Quote Originally Posted by McClef View Post

I confess I had not heard of these others you cite but after investigation they are clearly NOT war movies and the trailer for The Mortal Storm even says as much - "A tale of love and sacrifice NOT war." They are both set before WW2 and even before the Anschluss involving individuals and not nations.
Unfortunately, films are about people and ideas. To be about "nations" I think you'd be talking about documentaries, rather than narrative cinema. When you say these films are set before WWII I presume you mean before Britain entered the war in September of 1939. When I say "before the war" I'm referring to the events prior to 7 December 1941. I have been digging through my notes looking for the details of a very good film made about the destruction of Czechoslovakia, and the resistance to the Germans, that was lensed in (I think) in 1939. I want to say that the title was Forced Landing, but that's probably not it.
Quote Originally Posted by McClef View Post

I am not trying to be deliberately obtuse (oh yes you are! ) but I am still waiting for an American made movie that fits your original claim about occupied Europe as none of these qualify being about Germany alone before it got expansionist.
Without resorting to my teaching notes, I'll offer They Met In Bombay a 1941 film staring Clark Gable as a jewel thief in India who ends up fighting the Japanese in China! Only Hollywood could come up with something like this... but wait, it's not occupied Europe. And it's probably not a "war film" by your definition.

Trefor, I think you should go back and re-read my comments in Post #37-- I didn't mention anything about "war films"-- perhaps I was being too subtle, or expecting a less interpretive reading of what I wrote. My point, and obviously it was missed, was that Hollywood was making films that were pro-war and anti-axis several years before the US entered the conflict. No where did I say they were making "traditional" war films. But there's the rub. What, exactly is a war film?

I think we'd probably both agree that Saving Private Ryan is a war film. But how about Schindler's List? Or Breaker Morant? It's my view on the subject that just because a story is set during a war, it isn't necessarily a "war film". Off the top of my head I don't recall any battle scenes in Waterloo Bridge but the story definitely takes place during the war.