Christmas may ostensibly be a time of goodwill to all men, but war rarely takes a break for the festive season – as events in Ukraine sadly demonstrate. Here are ten films set during Yuletide where the front line is front and centre:
Castle Keep (1968) – Amazon Rent/Buy
Sydney Pollack’s (Three Days of the Condor) Castle Keep is set during the Germans’ failed Ardennes offensive of December 1944 and stars Burt Lancaster as one-eyed US Major Abraham Falconer. But if from that description you expect a meat-and-potatoes world war two actioner, think again. The picture is an elliptical, surreal mediation on art, war, mortality and time, with Falconer’s battered group assigned to defend a Belgian chateau stuffed with priceless art against the Germans, while the impotent Count of Maldorais (veteran French actor and real-life war hero Jean-Pierre Aumont) conspires to protect his collection and beget an heir by hooking up the major with his wife (Astrid Heeren). Shot in glorious baroque technicolour by Henri Decaë (Le Cercle Rouge), and with a suitably modish score by the late Michel Legrand, Castle Keep has gradually achieved cult status over the years. If you prefer a more traditional view of the Ardennenoffensive, you may opt for 1965’s The Battle of the Bulge, a Boy’s Own take on events starring Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas and Robert Shaw.
Jarhead (2005) – Amazon Rent/Buy
US marine Anthony Swofford’s 2003 memoir provided the basis for Sam Mendes’s (1917) film set during Operation Desert Shield/Operation Desert Storm of the first Gulf War (1990–1991). Jake Gyllenhaal’s bored marine sniper Swofford causes mayhem when he organises an impromptu Christmas party with unauthorised booze, never a clever idea when there are crates of live ammunition in the vicinity. Although a relative box-office failure, Jarhead spawned a slew of direct-to-video sequels. As with many of the director’s middlebrow efforts, Jarhead is distinctly under-powered when compared to the likes of David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999).
Stalag 17 (1953) – Amazon Rent/Buy
Set in a German prison camp for US airmen on the Danube during Christmas 1944, Billy Wilder’s typically cynical comedy is a personal favourite of mine. When would-be escapees are swiftly caught and shot by the prison guards, in-it-for-himself J.J. Sefton (William Holden) is suspected of being the grass. Beaten up and shunned by his fellow inmates, Sefton resolves to find the real snitch – and rub his persecutors’ faces in it. Which he then proceeds to do. Holden is terrific in the picture, justly winning the Academy Award for best actor; he reprised the role for a (very) brief comic cameo in 1979’s Escape to Athena, co-starring his then romantic partner Stefanie Powers (Hart to Hart). Director Otto Preminger (Laura) plays sadistic camp commandant Colonel von Scherbach, a role that surely inspired the character of similarly chrome-domed Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer) in Hogan’s Heroes (CBS, 1965–71). The role wasn’t much of a stretch for Preminger, a notorious bully as a director. The scenario was vaguely reprised in Gregory Hoblit’s (Primal Fear) Hart’s War where Colin Farrell and Bruce Willis face off as officers interned at a German POW camp in December 1944.
Joyeux Noël (2005) – Amazon Rent/Buy
The famed first world war Christmas truce of December 1914 is depicted in Christian Carion’s (My Son) Joyeux Noël, where German, English and French troops enjoy a brief respite from the conflict. Of course, the soldiers’ fraternisation angers the authorities of all sides, who put an end to the seasonal festivities and punish the leading participants. Quelle surprise. The movie stars some familiar faces including Ian Richardson, Daniel Brühl, Diane Kruger and Alex Ferns – best known as EastEnders’ villainous Trevor Morgan, but who has also forged a career with roles in series such as Andor (2022) and Chernobyl (2019).
Silent Night (2002) – Amazon Rent/Buy
More Bulge-related moviemaking in this modestly budgeted TV picture starring Linda Hamilton (the Terminator movies) as German housewife Elisabeth Vincken, hosting an unlikely Christmas dinner with Wehrmacht and US troops who seek refuge in her forest cabin refuge. All goes surprisingly swimmingly until a German infiltrator disguised as an American MP turns up to put a damper on proceedings.
The Lion in Winter (1968) – Studiocanal Presents, Amazon Rent/Buy
A change of both pace and era in Anthony Harvey’s adaptation of James Goldman’s hit stage play. Christmas 1183 and the Plantagenets under paterfamilias Henry II (Peter O’Toole) and scheming estranged wife Eleanor (Katharine Hepburn) call a brief truce with their fractious offspring (played by Anthony Hopkins, Nigel Terry and John Castle) and guest Louis VII of France (Timothy Dalton) to celebrate the season of goodwill. Except there’s precious little to go round, the Angevins and Louis all conspiring in various ways to secure power. The dialogue is more 1960s than 1180s – at one point Eleanor states: ‘It’s 1183 and we’re all barbarians!’ – but TLIW is an enjoyable enough watch for all its archness. The picture was rather unnecessarily remade in 2003, with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close as Henry and Eleanor. Goldman was the younger brother of William, writer of Marathon Man and the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, a relationship analogous to the brothers Peter (Amadeus) and Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) at the time.
A Midnight Clear (1992)
We return again to the Battle of the Bulge in Keith Gordon’s (Mother Night) elegiac film, adapted from William (Birdy) Wharton’s 1982 novel which concerned his harrowing second world war experiences in the Ardennes. Peter Berg, Kevin Dillon, Ethan Hawke, Gary Sinise and Frank Whaley play members of a US army intelligence and reconnaissance squad who, akin to Castle Keep, occupy a chateau close to the advancing Germans. Rather than fanatical Nazis, the enemy is a reluctant squad of teenagers led by an older, disillusioned sergeant. Making contact with their counterparts, the Germans request that they stage a fake skirmish where they can be captured without reprisals against their families at home. What could possibly go wrong? Incidentally, actor Curt Lowens née Löwenstein, who plays the Wehrmacht NCO, in real life saved 150 Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) – Freevee, BFI Player, Arrow Video, Amazon Rent/Buy
The only really seasonal thing about this film is the title, which is spoken in ironic circumstances twice in the picture, set in a Japanese POW camp in second world war Java. Nonetheless Nagisa Ōshima’s (In the Realm of the Senses) movie is worthy of inclusion due to the quality of the acting, with the late David Bowie contributing the most fully rounded performance of his career as Lord Jim-esque Major Jack Celliers. Other cast members include Ryuichi Sakamoto (Capt. Yonoi), Tom Conti (Lawrence) and director/actor Takeshi Kitano as the alternately gregarious/brutal Sgt. Gengo Hara. Older readers will remember Sakamoto’s affecting ‘Forbidden Colours’, which he wrote for the film. MCML was based on the autobiographical novel The Seed and the Sower (1963) by Laurens van der Post (1906-96), mentor of the future King Charles III.
When Trumpets Fade (1998)
Largely forgotten due to being immediately followed by the Bulge, the Battle of Hürtgen Forest was a particularly hard slog, a prolonged engagement in dense woodland that ideally suited the Wehrmacht defenders. John Irvin, director of the 1979 TV adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, manages his limited TV movie budget well, drawing out some strong performances from a strong cast that includes Ron Eldard, Frank Whaley (again), Timothy Olyphant, Dwight Yoakam and Bobby Cannavale.
Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) – Amazon Rent
Richard Attenborough called in a lot of favours for his directing debut, a star-studded adaptation of Charles Chilton’s musical which achieved success under the aegis of Joan Littlewood in 1963. The first world war is portrayed in popular songs of the period in a series of largely static vignettes. The picture had some relevance as an anti-war movie at the height of the Vietnam conflict, but at 144 minutes, it’s something of an endurance test. There’s a memorable sequence set during the 1914 Christmas truce which features Angus Lennie – Ives ‘The Mole’ in The Great Escape (1963, which also starred Attenborough) and ‘Shughie McFee’, the cantankerous chef at the Crossroads Motel.
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