The Second World War film is one of the most precious, educative and enjoyable of cinematic genres. Ever since the Germans threw in the towel we have produced an amazing number and variety of films about the Allied nations’ struggle against Nazism. Sometimes these are straight-up tales of derring-do like Where Eagles Dare (1968); other times slightly revisionist takes like Enigma (2001); and rarely complete anti-historical rewritings like U-571 (2000).
The golden age was clearly in the 1960s and 1970s when there was a sufficient supply of excellent and serious actors, many of whom had fought in the war itself, others slightly younger but raised in the shadow of it.
