Films about the Age of First World War
This collection provides information on selected movies, TV productions and documentaries on the themes of gender, military and war in the period covered by the Oxford Handbook.
The most important wars for this period include:
- First World War (1914–18)
- Russian Civil War (1917–22)
- Irish War of Independence and Civil War (1919–23)
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This serial and epic documentary uses re-enactments and animations to tell the story of World War I through the eyes of ordinary people. It explores the lives of housewives, journalists, workers, and volunteers across Europe and North America...
Directed by Sam Mendes, this film tells the story of two young British soldiers during the First World War who are ordered to deliver a message calling off an ill-advised attack soon after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, the German...
A forbidden love story set in Germany before World War II. A young assistant falls for his employer's wife, but war, promises, and time keep them apart.
Based on the lives of Russian Admiral Alexander Kolchak and poet Anna Timiryova, Admiral weaves together love and war set during World War I and the Russian Civil War. Duty and marriage keep the two lovers separated, as each tries to...
This documentary focuses on the Armenian genocide by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It is based on eyewitness reports by European and American personnel stationed in the Near East at the time, Armenian...
All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American anti-war film based on the German novel, Im Westen Nichts Neues (1929), by Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970). Directed by Lewis Milestone, the film won two Oscars for Best...
This documentary traces the lives of the "Forgotten Ten" during the Irish War of Independence. Following courts martial, the British forces executed ten IRA prisoners at the Mountjoy Prison between 1920 and 1921 during the Irish War of...
Based on Peter Rees’ 2008 Book, The Other ANZACS, the series Anzac Girls is an Australian six-part television drama program first screened on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 2014. It tells the true story of nurses...
In this avant-garde silent film, acclaimed director Alexander Dovzhenko documents the demobilization of Ukraine and its embrace of the Bolshevik Revolution after World War I. Timosh, a veteran and factory worker, views Ukrainian independence...
One of the most popular films in the Soviet Union and Russia, White Sun of the Desert portrays the Russian Civil War (1917-1922) in the style of a classic American western. Fyodor Sukhov (Anatoly Kuznetsov), a Red Army soldier on his way...
Loosely based on an Evelyn Waugh novel, Bright Young Things explores the culture of affluence, jazz, and cultural transformations in interwar England. In the 1930s, Adam Fenwick-Symes is part of the English idle class, wanting to marry...
Based on the acclaimed novel by Roger Vercel, this film explores ideas of civilization and humanity during and after World War I. Even though World War I is over, French troops are still fighting on the Bulgarian border. There, a band of...
Inspired by the memoirs of Maurice Genevoix, this television series explores the loss of innocence and bonds of brotherhood forged during World War I. Genevoix eagerly volunteers for the French Army when war breaks out, but such excitement...
This popular propaganda film of the Soviet Realist era celebrates Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev (1887–1919), a Red Army commander who became a hero of the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). It is based on the novel of the same name by Dmitri Furmanov, a...
Produced shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, this film offers a damning critique of the Bolshevik Revolution. CHEKA, the Bolshevik secret police, round up and execute opponets, political dissidents, and ordinary people to impose absolute...
In 1973, Kenneth Griffith, the renowned documentary maker, gathered together a group of veterans of the Irish Rising. Almost half a century after the terrible events they lived through, this highly diverse group – branded terrorists by the...
Set in Latvia during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922) and World War I, Coup de Grâce offers a devastating critique of the impact of war and masculinity on sexuality, femininity, and personal politics. After Erich, a German soldier,...
This romanticized account of Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the famed German fighter pilot, interrogates his role in World War I. Richthofen orders his men to save the lives of the enemy pilots in downed aircraft, and his romance with a nurse...
Der Wunschbaum (The Wishing Tree) is a three-part television film in the style of a family saga based on a novel by Sandra Paretti. It spans the years 1899 to 1925 and centers on the life of Camilla Hofmann, the daughter of chemist and...
Doctor Zhivago is a 1965 epic romantic drama film, set in Russia circa World War I and the Russian Civil War of 1918–1922, and is based on the 1957 Boris Pasternak novel Doctor Zhivago. While immensely popular in the West, the...