10 World War II Movies With Perfect Endings
You’d need more than one book to cover and describe World War II comprehensively, so a couple of paragraphs at the top of an article aren’t going to cover anything, but if you need the basics, it was fought from 1939 to 1945 (with important events before, and then things after 1945 impacted, of course), it involved most of the world, and it was easily the deadliest conflict in recorded history.
It’s then no wonder why there are so many movies about the Second World War, with some being released when the war was still being fought, and then plenty of others still being made well into the 21st century. Of those, the ones below stand out for being great World War II movies with especially memorable (or even perfect) endings, some being bittersweet, and others being more outwardly tragic. There are inevitable spoilers here, too, if you care about that sort of thing, because it’s hard to talk about movie endings otherwise, honestly.
10
‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’ (1983)
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Image via Palace Pictures</figure>
Right at the end of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, you do get a little Christmas, but not a lot, so it’s probably not worth adding to the yearly rotation of movies to watch around December. Unless you want to. It is a pretty great movie, so there are worse ones to watch yearly. But for that part of the year, there’s also a good argument to be made that you should go for something a bit more actually Christmassy.
Much of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is about tension between those running a POW camp and those who are there as prisoners, and then two characters get to reflect on that at the movie’s end, but with their positions now flipped. It’s a way of suggesting some redemption or healing post-World War II, but then also very bittersweet because of other circumstances. It’s the right note for a strange and admirably empathetic World War II film to add on, and it even makes a direct title drop right before the end credits feel appropriate.
9
‘The Zone of Interest’ (2023)
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Image via A24</figure>
The Zone of Interest is one of the grimmest movies in recent memory, and more of a psychological drama about various troubling things set during World War II than it is a conventional war movie. It might be a stretch to include it, as a result, yet there is also undeniable power here, with the way it makes the statement it chooses to make, and the ending serves to very much link the historical events to the present day.
It’s something that’s probably on the mind throughout The Zone of Interest, but briefly cutting forward in time to the present day and then going back to 1944 right before the film concludes makes that all the more explicit. There’s a sense of people being doomed to repeat history as a result (and that’s found in the ending of another war-related movie from 2023; more on that one shortly), unless The Zone of Interest can be used as a warning about dehumanization, ignorance, and the banality of evil alongside some other undoubtedly heavy things worth thinking about.
8
‘The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer’ (1961)
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Image via Shochiku</figure>
The whole of The Human Condition trilogy is bleak, because it’s three movies, each one being about three hours long, and they add up to tell a story about one man trying to stay away from World War II, but then getting wrapped up in fighting anyway. He’s a pacifist who finds his morals pushed in impossibly difficult ways, and so he eventually ends up having to take part in actual combat by the second film in the trilogy.
The third film, A Soldier’s Prayer, sees him having to survive on his own for the most part, with the war seemingly winding down, but he’s in a greater amount of danger regardless. A good deal of A Soldier’s Prayer feels like it might well have inspired The Revenant, because it’s similarly intense and gritty as a survival movie, and then ultimately heavier and more hopeless with its ending, too. To say that everything that happened in The Human Condition was tragically for nothing would be quite the understatement.
7
‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)
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Image via Universal Pictures</figure>
If you want a heavy-going double feature, you can watch The Zone of Interest alongside Oppenheimer, because both came out in 2023, got a high level of critical acclaim, and told World War II-related stories in unexpected ways. Oh, and the pair of them very purposefully left out the sorts of visuals you might’ve expected to see, with The Zone of Interest emphasizing sound, and then Oppenheimer being a psychological drama/thriller kind of thing without any scenes of combat or expected destruction/devastation.
You do still feel the devastation that followed the creation of the atomic bomb on a more internal/psychological/abstract level, and then the ending of the film absolutely drives home the anxiety that’s persisted in the years following that invention being used to bomb the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s incredibly sobering and troubling, leaving you feeling pretty despondent about the current state of the world, and really, the state of the world overall post-World War II, with no real definite peace of mind in sight.
6
‘Das Boot’ (1981)
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Image via Neue Constantin Film</figure>
As a war movie, Das Boot is admittedly nail-biting and maybe even thrilling at times, but that’s not really the focus of the movie, and the way it ends definitely drives home the anti-war qualities of the film even more. Some horrific things happen throughout the whole film, absolutely, and there is also a general look at how dull and unpleasant life on a submarine during wartime would be, yet the tragic ending does trump all the other misery and horror that came before.
The submarine crew docks at the film’s end, having made it through countless obstacles, but then it’s all for nothing thanks to a sudden bombing raid destroying the submarine and killing a decent number of characters all at once.
Put simply, the characters survive a lot, and if you watch the director’s cut, Das Boot does a remarkable job of making you feel like they’re in constant danger for approximately three hours (that cut’s three and a half hours, but there is a prologue of sorts on land). The submarine crew docks at the film’s end, having made it through countless obstacles, but then it’s all for nothing thanks to a sudden bombing raid destroying the submarine and killing a decent number of characters all at once. It’s miserable and even a bit frustrating, but all by design, and it’s definitely one way to make a hell of an anti-war statement.
5
‘The Great Dictator’ (1940)
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Image via United Artists</figure>
It’s always worth appreciating how the first Charlie Chaplin movie with dialogue happened to have one of the best-written monologues in cinema history, found right at the end of The Great Dictator. Chaplin wrote some amazing silent movies (or movies with very limited sound, just no real traditional dialogue, like in City Lights and Modern Times), and then yes, those skills did indeed transfer over to writing something with dialogue.
Like most of his other classics, The Great Dictator is a dramedy, and then it’s also one of the earliest World War II movies, serving as an interesting historical document and something groundbreaking for criticizing Germany (through an obvious parody) and what was happening with regards to the onset of the Second World War. And the speech at the end, delivered by the heroic character Chaplin plays in the film (mistaken for the villainous character he also plays) is on-the-nose, sure, but it’s powerful regardless, and so much of what’s said still holds up and proves moving to hear to this very day.
4
‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957)
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Image via Columbia Pictures</figure>
The Bridge on the River Kwai is potentially the best prisoner-of-war movie set during World War II, or if it’s not in the spot, then it’s second only to The Great Escape. For what it’s worth, that 1963 movie just missed out on getting a spot in this ranking, because it does have a powerful and memorable ending, yet The Bridge on the River Kwai (and the previously mentioned movies) arguably hit a little harder.
With The Bridge on the River Kwai, it’s all very tragic in the classic sense, and maybe even a little over-the-top in the process, but it does really work. The film’s about some expected conflict, but then also further conflict among Allied forces regarding that titular bridge, and everyone ends up clashing in a way at the movie’s end that means no one wins, or comes anywhere close to it. If you’ve already read Catch-22 and are looking for the next-best statement on the madness and absurdity of war, then you can find it here, at the end of The Bridge on the River Kwai.
3
‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009)
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Image via The Weinstein Company</figure>
Quentin Tarantino has yet to direct a movie with an ending that comes anywhere close to being bad, so his sole World War II film to date, Inglourious Basterds, feels like it belongs here. It’s probably the most spoilable film here, since it’s great because of how it rewrites history, with a fictional plot to eliminate the highest-ranking German leaders in an attempt to end the war.
And since the war didn’t end that way in real life, you figure the operation is doomed to fail, but then nope, it works. It’s surprising and cathartic for sure, and then the very end of the film is also great, alongside being darkly funny. Basically, that’s stuff following the big cinema explosion/massacre, with Brad Pitt‘s character echoing what was surely Tarantino’s sentiments at the time, regarding Inglourious Basterds, describing a karmic act of violence as something that “might just be my masterpiece.”
2
‘Schindler’s List’ (1993)
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Image via Universal Pictures
Released about a half-century after most of the events it depicts (so in stark contrast to something like The Great Dictator and another war movie of sorts from the 1940s that’ll be mentioned just below), Schindler’s List is a film that aims to highlight a heroic act performed during an awfully dark period in history. The man at the center of it all, Oskar Schindler, was an industrialist who used the money he had to save more than 1000 Jewish lives, predominantly by employing them and then using this employment to make them officially exempt from being sent to concentration camps.
The challenges of getting this to work are what Schindler’s List spends a lot of its epic runtime showing, and then parts of it are also concerned with depicting the horrors of the concentration camps and the mass extermination linked to them. At the end of it, despite the good done, Schindler breaks down and regrets not being able to do more, which is an incredibly well-acted and well-written scene, all before the very end of the film shows real-life footage of those Schindler saved (and some descendants of the saved) honoring his legacy and what he did at his grave.
1
‘Casablanca’ (1942)
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Image via Warner Bros. Pictures</figure>
There are things Casablanca manages to be throughout a fairly short runtime beyond being a war movie, since it’s also an iconic romance, a well-acted drama, and something even close to a thriller at times… plus it’s quite funny at times, but with precision, so that comedic stuff doesn’t detract from everything else. It’s great and timeless entertainment for a handful of reasons, but then it ends on a basically perfect note, and that elevates Casablanca from being a great movie to a genuinely masterful one.
Everything the movie was going for emotionally earlier on comes back in some way during the final scene, and everything that worked before it is heightened and/or felt to a greater extent. It can’t be beaten in terms of how well-written an ending can be, and if it’s the first thing you think of when you hear the term “bittersweet ending,” then that’s not too surprising. And sure, it’s not a traditional war movie, and it could only explore war-related things so much when the Second World War was being fought when it was made and released, but still, it feels right to put it in the top spot here.
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