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Filmography - War Movies: European Theater part 2

Films on DVD as of June 2011. Includes films with combat and/or wartime settings

War Movies Filmography - World War II - European Theater part 2

Titles available on DVD as of June 2011. 

Includes films with combat and/or wartime settings.

This is a selective list of video holdings in the American University Library. Filmographies are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the ALADIN catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible. For complete up-to-date holdings (including VHS tapes) please refer to the library ALADIN catalog (www.catalog.wrlc.org)

 

 

Kanal = Canal. Criterion collection. 2005. 1 videodisc (96 min.). Set in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, a detachment of the Home Army is forced into the sewers where conflict and tension arise from the claustrophobic atmosphere below and the physical pressures of the German persecutors above. DVD 2582

Kapò. Criterion collection: Essential art house: Criterion collection: Essential art house. 2010. 1 videodisc (117 min.). The story of a Jewish girl from Paris sent to a concentration camp during World War II and her struggle to survive by stealing another's identity and becoming a warden. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3082

Katyn. 2009. 1 videodisc (121 min.). Dramatization of the massacre of 20,000 people (interned Polish officers as well as civilians accused of treason by the occupying Soviet forces) by the Soviet secret police at Katy n in the spring of 1940, and the cover-up that followed. Follows the fictional stories of four families, separated from one another in the confusion of September 1939, when the Soviets and Germans invaded Poland, through the Soviet occupation in 1945 when the truth of the massacre gets suppressed. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 6135

Letyat zhuravli = The cranes are flying. The Criterion collection: The Classic collection: Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs): Classic collection (Chicago, Ill.). 2002. 1 videodisc (94 min.). When Veronica's lover, Boris, goes to war, she moves in with Boris' family. His cousin seduces her and out of guilt she marrys him. Unhappy in her marriage and still in love with Boris she leaves her husband to wait for Boris to return. Later she learns Boris has been killed in the war. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 6850

Lifeboat. 2005. 1 videodisc (96 min.). When an their vessel is torpedoed in the Atlantic Ocean during WWII, eight survivors find refuge in a lifeboat. Short on food and water, their situation is further complicated when they rescue a crew member from the German submarine that sank their ship. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1633

The long voyage home. 2006. 1 videodisc (105 min.). The merchant ship Glencairn rolls and shivers in the black North Atlantic. On board, her anxious crewmen search the sky for German planes and hope they'll survive The Long Voyage Home. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2607

Man hunt. 2009. 1 videodisc (102 min.). A British hunter on vacation in the Bavarian Alps, in the forests near Adolf Hitler's home, gets Hitler in his gun sight, pondering whether or not he should shoot him. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5789

The man who never was. 2005. 1 videodisc (103 min.). Account of wartime espionage based on the true story of an intelligence operation designed to mislead the Nazis prior to the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7934

A matter of life and death. The collector's choice: Collector's choice (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (Firm)). 2009. 1 videodisc (104 min.). British flyer Peter Carter survives a jump from his burning plane without parachute and wakes up in a nether world between Earth and the next life. He is informed that he should have died and must go to Heaven, where he is put on trial for his life. He falls in love with June, an American radio operator. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5523

Military intelligence and you! 2008. 1 videodisc (78 min.). After American troops in World War II are attacked by a mysterious squadron, Major Nick Reed must use his intelligence sources to discover the locations of a secret Nazi base. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4677

The more the merrier. 2004. 1 videodisc (ca. 104 min.). To help the war effort, a patriotic young woman rents half of her apartment to a well-to-do, retired millionaire, who decides to play cupid by renting half of his half to a high-type, clean-cut nice young man. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2133

Mrs. Miniver. 2004. 1 videodisc (133 min.). A family in a small English town experiences the 1940 bombing of England by Germany. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4967

Night train to Munich. The Criterion collection: Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs) . 2010. 1 videodisc (90 min.). Takes viewers on a World War II era journey from Prague to England to the Swiss Alps, as Nazis pursue a Czech scientist and his daughter who are being aided by a debonair British undercover agent. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 308

Der neunte tag = The ninth day. 2005. 1 videodisc (93 min.). Noted German director Volker Schlondorff's (The Tin Drum) highly compelling The Ninth Day provides a unique examination of historical events that took place during the Holocaust. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1806

Nirgendwo in Afrika = Nowhere in Africa. 2003. 1 videodisc (142 min.). Critically acclaimed, this is the award winning true tale of a Jewish family who flee the Nazi regime in 1938 and learn to cope with their new life, and each other, on a remote farm in Kenya. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1155

La Notte de San Lorenzo = Night of the shooting stars. 2008. 1 videodisc (107 min.). It is the Night of San Lorenzo, the night when dreams come true. While watching shooting stars, Cecilia tells her son about a similar night in 1944, when she was six years old, and the residents of San Martino, her small Tuscan hometown, struggled against Nazi oppression during the final days of WWII. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5167

Obchod na korze = The shop on Main Street. The Classic collection: The Criterion collection: Classic collection (Chicago, Ill.): Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs). 2001. 1 videodisc (125 min.). In 1942, Tono and his wife are struggling because of his antipathy towards the fascist regime. His brother-in-law, the local fuehrer, chooses Tono to oversee a button shop owned by a sweet, harmless Jewish widow, Mrs. Lautman. Unable to explain his position to Mrs. Lautman, Tono gradually accepts her belief that he is her assistant. When the Jews are ordered deported, the well-meaning Tono decides to shield her from the Nazis. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5784

Ostre sledované vlaky = Closely observed trains. Criterion collection: The Classic collection: Classic collection (Chicago, Ill.): Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs). 2001. 1 videodisc (93 min.). Comedy-drama about a young trainmaster employed in a tiny station during World War II. He becomes involved in a plot to blow up a German ammunition train, but when the plan backfires, he is forced to commit the ultimate act of courage. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 6551

Overlord. The Criterion collection: Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs). 2007. 1 videodisc (84 min.). The story of one 20-year-old's journey from basic training to the battle front lines at D-day brings all the terrors of war to its viewers with jolting authenticity. Interweaved with archival war footage. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3750

Pasqualino settebellezze = Seven beauties. 2006. 2 videodiscs (116 min.). Pasqualino is a lady's man living off his sisters' money until he is arrested and sent to the army. He is captured by the Germans and taken to a concentration camp where he plots his escape by seducing a German officer. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 6895

Patton. Fox war classics. 2001. 1 videodisc (171 min.). Story of General Patton in World War II whose military brilliance was balanced by his inability to deal with the social and political aspects of war, causing him difficulties in his dealings with the War Department. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 654

The pianist. 2002. 1 videodisc (149 min.). Based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, who was a brilliant pianist. He watched as his family was shipped off to Nazi labor camps. He managed to escape and lived for years in the ruins of Warsaw, hiding from the Nazis. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1794

Pokolenie = A generation.  Criterion collection. 2005. 1 videodisc (87 min.). Film follows the fortunes of one boy under the German Occupation who, along with an entire generation of Polish youth, took up the fight against the Germans with whatever means were at hand. A cocky Polish youth decides to fight the Nazis after he falls for a pretty resistance leader.  As he and his friends help escapees during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the innocence of a generation is lost under the grueling conditions of war. DVD 2581

Popiól i diament = Ashes + diamonds. Criterion collection. 2005. 1 videodisc (103 min.). On the last day of World War Two in a small town somewhere in Poland, Polish exiles of war and the occupying Soviet forces confront the beginning of a new day and a new Poland.  In this incendiary environment we find Home Army officer Maciek Chelmicki, who has been ordered to assassinate an incoming commissar.  But a mistake stalls his progress and leads him to Krystyna, a beautiful barmaid who gives him a glimpse of what his life could be. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2583

The reader. 2009. 1 videodisc (124 min.). When he falls ill on his way home from school, 15 year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. The two begin an unexpected and passionate affair only for Hanna to suddenly and inexplicably disappear. Eight years later, Michael, now a young law student observing Nazi war trials, meets his former lover again, under very different circumstances. Hanna is on trial for a hideous crime, and as she refuses to defend herself, Michael gradually realizes his boyhood love may be guarding a secret she considers to be more shameful than murder. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3963

Reunion in France. The John Wayne collection: John Wayne collection (Warner Bros.). 2007. 1 videodisc (104 min.). A Frenchwoman in Nazi-occupied Paris hides a downed American flyer and attempts to get him safely out of the country. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5265

Roma, città aporta = Open city. 1997. 1 videodisc (105 min.). Rossellini's classic is representative of neo-realistic cinema. Taking place in Rome during the Nazi occupation, Pina (Magnani) is an impoverished mother-to-be and Don Pietro Pellegrini (Fabrizi) is a parish priest whose loyalties are tested by the sinister German forces that occupy their homeland during World War II. The priest, who is helping the Italian resistance fighters, is discovered and arrested by the SS. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 46

Rosenstrasse. 2005. 1 videodisc (136 min.). After the death of her father, Hannah becomes concerned with the strange behavior of her mother. Traveling to Berlin to interview a woman who knew her mother as a child, Hannah hears the story of a week in 1943 when the Aryan wives of Jewish men held captive in a building on Rosenstrasse protested in the name of love, and realizes how little she knew of her mother's troubled childhood. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5583

Salo, o, le 120 giornate di Sodoma = Salo or the 120 days of Sodom. The Criterion collection: Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs). 2008. 2 videodiscs (116 min.). A transposition of the Marques de Sade's eighteenth century opus of torture and degradation to 1944 Fascist Italy. A thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in. A transposition of the Marques de Sade's eighteenth century opus of torture and degradation to 1944 Fascist Italy. A thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in. Special features included. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4684

Saving Private Ryan. 2004. 1 videodisc (169 min.). In the last great invasion of World War II, a squad of American soldiers embark on a special mission ... to find Private Ryan. Faced with impossible odds, surrounded by the brutalities of war, each man searches for his own answer and the strength to triumph over an uncertain future with honor, decency and courage. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1313

Schindler's list. 2004. 1 videodisc (196 min.). The story of a Catholic war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who risked his life and went bankrupt in order to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps. He employed Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army. At the same time he tries to stay solvent with the help of a Jewish accountant and negotiates business with a vicious Nazi commandant who enjoys shooting Jews as target practice from the balcony of his villa that overlooks the prison camp he commands. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2419

Slaughterhouse-five. 2004. 1 videodisc (104 min.). The story of Billy Pilgrim who is ordinary in almost every respect but one: he has come unstuck in time and jumps back and forth in his life with no control over where he is going next. In the end Billy learns he must concentrate on the good things and ignore the bad in life. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5727

The small back room. The Criterion collection: Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs). 2008. 1 videodisc (107 min.). Details the professional and personal travails of a troubled, alcoholic research scientist and military bomb-disposal expert who, while struggling through a relationship with his girlfriend, is hired by the government to advise on a German weapon. DVD 4667

Soldaat van oranje = Soldier of orange. Paul Verhoeven collection. 2001. 1 videodisc (156 min.). Erik Hazelhoff is a spoiled young aristocrat who transforms himself into a daring leader in the Dutch resistance forces during World War II. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2524

Sorstalanság = Fateless. 2006. 1 videodisc (140 min.). A teenage Jewish boy from Budapest finds himself in turmoil as Hitler's Final Solution becomes policy throughout Europe. Taken from his family and sent to a concentration camp, his existence becomes a surreal adventure in adversity in order to survive. DVD 8093

Stalag 17. 2006. 1 videodisc (120 min.). A group of American G.I.s in a POW camp suspect a spy is among them. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5384

Stalingrad. 1998. 1 videodisc (150 min.). This film features the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare - the legendary battle of Stalingrad - where over 2 million men lost their lives. Stalingrad was the turning point in the war for the Germans. They never recovered from this devastating defeat. Stalingrad's emphasis is not simply on the battle but on certain young men who fought in that war - their hopes, their fears, their stories. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5732

To be or not to be. 2005. 1 videodisc (91 min.). Comedy about a theatrical troupe in Warsaw during World War II. They use every trick at their command to outwit the Nazi occupation troops, and at the same time hold the Nazis up to ridicule. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1343

Ulica graniczna = Border Street. 2005. 1 videodisc (122 min.). A tragedy about an old tailor who tries to save his daughters and others in the Warsaw ghetto. Culminates with the uprising of 1943, when Jews, supported by the Polish underground, take up arms and die fighting. DVD 5974

Un condamné à mort s'est échappé, ou, Le vent souffle où il vent = A man escaped. 2004. 1 videodisc (ca. 100 min.). A French Resistance fighter is sent to an infamous prison in Lyon in 1943, where 7,000 of the 12,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine is certain that execution awaits him, and begins planning his escape. For a period of time he goes it alone, but reluctantly takes on a partner. He gets some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure of isolation. DVD 1120

Le vieil homme et l'enfant = The two of us. The Criterion collection: Criterion collection (DVD videodiscs). 2007. 1 videodisc (87 min.). A Jewish boy living in Nazi-occupied Paris is sent by his parents to the countryside to live with an elderly Catholic couple until France's liberation. Forced to hide his identity, eight-year-old Claude bonds with the irascible, staunchly anti-Semitic Grampa, who improbably becomes his friend and confidant. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4440

La vita è bella = Life is beautiful. Miramax collector's series. 1999. 1 videodisc (116 min.). A charming but bumbling waiter who's gifted with a colorful imagination and an irresistible sense of humor has won the heart of the woman he loves and has created a beautiful life for his young family. Then that life is threatened by World War II. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 156

Watch on the Rhine. 2008. 1 videodisc (112 min.). Sara and Kurt Muller and their three children are returning to her mother's home in Washington D.C. after 18 years in Europe. A Romanian Count living there discovers Kurt's attache case full of money. He also finds out from friends at the German Embassy that Kurt is working with an anti-Nazi underground group in Germany. He tries to blackmail Kurt. Kurt shoots him and must flee. When Sara hears no more of Kurt, she knows that her oldest son Joshua will soon leave to work in the underground. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4945

What price glory. The Ford at Fox collection. 2004. 1 videodisc (109 min.). Two American Marines are best buddies in competition for an alluring French woman, daughter of a local shopkeeper. DVD 3490

The young lions. Fox war classics. 2001. 1 videodisc (167 min.). The story of World War II from the American and the German perspectives. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1418

Zwartboek = Black book. 2007. 1 videodisc (146 min.). Rachel, a young Jewish girl hiding from the Nazi's during World War II in The Netherlands, sees her hiding place blown up. She escapes with her rescuer, a young sailor, but the boat sails into a trap set by the Germans. She escapes and joins the resistance, and under the false name Ellis de Vries she meets SS-hauptsturmführer Ludwig Muntze on a train smuggling weapons. She goes to his headquarters to meet him again and gain his trust, and soon they fall in love. She joins his office as a spy, but when someone within the resistance betrays her, she is now seen as an enemy betraying both sides. All that's left to do is run with the man she learned to love and find a way to prove her innocence by finding the real betrayer. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4058