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 German World War I movie, directed by Victor Sewell, offers a highly fictionised version of the death of the British War Secretary, Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916) on abroad the cruiser HMS Hampshire, on his way to...
This film, set during the Russian Revolution, is based on We the Living, a semi-autobiographical novel by Ayn Rand first published in 1936. Originally meant to be two films, Noi vivi and Addio Kira, this film is a two-...
In a remote Russian village during World War I, factory workers struggle to organize against the owners. When World War I comes, they unite as soldiers of the Tsar on the Eastern Front, while local girl Anka forges a relationship with a German ...
Commissioned by the U.S.S.R for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1917, this celebratory documentary film portrays events in revolutionary Petrograd (St. Petersburg). In documentary style, events are re-enacted from the end of...
In this HBO-BBC-VRT miniseries, an English aristocrat awakens to the modern world shaped by feminism and World War I. The story follows Christopher Tietjens, a top civil servant from a background of wealth and privilege, whose marriage flounders...
An exploration of how war transforms a man's life and relationship with women in interwar France. In pre-1914 Paris, an aspiring artist falls in love with a dressmaker. After she dies in childbirth he volunteers to take part in a dangerous...
Paths of Glory is a 1957 American anti-war film directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1935 novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as the French Colonel Dax, commanding officer,...
The second part of the film series, People's Century: 1900-1999, is titled Killing Fields: Marching to Glory, Soldiers Face Death on an Industrial Scale in a Ghastly Global War....
The First World War had bathed the new century in blood. Endless fields of gravemarkers quilted the landscape of Europe. Nine million lost their lives in a horrible war of attrition. A whole generation was traumatized by the horror of the...
At the end of the twentieth century People's Century looks back at the story of our times. This twenty-six part PBS television series offers new insight into the turbulent events of these hundred years through the revealing personal...
Storm over Asia is a 1928 Soviet propaganda film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin. Lowly Mongolian trapper Bair (Valery Inkijinoff), shunned by his fellow trappers for fighting with a trader, flees his trading post and joins the Soviet...
A young man reconstructs his dreams after the tragedy of World War I. Louis Midavaine's hopes of becoming an artist and establishing life with the woman he loves fall to the horrors of war. While recovering from injury, he learns how to laquer...
At the beginning of World War I, Allied nations turned to British-born writer Gertrude Bell (1868-1826) to help organize the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Queen of the Desert, directed by Werner Herzog, offers a sweeping account...
Loosely based on the life of Russian silent screen star Vera Kholodnaya (1893-1919), this film explores a woman's political awakening during the Russian Civil War. After the Bolsheviks take Moscow, a film crew moves to Odessa to continue work....
This televised miniseries explores the emergence of Irish nationalism during World War I. Friendships and relationships disintegrate as war disrupts society. In 1916 Irish rebels lead an insurrection, known as Easter Rising, the most successful...
Based on Pat Barker's 1991 novel, Regeneration, this film follows the stories of a number of officers in the British Army during World War I who are brought together in Craiglockhart War Hospital to be treated for various physical and...
This television miniseries presents a dramatization of the life of Sidney Reilly (1873-1925), one of the most famous spies in the history of modern British espionage and the eventual inspiration for James Bond. In this miniseries, Reilly (Sam...
Saiorse? (Irish for ‘freedom’) was the 1961 successor to George Morrison’s highly successful 1959 film Mise Éire. This documentary presents the effects of the Irish War for...
This documentary explores the history of the Irish Republic, beginning with independence in 1921 to the 1990s. Interviews with politicians, citizens, and scholars of Ireland and archival records and newsreels offer a contextualized and analytical...
During the Irish War of Independence (1919–1923), an Irish-American medical student finds himself caught between the Irish Republican Army and the "Black and Tans," ex-British soldiers recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary to suppress the...