List members: A year or so ago, AFI came out with their list of the best 100 films of all time. Earlier this year, Forbes American Heritage Magazine came out with a list of the ten best movies of World War II. Recently, while doing some searching on the WOrld Wide Web, I located a site that listed at least 150 World War II films. I am curious as to what our list members think makes a good World War II film? Certianly, Saving Private Ryan and The THin Red Line are far advanced in many areas over their earlier counterparts like Sands of Iwo Jima, To Hell and Back, and The Naked and The Dead, but are they necessarily better? Sure, Saving Private Ryan depicts scenes more like they should have been in To Hell and Back, (which Audie Murphy himself felt was too sanatized) but other modern war films such as Memphis Belle have actually taken history and changed it on screen. What part does an accurate depiction of violence in a World War II film play in how he film is viewed by the public. Are "James Ryan" and the other characters in SPR more beliavible, heroic, or real than Audie Murphy (who played himself), characters played by John Wayne, etc. and other earlier WW II film stars/characters, simply because their films were made in eras of great difference in technology and taste (with regards to violence, etc.? Thoughts? Vince Leibowitz, Executive Director American Cotton Museum "Where Cotton Is Still King" http://www.cottonmuseum.com 600 Interstate 30 East P.O. Box 347 Greenville, Texas 75403 (903) 454-1990 (903) 450-4502 President Northeast Texas Museum Association http://www.cottonmuseum.com/ntma.htm ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu