On the slate are wide-scale epics, personal dramas, devastating documentaries, historical revisions and even a comedy or two. And who better to ask than the man behind Inglourious Basterds and walking war-kipedia of combat flicks, Quentin Tarantino? He’s helped us parse hundreds of films down to a mere 50 all-timers. In fact, there are so many World War II movies that we needed help narrowing them down to a mere 50. What some of the very best have in common is the first-hand experiences of their filmmakers: men like Sam Fuller, Jean-Pierre Melville and John Huston saw it all for themselves and brought that authenticity to their films.

There are gripping stories of resistance movies like Army of Shadows and Kanal, a whole canon of Holocaust masterpieces and a number of seminal documentaries that employ real-life footage to bring it all home.

A whole genre in their own right, World War II movies come in all shapes and sizes: from gung-ho men-on-a-mission movies like Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare to the bleaker, more complex visions of war that usually emerged from the vanquished nations ( Fires on the Plain, Kelly’s Heroes, Stalingrad, et al).

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