1930s War Movies

The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

The film is about the civil war in the Zangezur (Syunik) province of Armenia in the early 1920s. The last Dashnak battalions headed by Sparapet Nzhdeh still opposed both the incursion of Red Army and the local Bolshevik partisans.

This revolutionary epic likens the push for industrialization of Soviet Ukraine with the battle for Perekop during the Civil War. A missing plow blade is presented as a symbol of the country's backward peasant economy that needs to be transformed in the course of the industrial construction. In an onslaught of rapidly changing images, Ukrainian village with its peasants suspicious of everything new, dramatically collides with the frenzy of working factories, plants, and mines.

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

A Chinese couple in the 1930s struggle to survive. Things get complicated for them when he enlists to fight the war against Japan.

This powerful anti-war film statement focuses on the plight of a German unit in World War I that finds itself surrounded by British and French forces.

The revolutionary struggle of the Georgian proletariat is the central theme of this story. The narrative follows the life and fate of a young revolutionary named Mito. After the Mensheviks disrupt a railway strike, Mito is sentenced to three years in prison, and his father is executed. During his time in prison, Mito shares a cell with an old Bolshevik, which transforms the hot-headed and unstable young man into a conscious Bolshevik. Soon, World War I begins, and Mito, who has just been released from prison, is sent to war.

French-language version of Port Arthur (1936), a German language film (q.v.) co-produced by German, French and Czechoslovakian film interests. About espionage, action and romance in the Russo-Japanese War, as the conflict threatens Russian naval officer Boris Ranewsky and his Japanese wife Youki.

Chronicles the Alpine war experiences of young Toni Bruggler (Ludwig Kerscher), a Tyrolean-German member of the Standschützen (militiamen), comprised of those who are too young or old to fight in the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg army.

A 1933 film.

A tale of the World War I love affair, begun in Italy, between American ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry and British nurse Catherine Barkley. Eventually separated by Frederic's transfer, tremendous challenges and difficult decisions face each as the war rages on.

A naive peasant appears by turns during the Civil War in two hostile camps and finally chooses the Red Army.

In 1917, in a small village in the North, Abbe Gaillard is suspected by the Germans of facilitating the escape of French and Belgian soldiers. A false alibi makes him innocent and he can thus continue his mission, thanks to the devotion of an Alsatian who, in enemy uniform, obscurely serves his country.

It depicts the story of several Russian soldiers during the World War I and the Russian revolution.

No overview available

Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.

During World War 1 a Russian soldier (Pyotr Sobolevsky) serves in Russian Expeditionary Force in France where he is chosen for his marksmanship and trained as a skilled sniper. After the Russian revolution the soldier returns home while his commander (Boris Shlikhting) fights against the Soviet Russia. In 1930 the former soldier works on a factory and also he is the instructor in shooting club. Once the town that is near the Soviet border is attacked by foreign troops (the hostile state isn't named but the uniform of the soldiers resembles Finnish). The character meets againt with his former commander who serves in invading forces.

The film is about the Bolshevik revolt in one of the Armenian Dashnak detachments.

Docu-drama about political and military conflict during the Russian Civil War in 1918, from an orthodox pro-Communist viewpoint.

No overview available

800 Chinese soldiers guard the important warehouse district against the invading Japanese Army. Re-imagination of a famous (bordering on legendary) episode from the battle of Shanghai: 800 soldiers of the 88th regiment against what feels like the whole of Japan’s Imperial Army - think Thermopylae, Chinese version. A splendid, visually amazing gem which, in its own way, is also a last stand: of silent cinema, Shanghai style. (iffr)

An account of the peasant turned mythical military hero Vasily Chapayev, charting his campaign in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

Forever England gives John Mills his first leading role as Brown. Born after a brief affair between his mother and a naval officer, he joins the Royal Navy during the First World War. There his bravery and marksmanship keeps a German ship in port so a British ship can sink it. He becomes a hero, but at what cost?

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, a five-man reconnaissance unit is dispatched to scout enemy positions in a volatile territory. After a sudden and intense firefight, the group is separated, leaving the survivors to wait in agonizing suspense at their outpost.

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.

The film is based on Georgian medieval epic poem “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli and depicts an episode of Nestan-Darejan’s release from Kajeti fortress.

A second version of Gance's Napoléon, with sound.

Follows the story of the 26 Artillery Division of the Soviet Red Army.

Banned in the Soviet Union for its "negative" content and never released, Kalatozov was forced to retreat from filmmaking for seven years because of this film. The film sets out to illustrate the old adage, "For want of a nail, the battle was lost," showing how the inferior quality of something so trivial as a nail in a soldier's boot leads inexorably to the capture of an armored train. Kalatozov had intended to demonstrate the crucial and universal importance of efficiency in Soviet industry, but the government decided that his fable gave a negative impression of the Red Army's capabilities.

Episodic story of the resistance to the German invasion of Ukraine in 1918 during World War I, and made as an example of the guerrilla warfare and fierce spirit in which Ukrainian peasants were again resisting Teuton onslaughts in 1939. Highlights a small band of guerrillas and their battles using scythes, shotguns and, often, just clubs against the Kaiser's army in the Ukrainian forests.

It's 1938, but Stan doesn't know the war is over; he's still patrolling the trenches in France, and shoots down a French aviator. Oliver sees his old chum's picture in the paper and goes to visit Stan who has now been returned to the States and invites him back to his home.

Six young men from the city take jobs building roads for the Chinese Army

This is a film from the series of so-called "defense" films, which presents a hypothetical "scenario" of a future war. The crew of test pilot Sergei Novikov makes a long non-stop flight on an airplane of a new design. Novikov's son, Yurka, a passionate inventor, manages to contact his father using a transmitter he designed himself. Just before landing Novikov felt bad - an old leg wound, received during the Civil War, had opened. But still the pilot managed to land the plane on the airfield of the aircraft factory. After an editorial article in the newspaper Pravda, the movie was removed from the screens.

About children's participation in the fight against kulaks.

The Austrian Secret Service sends its most seductive agent to spy on the Russians.

The Latvian epic "Lāčplēsis" resounds through time and parallels the struggles of a Latvian soldier and his love before, during and after WWI.

In 1917, the people of the Russian Empire are no longer willing to fight Germany, but the bourgeois government of Alexander Kerensky is unwilling to defy its imperialist allies and stop the war. Only Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party is resolute in calling for peace. In the front, the soldiers of one battalion elect three delegates to travel to St. Petersburg with donations the troops collected for the Pravda newspaper: Gudushauri, Panasiuk and Ershov. The three arrive in the capital and describe the horrendous conditions in which the soldiers live to Joseph Stalin, Lenin's trusted aid and colleague. They join the Bolsheviks and take part in the storming of the Winter Palace, led by Stalin and Lenin. Stalin announces that the great dawn of revolution has broken.

In 1853, as the British and Russian empires compete to gain and maintain their place in the dreadful Great Game of political intrigues and alliances whose greatest prize is the domination of India and the border territories, Major Geoffrey Vickers must endure several betrayals and misfortunes before he can achieve his revenge at the Balaclava Heights, on October 25, 1854, the most glorious day of the Crimean War.

The young and patriotic student Demachy joins the French army in 1914 to defend his country. But he and his comrades soon experience the terrifying, endless trench war in Champagne, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected for this cannon fodder.

The 1930s. Naval maneuvers are underway. On orders from the command, three submarines are to "attack" a battleship. In the heat of the "battle," a fourth periscope appears. Where did the fourth submarine come from? Is it one of ours or an enemy vessel? These questions must be answered immediately by the commander of the destroyer "Otvažny," otherwise...