Director Christopher Nolan’s costly historical thriller Dunkirk proved the enduring popularity of war films to cinema audiences in the UK.
But it may come as a surprise to some that the £112million picture – featuring pop singer Harry Styles – has topped a list of the nation’s favourite Second World War films of all time.
It beat classics such as The Dam Busters (1955) and The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) in the poll by Deltapoll, which surveyed 1077 film buffs, for the War Movie Theatre podcast.
The 2017 film, which also stars Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan, depicts the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 when more than 330,000 allied troops were rescued from the French harbour.
Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998), which follows the search for the titular character during the Normandy invasion, came second, followed by The Great Escape (1963), which sees allied prisoners attempting to escape a Nazi camp, in third.
The Dam Busters, which depicts the RAF’s Operation Chastise, finished fourth in the poll, while the Battle Of Britain (1969), a dramatisation of the battle between the RAF and the German Luftwaffe, came in fifth.
The rest of the list was made up of The Longest Day (1962), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Pearl Harbor (2001), Schindler’s List (1993), and The Bridge On The River Kwai.
Author Robert Hutton, co-host of the War Movie Theatre podcast, said of the poll: ‘Cinema has always been looking for great stories… Even as the war was being fought, it was inspiring some of the greatest films, like In Which We Serve or Went The Day Well?
A graphic showing the top 10 World War Two films as voted for by the British public
Kenneth Branagh as Commander Bolton in director Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which Brits voted the best Second World War film of all-time
In second place was Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Pictured: Tom Hanks (left) and Tom Sizemore (right)
A still from the 1963 war epic The Great Escape, about a group of Allied soldiers plotting to break out of a German prisoner of war camp, which finished third in the poll
‘It’s not surprising that Dunkirk is top of the list, it’s the most successful war movie of the past decade. But it’s noteworthy that half the list is from the golden era of war movies in the 50s and 60s.
‘I’d have liked to see at least one of the great Alistair MacLean commando movies, The Guns Of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare in there.
‘But mainly I’m appalled to see Pearl Harbor on the list, which ought to be a war crime.’
It comes after Europe commemorated the 80th anniversary of VE Day on May 8, which marks the end of the Second World War on the continent in 1945.
