Best War Movies of 1961

A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.

Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz ("El Cid" to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honour, still succeeds in taking the initiative and driving the Moors from Spain.

Tells the true story of Gwen Terasaki, who falls in love with, then marries a Japanese diplomat. When war breaks out they find animosity and trouble from both sides.

Set in Italy, the story takes place in this very country, during WW2, where German occupation army ruled everything, just before the allied forces came, in 1944. Crawford plays here a doctor whose son has been shot by the Germans. Of course he has no more taste in life. He continues his work as a German officers' physician. One day, he throws a bomb just in the middle of German troops. Many soldiers and officers are killed. Some time later, the lead officer of the Nazis troops suspects the doctor to be the responsible of the explosion. He lets him know that he himself knows...

Based on a play by Willis Hall. A troop of British soldiers are out in the jungle to record jungle noises and troop noises in the jungle so that the recordings can be played back by other troops to divert the enemy to their whereabouts. As they progress to what they think is closer to the base camp they find themselves farther and farther from radio range until the only channel they can get clearly is that of a Japanese broadcast. They now realize they are probably only 10 to 15 miles from a Japanese camp! The tension is added to by rowdy and openly admitted "non-hero" Private Bamforth who has nothing good to say about anyone and especially Corporal Johnstone (who holds an equal dislike for Bamforth). When a Japanese soldier is taken as their prisoner, the true colours of each man comes to the surface

During World War II, a plane full of RAF fighter crashes in the Ethiopian desert and they are met upon by an enemy Italian patrol that allows them to go free. But, when the Brits are given orders to attack the Italians, lots of problems ensue.

American GI Ernie Williams, admittedly weak-kneed, has an uncanny resemblance to British Colonel MacKenzie. Williams, also a master of imitation and disguise, is asked to impersonate the Colonel, ostensibly to allow the Colonel to make a secret trip East. What Williams is not told is that the Colonel has recently been a target of assassins. After the Colonel's plane goes down, the plan changes and Williams maintains the disguise to confuse the Nazis about D-Day.

Ira Hayes, a young Pima Indian, enlists in the Marine Corps. At boot camp, he is shunned and mocked by everyone, aside from a Marine named Sorenson, who he befriends. They happen to be two of the six marines captured in the famous photograph of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima, but Sorenson is killed soon after. Although he is hailed as a hero, Ira's life begins to spiral out of control after the war.

Part 1 ended with Jianbai and Su Yanan among the students fleeing the invading Japanese. Part 2 follows the efforts of all four characters to participate in the war effort. Su Yanan joins the army and fights. Jianbai enlists to be near her. A-Lan becomes a nurse at a battlefront hospital and Qiuming entertains the troops. (Grace Chang, Cathay's leading musical star at the time, performs some rousing patriotic numbers in these scenes.) Jianbai is reunited with Su in the battlefield, but...

A four-year-old boy is drafted into the army.

“The Forgotten Faces (1961), a film reconstruction of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, won Watkins another amateur Oscar, and to this day, the film is praised in England as "one of the most memorable amateur films ever made".

Comedy set in World War Two, starring James Robertson-Justice and Leslie Phillips. Sir Ernest Pease (Robertson-Justice) is a self-important scientist who is sent undercover on a bombing mission to monitor the effectiveness of his latest invention, a new-fangled radar. When the plane is attacked, he parachutes to safety - only to be sent to a POW camp, where he takes on the alias of Lieutenant Farrow. There, the somewhat happy-go-lucky bunch of Brits suspect their acerbic new fellow prisoner of being a spy, and all sorts of culture clashes and misunderstandings ensue.

Two Air Force friends have fun during their enlistment.

A Marine stationed in the Philippines loses a hand in an accident and is discharged from the Corps. When the Japanese invade the Philippines, he is called back into service to rescue a general held by Filipino guerrillas behind Japanese lines. Attaching a steel prosthetic in place of his missing hand, he and his men set out on the mission, which turns out to be not quite what he was told it was.

This is only the second Audie Murphy movie set in WWII after his autobiographical "To Hell and Back." Here Murphy steps out of his usual kid-Western role to play a civilian working for the Navy helping supply guerilla insurgents in the Philippines. His sole motive is not politics nor bravery, but to find his bride from whom he was separated during the Japanese invasion two years before

World War II GIs adopt an Italian war orphan.

Documents the period 1919-1922 in Ireland's history, covering the war of independence against the British and the civil war that followed using archive footage from the time, including original newsreel footage.

When an American attack on the German-held town of San Corrado results in the Germans being forced out of the town, they don't have time to take along a top Italian partisan leader they have captured and imprisoned. Fearing that the Americans will turn the man loose to organize more partisan attacks on their forces, the Germans send one of their top agents to infiltrate the town, posing as an American soldier cut off from his unit, and assign him to re-capture the partisan leader and bring him back for interrogation--or, if that's not possible, to kill him.

An American army unit is trapped in a small town during a German counterattack and discovers that a spy in the town is providing the Germans with information about them.

A pacifist's values are challenged in war-time Japan.