started to take a positive view of the war and of Japanese actions. These nationalistic films, including Pride (1998), Merdeka 17805 (2001), and The Truth about Nanjing (2007), have emphasized positive traits of

784-424: A Japanese soldier beheads an American: the victim shows pain and his lips freeze in a scream, yet no blood spurts and his head does not fall off. Basinger points out that while this is physically unrealistic, psychologically it may not have been. The wartime audience was, she points out, well aware of friends and relatives who had been killed or who had come home wounded. The Axis powers similarly made films during

896-570: A call to Berlin. The agents locate a secret aerodrome, built into a cliffside so that it cannot be bombed. A patrol hears them in the woods, fires into the trees, and Raoul is shot. He dies at home, with Michele and the priest beside him. Angry and heartbroken, Michele tells them to leave, Raoul died without showing them the important rendezvous point, an ancient tree where he and Michele played as children. They must return to ask Michele where it is. She refuses to help. M. Fayolle and his daughter, Estelle, arrive to speak to Raoul, revealing their role in

1008-477: A close second. The costliest war in U.S. history in terms of American life, this war has been the subject of, or the backdrop to, numerous films, documentaries and mini-series. One of the earliest films using the Civil War as its subject was D.W. Griffith 's 1910 silent picture, The Fugitive . Films that have the war as its main subject, or about a certain aspect of the war, include the 1989 film Glory , about

1120-510: A conflict between "good" and "evil" as represented by the Allied forces and Nazi Germany whereas the Western portrays the conflict between civilized settlers and the savage indigenous peoples. James Clarke notes the similarity between a Western like Sam Peckinpah 's The Wild Bunch and "war-movie escapades" like The Dirty Dozen . The film historian Jeanine Basinger states that she began with

1232-892: A film festival called MaltinFest at the Egyptian Theater that spanned three days. Special guests included Laura Dern and Alexander Payne . Since 2018, Maltin has served on the advisory board for Legion M . In 2022, he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences as part of the Member at Large branch. Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide has been praised by comedian Patton Oswalt who described it as "A paperback Kubrickian monolith of one man's massive and far-reaching tastes." Other admirers include Noah Baumbach , Alexander Payne , and Billy Bob Thornton . In The Simpsons episode " A Star Is Burns ", Marge says: "Did you know there are over 600 critics on TV and Leonard Maltin

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1344-512: A friend of hers at publisher New American Library who was looking for someone to edit a film guide and in September 1969, at age 18, Maltin edited his first book, TV Movies , a compendium of synopses and reviews, with the subtitle, "Everything You Want To Know About More than 8,000 Movies Now Being Shown on TV". In subsequent years, the book was regularly updated and then annually updated from October 1987 until September 2014, each edition having

1456-399: A monthly column for a Canadian publication, Film Fan Monthly , edited by Daryl Davy, dedicated to films from the golden age of Hollywood. In May 1966, Davy asked 15-year-old Maltin if he would take over as editor and sold the publication to him for $ 175. At the time it had a circulation of 400 in 11 countries. He expanded the circulation to 2,000 and continued to publish it until 1974. In

1568-411: A personal letter from von Ribbentrop and champagne supplied by Nobby. Having thus established their bona fides , they do deals with German officers for supplying their messes . They are able to photograph a map showing troop disposition, and also extract a great deal of information from the unwary Nazis, who suspect them of being either Gestapo or counter espionage. Annoyed, General von Reichman puts in

1680-472: A powerful emotional impact. It was watched by some 20 million people in Britain in its six weeks of exhibition, making it what the critic Francine Stock called "one of the most successful films of all time". The 1925 American film The Big Parade depicted unglamorous elements of war: the protagonist loses his leg, and his friends are killed. William A. Wellman 's Wings (1927) showed aerial combat during

1792-411: A preconception of what the war film genre would be, namely that: What I knew in advance was what presumably every member of our culture would know about World War II combat films—that they contained a hero , a group of mixed types [of people], and a military objective of some sort. They take place in the actual combat zones of World War II, against the established enemies, on the ground, the sea, or in

1904-528: A quiet Russian and an extrovert southerner from Odessa, singing in his dugout. The many Soviet films about the Second World War include both large-scale epics such as Yury Ozerov 's Battle of Moscow (1985) and Mikhail Kalatozov 's more psychological The Cranes are Flying (1957) on the cruel effects of war; it won the 1958 Palme d'Or at Cannes. Japanese directors have made popular films such as Submarine I-57 Will Not Surrender (1959), Battle of Okinawa (1971) and Japan's Longest Day (1967) from

2016-433: A sentry once ashore, they set a time and place for a rendezvous in two days with the code for bringing the aircraft. They split up, Gowan and Nobby to the village, Raoul and Garnett to the chateau that is Raoul's ancestral home where Lulu ( Betty Warren ), Nobby's wife, welcomes them. Raoul and Garnett are welcomed, more or less, by Raoul's sister Michele. Their brother is a prisoner. She wants Raoul to stay and help to manage

2128-519: A three-word movie review on Entertainment Tonight for that year's horror film spoof, Transylvania 6-5000 . The review begins with a silent Maltin swaying to a recording of the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing "Pennsylvania 6-5000", the instrumental melody interrupted by the sound of a telephone ringing (part of the original recording), after which the band chants the title of the song. In his review, Maltin timed it so that his review began with

2240-502: A traditional war film should have a hero, a group, and an objective, and that the group should contain "an Italian, a Jew, a cynical complainer from Brooklyn, a sharpshooter from the mountains, a midwesterner (nicknamed by his state, 'Iowa' or 'Dakota'), and a character who must be initiated in some way". Films based on real commando missions, like The Gift Horse (1952) based on the St. Nazaire Raid , and Ill Met by Moonlight (1956) based on

2352-407: Is a film genre concerned with warfare , typically about naval , air , or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. Themes explored include combat , survival and escape, camaraderie between soldiers , sacrifice, the futility and inhumanity of battle,

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2464-540: Is named for her). In July 2018, Maltin announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease three and a half years prior. In 1998, Maltin settled a libel suit brought by former child star Billy Gray , of Father Knows Best fame, whom Maltin identified in his review of the film Dusty and Sweets McGee as a real-life drug addict and dealer. The statement had appeared in print in Maltin's annual movie guide for nearly 25 years before Maltin publicly apologized for

2576-487: Is the best looking of them all?" Lisa replies "Ewwww!" In the 1995 video release of the original Star Wars trilogy, there was an interview with George Lucas conducted by Maltin before the start of the films. Maltin is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's shortest movie review; his two-star review of the 1948 musical Isn't It Romantic? consists of the word "No". Maltin voices himself in

2688-548: The Mad magazine parody of Gremlins 2 , in which he protests being eaten as Roger Ebert gives a worse review of the film, only for the Gremlins to remark they are waiting until Thanksgiving to find Ebert, as "he will feed a family of 15!". Maltin was parodied in the South Park episode " Mecha-Streisand " (1998) where he (voiced by Trey Parker ), Sidney Poitier , and Robert Smith fight

2800-640: The Algerian War (1954–1956). It was shot on location as an Italo-Algerian co-production. It had the black and white newsreel style of Italian neorealism , and even-handedly depicts violence on both sides. It won various awards including Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival . It was attacked by French critics and was for five years banned in France as well as Jamila, the Algerian (1958). Few films before

2912-459: The Battle of Stalingrad . Feature films made in the west during the war were subject to censorship and were not always realistic in nature. One of the first to attempt to represent violence, and which was praised at the time for "gritty realism", was Tay Garnett 's Bataan (1943). The depiction actually remained stylised. Jeanine Basinger gives as an example the "worst image for stark violence" when

3024-638: The Indonesian war of independence (1945–1949). Two other films about the same period portray the Indonesian equivalent of the Chinese Long March : Usmar Ismail 's Darah dan Doa ( The Long March , literally "Blood and Prayer", 1950) and Mereka Kembali ( They Return , 1975). Each of these films interprets the past from the perspective of its own time. The more recent Merdeka (Freedom) trilogy (2009–2011), starting with Merah Putih ("Red and White",

3136-510: The Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello . Maltin wrote program guides for the newly created Showtime network and went on to publish articles in a variety of film journals, newspapers, and magazines, including Variety and TV Guide . In the 1970s Maltin also reviewed recordings in the jazz magazine Downbeat . Maltin served as the film critic for Playboy for six years based on Roger Ebert 's suggestion. He has also wrote Behind

3248-678: The Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. The film cuts to an (American) "helicopter-eye view", contrasting painfully with the human tenderness seen earlier. Dino Mustafić's Remake (2003), written by Zlatko Topčić , tells the parallel coming-of-age stories of a father living in Sarajevo during World War II and his son living through the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War . According to Topčić,

3360-685: The School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California . In 1990, he took a look at the MGM years of The Three Stooges in a film called The Lost Stooges , available on a made-to-order DVD through the Warner Archive Collection . Maltin left Entertainment Tonight in 2010. His final appearance on the show as a regular correspondent was on July 19, 2010. He also wrote the introduction for The Complete Peanuts: 1983–1984 . In 1985, he delivered

3472-618: The Second World War came from Britain and combined the functions of documentary and propaganda. Films such as The Lion Has Wings and Target for Tonight were made under the control of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information. The British film industry began to combine documentary techniques with fictional stories in films like Noël Coward and David Lean 's In Which We Serve (1942)—"the most successful British film of

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3584-530: The Second World War . Their mission is to collect intelligence on German military strength in the coastal area of occupied France . Sub-Lieutenant Jackson ( Stewart Granger ) watches as their dinghy across the English Channel and remarks that he does not envy them their jobs. Nobby knows the target area well: He used to live in Saint Antoine , where he ran a café with his French wife, Lulu. After killing

3696-492: The battle of the Atlantic . Others, like The Dam Busters (1954), with its exciting tale of the inventor Barnes Wallis 's unorthodox bouncing bomb and its distinctive theme music , were true stories. The Dam Busters became the most popular film in Britain in 1955, and remained a favourite as of 2015 with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes , though, partly because it celebrated an "exclusively British [victory]", it failed in

3808-466: The 1950s and 1960s. War film production in the United Kingdom and United States reached its zenith in the mid-1950s. Its popularity in the United Kingdom was brought on by the critical and commercial success of Charles Frend 's The Cruel Sea (1953). Like others of the period, The Cruel Sea was based on a bestselling novel, in this case the former naval commander Nicholas Monsarrat 's story of

3920-733: The 1980s and 1990s, Maltin served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute . In the mid-1990s, Maltin became the president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and is on the advisory board of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. For nearly a decade, Maltin was also on the faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City . As of 2018, Maltin teaches in

4032-474: The 2016 BoJack Horseman episode "Brrap Brrap Pew Pew" where the titular character attends the Leonard Maltin Awards. The episode features two references to Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide on a cocktail menu that lists two of its items as "Isn't it Rum and Coke ? No" (a reference to Maltin's infamous review of Isn't It Romantic? ) and "Jaeger BOMB," with the second word stylized in the same manner as

4144-712: The American market. A large number of war films were made in the 1955–1958 period in particular. In 1957 alone, Bitter Victory , Count Five and Die , The Enemy Below , Ill Met by Moonlight , Men in War , The One That Got Away , and Seven Thunders , and the highly successful, critically acclaimed pictures The Bridge on the River Kwai (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year ) and Paths of Glory were released. Some, such as Bitter Victory , focused more on

4256-735: The Americans. Similarly, the country's films about the Korean War show victory without help from the Chinese. The film scholar Johannes Schönherr concludes that the purpose of these films is "to portray North Korea as a country under siege", and that since the U.S. and its "puppet" South Korea invaded the North once, they would do so again. Gillo Pontecorvo 's dramatic The Battle of Algiers (( Italian : La battaglia di Algeri ; Arabic : معركة الجزائر ; French : La Bataille d'Alger ), 1966) portrayed events in

4368-698: The Camera , a study of cinematography published in 1971. Starting on May 29, 1982, Maltin was the film reviewer on the syndicated television series Entertainment Tonight for 30 years. He praised the Tournee of Animation (alongside the Los Angeles International Animation Celebration ) on the show at one point or another. He also appeared on the Starz cable network, and hosted his own syndicated radio program, Leonard Maltin on Video , as well as

4480-858: The Central Powers and the Allies produced war documentaries. The films were also used as propaganda in neutral countries like the United States. Among these was a film shot on the Eastern Front by official war photographer to the Central Powers, Albert K. Dawson : The Battle and Fall of Przemysl (1915), depicting the Siege of Przemyśl , disastrous for the Austrians, with incidents reenacted using soldiers as extras. The 1915 Australian film Within Our Gates (also known as Deeds that Won Gallipoli ) by Frank Harvey

4592-614: The December 1968 issue of Esquire magazine, he wrote an article listing his 75 best movies shown on television and the 25 worst. He also wrote for Classic Images . He created a film society at Teaneck High School and graduated in 1968. Maltin later earned a journalism degree at New York University . While at New York University, Maltin became film critic and associate editor for the university's Washington Square Journal , as well as continuing to edit Film Fan Monthly . An English teacher at Teaneck High School suggested that Maltin meet

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4704-616: The Golden Mulberry at the Udine Far East Film Festival, but was criticised for its nationalistic sympathy with kamikaze pilots. The wartime authorities in both Britain and America produced a wide variety of documentary films. Their purposes included military training, advice to civilians, and encouragement to maintain security. Since these films often carried messages, they grade into propaganda. Similarly, commercially produced films often combined information, support for

4816-455: The Great War" without attempting to classify these. However, some directors and critics have offered at least tentative definitions. The director Sam Fuller defined the genre by saying that "a war film's objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war." John Belton identified four narrative elements of the war film within the context of Hollywood production: a)

4928-458: The Japanese military and contended that the Japanese were victims of post-war vindictiveness and viciousness. Such films have, however, been subject to protest for revisionism . The Eternal Zero (2013) narrates the tale of a Zero fighter pilot who is considered a coward by his comrades, as he returns alive from his missions. It broke the record takings for a Japanese live action film, and won

5040-431: The Japanese state as one great family and the Japanese people as an "innocent, suffering, self-sacrificing people". Dower comments that the perversity of this image "is obvious: it is devoid of any recognition that, at every level, the Japanese also victimized others." According to Andrew Pulver of The Guardian , the public fascination with war films became an "obsession", with over 200 war films produced in each decade of

5152-586: The Maine Victims , Blanket-Tossing of a New Recruit , and Soldiers Washing Dishes . These non-combat films were accompanied by "reenactments" of fighting, such as of Theodore Roosevelt 's "Rough Riders" in action against the Spanish, staged in the United States. During the First World War, many films were made about life in the war. Topics included prisoners of war, covert operations, and military training. Both

5264-590: The National Film Board of Canada . Comedian Doug Benson 's podcast Doug Loves Movies features a segment called the Leonard Maltin Game, in which the guest must guess the name of a film based on a subset of the cast list in reverse order and a few intentionally vague clues from the capsule review of the film from Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide . Maltin appeared on the podcast in February 2010 and played

5376-468: The Resistance to Michele, risking their lives. They are distressed to learn of Raoul's death; they are here to warn the others that the woods will be heavily patrolled. Reichman has learned that von Ribbentrop never heard of them and has launched a manhunt. Michele goes to warn them and show them the tree, but a patrol captures them. At the tree, Private Clark shows up in the armored propaganda truck (nicknamed

5488-596: The Russian people to battle, actual fighting, Germans surrendering and dead, and atrocities including murdered children and hanged civilians. It won an Academy Award in 1943 for best documentary. Newsreel cameras were similarly rushed to Stalingrad early in 1943 to record "the spectacle which greeted the Russian soldiers"—the starvation of Russian prisoners of war in the Voropovono camp by the German Sixth Army , defeated in

5600-625: The Second Sino–Japanese War from 1937 onwards did war film become a serious genre in China, with nationalistic films such as Shi Dongshan 's Protect Our Land (1938). The Chinese Civil War, too, attracted films such as Cheng Yin 's From Victory to Victory (1952). A more humanistic film set in the same period is Xie Jin 's The Cradle (1979), while more recent large-scale commercial films include Lu Chuan 's City of Life and Death (2009). Chinese directors have repeatedly attempted to cover

5712-454: The Second World War, for propaganda and other purposes. In Germany, the army high command brought out Sieg im Westen ("Victory in the West", 1941). Other Nazi propaganda films had varied subjects, as with Kolberg (1945), which depicts stubborn Prussian resistance in the Siege of Kolberg (1807) to the invading French troops under Napoleon . The propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels chose

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5824-498: The air. They contain many repeated events, such as mail call, all presented visually with appropriate uniforms , equipment, and iconography of battle. Further, Basinger considers Bataan to provide a definition-by-example of "the World War II combat film", in which a diverse and apparently unsuited group of "hastily assembled volunteers" hold off a much larger group of the enemy through their "bravery and tenacity". She argues that

5936-519: The atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Nanjing Massacre (1937–1938), with films such as the political melodrama Massacre in Nanjing , Mou Tun Fei 's docudrama Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre , and the "contrived Sino–Japanese romance" Don't Cry, Nanking . Zhang Yimou 's epic Chinese film Flowers of War (2011), based on Geling Yan 's novel, portrays the violent events through

6048-643: The attempted invasion of the Russian city of Novgorod by the Teutonic Knights . By April 1939 the film had been seen by 23,000,000 people. In 1941 the director and three others were awarded the Stalin Prize for their contributions. The film features a musical score by the classical composer Sergei Prokofiev , considered by artists such as the composer André Previn the best ever written for cinema. Russell Merritt, writing in Film Quarterly , describes it as

6160-425: The beach. Michele and Garnett have fallen in love. As the others embark by boat to return to England, Michele refuses his offer to take her with them and promises to start working with the Resistance. She gives him the little cross she wears around her neck and they kiss. “Goodbye Michele.” “Au revoir, Peter.” She turns and walks away, slowly at first, then with confidence and purpose. Leonard Maltin described it as

6272-491: The best of popular Indonesian cinema". It was the first Indonesian film to become well known internationally. War has been the Soviet Union's cinema's major genre, becoming known indeed as the "cinema front", and its war films ranged from grim portrayals of atrocities to sentimental and even quietly subversive accounts. Leonid Lukov 's popular and "beautiful" Two Warriors (1943) depicted two stereotypical Soviet soldiers,

6384-467: The bots with the film Gorgo . He was also mocked on the show for giving the film Laserblast a rating of 2.5 stars. After Mike and the Bots finish watching the movie, they express amazement at the rating while Mike reads off a list of well-known films that Maltin gave similar ratings to. Maltin hosted a compilation of National Film Board of Canada animated shorts, Leonard Maltin's Animation Favorites from

6496-515: The capture of the German commander of Crete, inspired fictional adventure films such as The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Train (1964), and Where Eagles Dare (1968). These used the war as a backdrop for spectacular action. Darryl F. Zanuck produced the 178 minute documentary drama The Longest Day (1962), based on the first day of the D-Day landings , achieving commercial success and Oscars. It

6608-704: The climactic ends of war films. Not all critics agree, either, that war films must be about 20th-century wars. James Clarke includes Edward Zwick 's Oscar-winning Glory (1990) among the war films he discusses in detail; it is set in the American Civil War , and he lists six other films about that war which he considers "notable". The screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies war films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy , claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified as belonging to one of them. The British military historian Antony Beevor "despair[s]" at how film-makers from America and Britain "play fast and loose with

6720-461: The colours of the flag of the new Indonesia), revisits the campaign for independence through the lives of a diverse group of cadets who become guerillas. Karya's November 1828 (1979) looks at Indonesia's struggle for independence through historical drama about the Java or Diponegoro War (1825–1830), though the colonial enemy was the same, the Dutch . Deanne Schultz considered it "a valuable interpretation" of Indonesian history that "embodies

6832-424: The combat film is not a subgenre but the only genuine kind of war film. Since she notes that there were in fact only five true combat films made during the Second World War, in her view these few films, central to the genre, are outweighed by the many other films that are only just war films. However, other critics such as Russell Earl Shain propose a far broader definition of war film, to include films that deal "with

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6944-494: The comment that "for all its epic pretensions (as if epic were a matter of running time, tumescent music and earnest voice-over pronouncements), the movie works best as a bang-and-boom action picture". Steven Spielberg 's Saving Private Ryan (1998) uses hand-held camera, sound design, staging, and increased audio-visual detail to defamiliarise viewers accustomed to conventional combat films, so as to create what film historian Stuart Bender calls "reported realism", whether or not

7056-745: The common Japanese soldier as an individual and as a family man, and even enemy Chinese soldiers are presented as individuals, sometimes fighting bravely. Once war with the United States was declared, the Japanese conflict became known as the Pacific War . Japanese film critics worried that even with Western film techniques, their film output failed to represent native Japanese values. The historian John Dower found that Japanese wartime films had been largely forgotten, as "losers do not get reruns", yet they were so subtle and skilful that Frank Capra thought Chocolate and Soldiers unbeatable. Heroes were typically low-ranking officers, not samurai , calmly devoted to his men and his country. These films did not personalise

7168-535: The cost of authenticity. Although the 1918 Finnish Civil War between Whites and Reds remained a controversial topic a century later in Finland , many Finnish filmmakers have taken up the subject, often basing their work on a book. In 1957, Toivo Särkkä 's 1918 , based on Jarl Hemmer 's play and novel, was screened at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival . Recent films include Lauri Törhönen 's 2007 The Border , and Aku Louhimies 's 2008 Tears of April , based on Leena Lander 's novel. Perhaps

7280-433: The destructive impact of American military presence on village life. The violent action films Shiri (1999) and Joint Security Area (2000) presented North Korea in a favourable light. Films in North Korea were made by government film studios and had clear political messages. The first was My Home Village (1949), on the liberation of Korea from the Japanese, presented as the work of Kim Il Sung without help from

7392-726: The effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war. War films are often categorized by their milieu, such as the Korean War ; the most popular subjects are the Second World War and the American Civil War . The stories told may be fiction , historical drama , or biographical . Critics have noted similarities between the Western and the war film. Nations such as China, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia have their own traditions of war film, centred on their own revolutionary wars but taking varied forms, from action and historical drama to wartime romance. Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti-war , comedy , propaganda , and documentary . There are similarly subgenres of

7504-401: The enemy and therefore lacked hatred, though Great Britain could figure as the "cultural enemy". For Japanese film-makers, war was not a cause but more like a natural disaster, and "what mattered was not whom one fought but how well". Asian enemies, especially the Chinese, were often portrayed as redeemable and even possible marriage partners. Japanese wartime films do not glorify war, but present

7616-441: The entire breadth of the war. Some films deal with the human aspects of the war, such as The Red Badge of Courage (1951), or Shenandoah (1965), on the tragedy that the war inflicted on the civilian population. Ken Burns 's The Civil War is the most-watched documentary in the history of PBS . The first war films come from the Spanish–American War of 1898. Short "actualities"—documentary film-clips—included Burial of

7728-454: The eyes of a 13-year-old girl. Many Indonesian films deal with the occupation of the archipelago by the Japanese during the Second World War. Teguh Karya 's Doea Tanda Mata ( Mementos , literally "Two Eye Marks", 1985) covers the limited nationalist resistance to Dutch colonial rule in the 1930s. A third group of films such as Enam Djam di Jogja ( Six Hours in Yogyakarta , 1951) and Serangan Fajar ( Attack at Dawn , 1983) covers

7840-406: The facts", yet imply that "their version is as good as the truth". For example, he calls the 2000 American film U-571 a "shameless deception" for pretending that a US warship had helped to win the Battle of the Atlantic—seven months before America entered the war. He is equally critical of Christopher Nolan 's 2017 film Dunkirk with its unhistorically empty beaches, low-level air combat over

7952-452: The fighting, the successful South Korean action film Piagol about leftist guerrilla atrocities encouraged other film-makers. The 1960s military government punished pro-communist film-makers and gave Grand Bell Awards to films with the strongest anti-communist message. The Taebaek Mountains (1994) dealt with leftists from the south who fought for the communists, while Silver Stallion (1991) and Spring in My Hometown (1998) showed

8064-810: The film Pearl Harbor 's US-biased portrayal of events is a compensation for technical assistance received from the US armed forces, noting that the premiere was held on board a U.S. Navy carrier. In another case, the U.S. Navy objected to elements of Crimson Tide , especially mutiny on board an American naval vessel, so the film was produced without their assistance. The film historian Jonathan Rayner observes that such films "have also clearly been intended to serve vital propagandist, recruitment and public relations functions". The first Chinese war films were newsreels like Battle of Wuhan (1911) and Battle of Shanghai (1913). Still in films such as Xu Xinfu 's Battle Exploits (1925), war featured mainly as background. Only with

8176-591: The first formal unit of the Union Army during the American Civil War to be made up entirely of Black volunteers. Some films such as Gettysburg focused on a single battle during the war, or even on a single incident, like the French short film La Rivière du Hibou ( An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ) and Disney 's The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). Others like the 1993 miniseries North and South spanned

8288-451: The following year's date. The book was later known as Leonard Maltin's TV Movies and Video Guide and eventually Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide . In 2005, many films released no later than 1960 were moved into a spin-off volume, Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide , to allow the regular book to cover a larger number of more recent titles. In 1970, his second book, Movie Comedy Teams , was published featuring teams such as Laurel and Hardy ,

8400-589: The game himself. He appeared on the show again in August 2010. In November 2010, Benson and Maltin played the game on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show . Maltin repeated his appearances on Doug Loves Movies in September 2011 with Jimmy Pardo and Samm Levine , in September 2012 with Chris Evans and Adam Scott and in November 2013 with Peter Segal , " Werner Herzog " and Clare Kramer . Beginning in November 2014, Maltin has hosted

8512-529: The genre is for the most part well defined and uncontentious, since war films are simply those about war being waged in the 20th century, with combat scenes central to the drama. However, Neale notes, films set in the American Civil War or the American Indian Wars of the 19th century were called war films in the time before the First World War. The critic Julian Smith argues, on the contrary, that

8624-508: The greatest screenplay ever written for the motion-picture medium"; Richard Attenborough 's satirical anti-war musical comedy based on Joan Littlewood 's play of the same name, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969); Spielberg's 2011 war drama War Horse was based on Michael Morpurgo 's children's novel of the same name . Many of the films promoted as "documentaries" added context to authentic battlefield scenes by staging critical events, and invented episodes and dialog to enhance excitement at

8736-407: The historical subject as suitable for the worsening situation facing Nazi Germany when it was filmed from October 1943 to August 1944. At over eight million marks, using thousands of soldiers as extras and 100 railway wagonloads of salt to simulate snow, it was the most costly German film made during the war. The actual siege ended with the surrender of the town; in the film, the French generals abandon

8848-565: The land. She is resigned to cooperating with the occupiers, and is too frightened to assist in the mission. They contact a local businessman, M. Fayolle, now hated by most of the townspeople for his open collaboration with the occupying forces, but in fact secretly working with the French Resistance . He and his daughter Estelle have helped 100 Allied servicemen to escape. He provides them with special papers. At German headquarters, Garnett and Gowan masquerade as champagne salesmen, aided by

8960-460: The last of the traditional war films, while the controversy around the help given by the U.S. Army and Zanuck's "disregard for Pentagon relations" changed the way that Hollywood and the Army collaborated. Zanuck, by then an executive at 20th Century Fox , set up an American–Japanese co-production for Richard Fleischer 's Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) to depict what "really happened on December 7, 1941" in

9072-454: The late 1970s about the Vietnam War actually depicted combat; exceptions include The Green Berets (1968). Critics such as Basinger explain that Hollywood avoided the subject because of opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War , making the subject divisive; in addition, the film industry was in crisis, and the army did not wish to assist in making anti-war films. From

9184-798: The late 1970s, independently financed and produced films showed Hollywood that Vietnam could be treated in film. Successful but very different portrayals of the war in which America had been defeated included Michael Cimino 's The Deer Hunter (1978), and Francis Ford Coppola 's Apocalypse Now (1979). With the shift in American politics to the right in the 1980s, military success could again be shown in films such as Oliver Stone 's Platoon (1986), Stanley Kubrick 's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and John Irvin 's Hamburger Hill (1987). The Vietnamese director Nguyễn Hồng Sến  [ vi ] 's The Abandoned Field: Free Fire Zone ( Cánh đồng hoang , 1979) gives an "unnerving and compelling .. subjective-camera-eye-view" of life under helicopter fire in

9296-605: The lowest rating Maltin would give movies. In the South Park episode " Mecha-Streisand ", a parody of Maltin comes to the small Colorado town and transforms into a giant robot to battle a mechanised Barbra Streisand . In 2020, a Leonard Maltin board game was released called King of Movies: The Leonard Maltin Game. Maltin lives in Los Angeles. He is married to researcher and producer Alice Tlusty, and has one daughter, Jessie, who works with him (his production company, JessieFilm,

9408-598: The metaphor of hunting to criticise the aggressiveness of Spanish fascism . It won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival in 1966. Ken Loach 's Land and Freedom ( Tierra y Libertad , 1995), loosely based on George Orwell 's Homage to Catalonia , follows a British communist through the war to reveal the painful contradictions within the anti-fascist Republican side. Samuel Fuller 's The Steel Helmet (1951)

9520-641: The most famous film about the Finnish Civil War is Edvin Laine 's 1968 Here, Beneath the North Star , based on the first two books of Väinö Linna 's Under the North Star trilogy; it describing the civil war from the losing side, Finland's Red Guards . The Spanish Civil War has attracted directors from different countries. Sam Wood 's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), based on Ernest Hemingway 's book of

9632-537: The pace brisk, but this is unremarkable fare"; and 20/20 Movie Reviews wrote, "the writers of the 1980s British comedy show Allo Allo must have seen Secret Mission at some point because the similarities are just too numerous to be coincidental. The only difference is that Secret Mission is straight while Allo Allo is a broad farce. Probably the only comical aspect of the movie is James Mason’s French accent, but he does at least look suitably embarrassed as he substitutes ‘z’s for ‘th’s." War film War film

9744-453: The phone ringing: " Transylvania 6-5000 ... stinks!" Maltin also appeared as himself in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), playing a film critic who blasts the first Gremlins film, but is attacked by the Gremlins. This scene echoed real life, as Maltin gave the first film a bad review, finding it mean-spirited, which affected his friendship with director Joe Dante . The scene was spoofed in

9856-570: The podcast Maltin on Movies . It began on Paul Scheer 's now-defunct Wolfpop network, with comedian and actor Baron Vaughn as a co-host. The two picked a topic generally based on what was currently in theaters and discussed three other movies within that topic: one that the two both liked, one that the two disliked and one they thought was a great lesser-known film, or " sleeper ", within the category. Topics included biopics, breakthrough performances and sequels. Maltin currently co-hosts with his daughter Jessie Maltin. From 2014 to 2019, Maltin hosted

9968-465: The popular Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) starring John Wayne . U.S. Marines considered Sands of Iwo Jima visually authentic, but found Lewis Milestone's Battle Cry (1955), with its attention to the lives of the men, the more realistic film. The formula for a successful war film consisted, according to Lawrence Suid, of a small group of ethnically diverse men; an unreasonable senior officer; cowards became heroic, or died. Jeanine Basinger suggests that

10080-507: The portrayal is genuinely more realistic. Jeanine Basinger notes that critics experienced it as "groundbreaking and anti-generic", with, in James Wolcott's words, a "desire to bury the cornball, recruiting poster legend of John Wayne: to get it right this time"; and that combat films have always been "grounded in the need to help an audience understand and accept war". Its success revived interest in World War II films. Others tried to portray

10192-474: The propaganda value of film, to publicise both victories and German atrocities. Ilya Kopalin's documentary Moscow Strikes Back ( Russian : Разгром немецких войск под Москвой , literally "The rout of the German troops near Moscow"), was made during the Battle of Moscow between October 1941 and January 1942. It depicted civilians helping to defend the city, the parade in Red Square and Stalin 's speech rousing

10304-456: The psychological battle between officers and egotism rather than events during the war. The Bridge on the River Kwai brought a new complexity to the war picture, with a sense of moral uncertainty surrounding war. By the end of the decade the "sense of shared achievement" which had been common in war films "began to evaporate", according to Pulver. Hollywood films in the 1950s and 1960s could display spectacular heroics or self-sacrifice, as in

10416-651: The quarterly Treasures From the Disney Vault on Turner Classic Movies . The last scheduled "Treasures from the Disney Vault" aired on September 2, 2019. Beginning in 2016, Maltin has served as the Honorary Head Juror of the Coronado Island Film Festival . In 2020, the festival named their top award The Leonard Maltin Tribute Award . In 2019, Maltin along with his daughter Jessie Maltin created

10528-767: The reality of the war, as in Joseph Vilsmaier 's Stalingrad (1993), which The New York Times said "goes about as far as a movie can go in depicting modern warfare as a stomach-turning form of mass slaughter". Many war films have been produced with the cooperation of a nation's military forces. Since the Second World War, the United States Navy has provided ships and technical guidance for films such as Top Gun . The U.S. Air Force assisted with The Big Lift , Strategic Air Command and A Gathering of Eagles , which were filmed on Air Force bases; Air Force personnel appeared in many roles. Critics have argued that

10640-430: The roles of civilians, espionage agents, and soldiers in any of the aspects of war (i.e. preparation, cause, prevention, conduct, daily life, and consequences or aftermath.)" Neale points out that genres overlap, with combat scenes for different purposes in other types of film, and suggests that war films are characterised by combat which "determines the fate of the principal characters". This in turn pushes combat scenes to

10752-588: The same name , portrays the fated romance between an American played by Gary Cooper and a partisan played by Ingrid Bergman against the backdrop of the civil war. The epic 168-minute film with its landscapes shot in Technicolor and a "beautiful" orchestral score was a success both with audiences and with critics. Alain Resnais 's Guernica (1950) uses Picasso 's 1937 painting of the same name to protest against war. Carlos Saura 's La Caza (The Hunt, 1966) uses

10864-510: The sea, and rescues mainly by the "little ships". Beevor feels, however, that Continental European film-makers are often "far more scrupulous"; for example, in his view the 2004 German film Downfall accurately depicted the historical events of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker, and he considers the 1965 French film The 317th Platoon , set in Vietnam, "the greatest war movie ever made". The 1966 film The Battle of Algiers is, he argues,

10976-471: The siege. For Japan, the war began with the undeclared war and invasion of China in 1937 , which the Japanese authorities called "The China Incident". The government dispatched a "pen brigade" to write and film the action in China with "humanist values". Tomotaka Tasaka 's Mud and Soldiers (1939) for instance, shot on location in China, Kōzaburō Yoshimura 's Legend of Tank Commander Nishizumi , and Sato Takeshi 's Chocolate and Soldiers (1938) show

11088-455: The story is based on incidents from his own life. The Iraq War served as the background story of U.S. movies, like The Hurt Locker from 2008, Green Zone from 2010, and American Sniper from 2014. The War in Afghanistan since 2001 was depicted in various movies, among them Restrepo in 2010 and Lone Survivor from 2013. The first popular Allied war films made during

11200-531: The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor . The film, panned by Roger Ebert and The New York Times , was a major success in Japan. Its realistic-looking attack footage was reused in later films such as Midway (1976), The Final Countdown (1980), and Australia (2008). The story was revisited in Pearl Harbor (2001), described by The New York Times as a "noisy, expensive and very long new blockbuster", with

11312-402: The suspension of civilian morality during times of war, b) primacy of collective goals over individual motivations, c) rivalry between men in predominantly male groups as well as marginalization and objectification of women, and d) depiction of the reintegration of veterans. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. The film critic Stephen Neale suggests that

11424-466: The syndicated TV show Hot Ticket with Boston film critic Joyce Kulhawik (originally E! personality and game show host Todd Newton ). Maltin also hosted a television show called Secret's Out on ReelzChannel network. He also spearheaded the creation of the Walt Disney Treasures collectible DVD line in 2001, and continued to provide creative input and host the various sets. During

11536-509: The war and was made in cooperation with the Army Air Corps. It proved a powerful recruiting tool. It became the first film (in any genre) to be awarded an Oscar for best picture. Later films of varied genres that deal with the First World War include David Lean 's "colossal epic", both war film and biopic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), shot in the then unfamiliar and exciting 70mm Technicolor , and described by Steven Spielberg as "maybe

11648-493: The war effort, and a degree of propaganda. Newsreels , ostensibly simply for information, were made in both Allied and Axis countries, and were often dramatised. More recently, in the Iran–Iraq War , Morteza Avini 's Ravayat-e Fath (Chronicles of Victory) television series combined front-line footage with commentary. Sergei Eisenstein 's 1938 historical drama Alexander Nevsky depicts Prince Alexander 's defeat of

11760-653: The war film in specific theatres such as the Western Desert of North Africa and the Pacific in the Second World War, Vietnam , or the Soviet–Afghan War ; and films set in specific domains of war, such as the infantry, the air, at sea, in submarines or at prisoner of war camps. The war film genre is not necessarily tightly defined: the American Film Institute , for example, speaks of "films to grapple with

11872-516: The war film lacks the formal boundaries of a genre like the Western , but that in practice, "successful and influential" war films are about modern wars, in particular World War II, with the combination of mobile forces and mass killing. The film scholar Kathryn Kane points out some similarities between the war film genre and the Western. Both genres use opposing concepts like war and peace, civilization and savagery. War films usually frame World War II as

11984-686: The war years" — Millions Like Us (1943), and The Way Ahead (1944). In America, documentaries were produced in various ways: General Marshall commissioned the Why We Fight propaganda series from Frank Capra; the War Department's Information-Education Division started out making training films for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy; the Army made its own through the U.S. Signal Corps, including John Huston 's The Battle of San Pietro . Hollywood made films with propaganda messages about America's allies, such as Mrs. Miniver (1942), which portrayed

12096-553: The “Music Box”) which he has just hijacked. Garnett and Clark change into Nazi uniforms and head to Nazi headquarters, where he gives the Medical Officer (Herbert Lom) instructions to release a prisoner, Captain MacKenzie, to them. He does so, but becomes suspicious. At 10 past three a.m., at first light, they signal a squadron of planes carrying paratroopers , who land and overrun the factory and blow it up. They all rendezvous at

12208-641: Was born in New York City, the son of singer Jacqueline ( née Gould; 1923–2012) and Aaron Isaac Maltin (1915–2002), a lawyer and immigration judge, as part of a Jewish family, and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey . Maltin began his writing career at age 10, with a weekly magazine called The Bergen Bulletin . At 13, he started writing for the Pennsylvania-based 8mm Collector , with a column called Research Unlimited, where he answered film questions. He began writing

12320-574: Was described by the Motion Picture News as "a really good war story, which is exceptional". The 1916 British film The Battle of the Somme , by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, combined documentary and propaganda, seeking to give the public an impression of what trench warfare was like. Much of the film was shot on location at the Western Front in France; it had

12432-549: Was followed by large-scale but thoughtful films like Andrei Tarkovsky 's Ivan's Childhood (1962), and quasi- documentary all-star epics filmed in Europe such as Battle of the Bulge (1965), Battle of Britain (1969), The Battle of Neretva (1969), Midway (1976), and A Bridge Too Far (1977). In Lawrence Suid's view, The Longest Day "served as the model for all subsequent combat spectaculars". However, its cost also made it

12544-503: Was made during the Korean War (1950–1953). The critic Guy Westwell notes that it questioned the conduct of the war, as did later films like The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and Pork Chop Hill (1959). Fuller agreed that all his films were anti-war. No Hollywood films about the Korean War did well at the box office; the historian Lary May suggested in 2001 that they reminded American viewers of "the only war we have lost". In 1955, after

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