I've been watching "Band of Brothers" for the first time (actually, I just finished it). The 2nd World War is a great "war movie" war and a lousy "war song" war, because even at its bleakest it can still be cast as a clash between good and evil, and that's rousing in a movie and horrid and saccharine in a song. The 1st World War is the opposite - a lousy "war movie" war but a great "war song" war. There are a few great WW1 movies but there just aren't that many WW1 movies in general, because the war doesn't provide a rooting interest so you have to kind of make one up. But songs (and novels) - brutal, all-encompassing and so supremely unnecessary, WW1 serves the pathos up on a silver platter for writers.
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I actually rather appreciate WWI as a good "war movie" war specifically because of the moral ambiguity. And, off the top of my head, Paths of Glory, Wings, and La Grande Illusion. I'd throw in The Dawn Patrol, too, but that's more of a sentimental favorite.
Also, Colin Bluntstone and Robyn Hitchcock sound uncannily similar, and yes, I realize it's the other way around.
A Very Long Engagement is pretty good.
But you think about the number of good or great WW2 movies and it just dwarfs the list of good WW1 movies. Bridge on the River Kwai. Downfall. Great Escape. The two Spielberg flicks. The Thin Red Line. From Here to Eternity. There's just a million of them. They couldn't make a "Band of Brothers" about the first World War, because there's just nothing going on. The war is too static for your average infantry-man.
All Quiet on the Western Front mother truckers. And I don't mean the one with Ernest Borgnine, though it is funny to hear him say "let's go get some Frenchy's!" in that movie. Of course it's nowhere near as funny as him telling Frank Sinatra "I'm gonna cut you up, wop" in From Here to Eternity.
Yes, WWII just kills it in terms of great war movies, but I don't necessarily think it's for the reason you cite. Hell, Bridge on the River Kwai, with its Stockholmed Alec Guinness, is a great example -- it blurs that line between good and evil. It's the same with Thin Red Line. And Downfall? A movie that suggests compassion for Nazis?
I do think World War II has more resonance with viewers and filmmakers alike, in part because of its immediacy. Filmmaking really came of age around the period of World War II, so it follows that the war is a more natural fixation than the previous one.
My point of view is probably colored from the recent watching of BoB. I was thinking about it more - there are also a shit-ton of great Vietnam movies (well out of proportion to that war's actual cost) and that's the morally ambiguiest. And there aren't really a lot of great Korean War movies. So I guess the movie thing is more about how much effect the thing had on the culture at large in America. WW2 was "our" war in a way that WW1 wasn't. Vietnam is the war that divided America; Korea is the war most people just kind of completely forget ever happened. I'm standing by the song thing though.
Also, since novels got lumped in with songs -- two of the very best (and very different) war novels are set in World War II: The Naked and the Dead and Catch-22. I'm not sure I count Slaughterhouse Five as a war novel, per se, but that would make three.
I thought about making the Vietnam point, too -- you could make the case that the best (American) war movies are born out of that war.
And while I can't think of any great World War II songs, I did just list a few great novels that deal with World War II. But World War I most definitely has the edge on war poetry.
(Great discussion; too bad we're confined to the comments.)
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