Women in War Scenes - Movies

Gary Cooper, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Philips and Helen Heyes

"On the Italian front during World War I, Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper), an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army, delivers some wounded soldiers to a hospital. There he meets his friend, Italian Major Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou), a doctor. They go out carousing, but are interrupted by a bombing raid. Frederic and English Red Cross nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes) take shelter in the same place. The somewhat drunk Frederic makes a poor first impression." (Wikipedia)

Anne Baxter and Erich von Stroheim

"Corporal John Bramble (Franchot Tone) is the sole survivor of a British tank crew after a major battle with Erwin Rommel's victorious Afrika Korps. Delirious, he stumbles across the North African desert into the Empress of Britain, a small, isolated hotel owned by Farid (Akim Tamiroff). The staff consists of just Frenchwoman Mouche (Anne Baxter), as the cook has fled and the waiter Davos was killed the night before by German bombing." (Wikipedia)

Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper

Katina Paxinou

"During the Spanish Civil War, an American language teacher, Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper), who lived in Spain during the pre-war period, fights in the International Brigades against Francisco Franco's fascist forces. An experienced dynamiter, Jordan is ordered to travel behind enemy lines and destroy a critical bridge with the aid of a band of local anti-fascist guerrillas. The bridge must be blown up to prevent enemy troops from traveling across it to respond to an upcoming offensive against the fascists." (Wikipedia)

Paulette Goddard, George Reeves and Claudette Colbert

Veronica Lake

"The story covers many day-to-day events and contrasts the brutality of war against the sometimes futile efforts of the nurses to provide medical aid and comfort. Each of the nurses has a past or present love story with a soldier, with the longest-term one between the characters played by Colbert and George Reeves. Flashback narration and a sequence where the nurses and injured soldiers are stranded in Malinta Tunnel pinned down by aircraft fire are two notable aspects of the film.

Moviegoers of the time found great timeliness in the movie, since MacArthur and the battles for Bataan, and Corregidor were familiar to every American. Although the love-story plot line is the primary thrust of the film, the difficulties and emotional toll of war are also shown." (Wikipedia)

Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart

"...Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley) and his sister Rose (Katharine Hepburn) are British Methodist missionaries in the village of Kungdu in German East Africa at the beginning of World War I in August/September 1914. Their mail and supplies are delivered by a small tramp steamer named the African Queen, helmed by the rough-and-ready Canadian boat captain Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart), whose coarse behavior they tolerate in a rather stiff manner.

During their journey down the river, Charlie, Rose and the African Queen encounter many obstacles, including the German fort and three sets of rapids. The first set of rapids is rather easy; they get through with minimal flooding in the boat. But when they pass the fortress and the soldiers begin shooting at them, the bullets pierce the top of the boiler and cause one of the steam pressure hoses to disconnect from the boiler. This causes the boat's engine to stop. Luckily, Charlie manages to reattach the hose to the boiler just as they are about to enter the second set of rapids. The boat rolls and pitches crazily as it goes down the rapids, leading to more severe flooding in the boat. However, they make it through." (Wikipedia)

Mercedes McCambridge

Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones

"Frederick Henry (Rock Hudson) is an American officer serving in an ambulance unit for the Italian Army during World War I. While recovering from a wound in a British base hospital in northern Italy, he is cared for by Catherine Barkley (Jennifer Jones), a Red Cross nurse he had met earlier, near the front, and they engage in an affair. Frederick's friend, the doctor, convinces the army that Frederick's knee is more severely wounded than it actually is and the two continue their romance but never get married." (Wikipedia)

Eleonora Brown and Sophia Loren

"The story centers on Cesira (Loren), a widowed Roman shopkeeper, and Rosetta (Brown), her devoutly religious twelve-year-old daughter, during World War II. To escape the Allied bombing of Rome, Cesira and her daughter flee southern Lazio for her native Ciociaria, a rural, mountainous province of central Italy." (Wikipedia)

Irene Papas

James Darren, Gia Scala, David Niven and Gregory Peck

"In 1943, the Axis powers plan an assault on the island of Keros — where 2,000 British soldiers are marooned — to bully neutral Turkey into joining them with a display of their military strength. Rescue by the Royal Navy is prevented by two massive radar-directed superguns on the nearby island of Navarone. When aerial bombing efforts fail, Allied Intelligence gathers a team of commandos to infiltrate Navarone and destroy the guns. Led by Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), the team is composed of Captain Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck), a renowned spy and mountaineer; Colonel Andrea Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) from the defeated Greek army; Franklin's best friend Corporal Miller (David Niven), an explosives expert and former chemistry teacher; Greco-American Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren), a native of Navarone; and "Butcher" Brown (Stanley Baker), an engineer and expert knife fighter." (Wikipedia)

Irina Demick
Janine Boitard, French Resistance, Caen

"The film pays particular attention to the decision by Gen. Eisenhower, supreme commander of SHAEF, to go after reviewing the initial bad-weather reports as well as reports about the divisions within the German High Command as to where an invasion might happen or what the response to it should be.

Numerous scenes document the early hours of 6 June when Allied airborne troops were sent in to take key locations inland from the beaches. The French resistance is also shown reacting to the news that an invasion has started. The Longest Day chronicles most of the important events surrounding D-Day, from the British glider missions to secure Pegasus Bridge, the counterattacks launched by American paratroopers scattered around Sainte-Mère-Église, the infiltration and sabotage work conducted by the French resistance and SOE agents to the response by the Wehrmacht to the invasion and the uncertainty of German commanders as to whether it was a feint in preparation for crossings at the Pas de Calais (see Operation Fortitude), where the senior German staff had always assumed it would be." (Wikipedia)

Raffaella Carrà

"Von Ryan's Express is a World War II adventure film, released in 1965, about a group of Allied prisoners of war who conduct a daring escape by hijacking a freight train and fleeing through German-occupied Italy to Switzerland. It stars Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard, and is based on the novel by David Westheimer. It was directed by Mark Robson. The film changes several aspects of the novel, most notably the ending, which is considerably more upbeat in the book. It became one of Frank Sinatra's most successful films." (Wikipedia)

Mary Ure

"In the winter of 1943–44, U.S. Army Brigadier General George Carnaby, a chief planner of the second front, is captured by the Germans when his aircraft is shot down en route to Crete. He is taken for interrogation to the Schloss Adler, a fortress high in the Alps of southern Bavaria. A team of Allied commandos, led by British Major John Smith and U.S. Army Ranger Lieutenant Morris Schaffer, is briefed by Colonel Turner and Admiral Rolland of MI6. Their mission is to parachute in, infiltrate the castle, and rescue General Carnaby before the Germans can interrogate him. MI6 Agent Mary Elison (Ure) accompanies the mission in secret, her presence known only to Major Smith." (Wikipedia)

Sally Kellerman

"Major Margaret Houlihan (Kellerman), the newly assigned chief nurse of the camp, arrives and has a tour of the camp. In the post-op ward, Trapper sees Burns unjustly blame Private Boone, a dim-witted teenage orderly, for a patient's death. Trapper then confronts Burns and punches him in front of Henry and Houlihan who happened to be walking by. Henry planned to make Trapper chief surgeon, but as a result of what happened, Henry advises him to postpone it for one week because if Trapper is named chief surgeon immediately after what Houlihan witnessed, "you'll hear her yelling in Washington [D.C.] Seoul." Later, Houlihan has a brief discussion about Army protocol with Hawkeye while claiming that Burns is a "good" technical and military surgeon, and reprimanding Hawkeye's nickname, calling it inconsistent with military protocol. Hawkeye develops an immediate dislike for Houlihan as a result, despite being attracted to her, calling her "what we call a regular army clown." Houlihan and Burns then make plans to bring discipline to the M.A.S.H. unit, which they consider to be out of control." (Wikipedia)

Jean-Louis Trintgnant and Romy Schneider

"In May 1940 a packed train takes refugees from a French village near the Belgian border away from the advancing German forces.. On it are Julien, a short-sighted radio repairer, and his pregnant wife and daughter. The women are given priority in a carriage at the front while he has to scramble into a cattle truck at the rear. There he is struck by a mysterious and beautiful young woman on her own.

At a station, the train is split and he is separated from his wife and daughter. As his half of the train slowly continues across war-torn France, sometimes bombed and strafed by German aircraft, he and the silent woman gradually become more intimate and eventually become lovers. He learns that she is a German named Anna, that she is Jewish and that her husband was taken by the Nazis two years ago.

When the train finishes at La Rochelle, he gets her fresh papers as his wife. Then he discovers that his real wife and daughter are already there in a hospital with his newborn son. Anna quietly walks away through wolf-whistling German troops." (Wikipedia)

Liv Ullman
Kate ter Horst

"...Was a Dutch full-time housewife and mother who tended wounded and dying Allied soldiers during the Battle of Arnhem. Her British patients nicknamed her the Angel of Arnhem." (Wikipedia)

Barbara Bach

"In 1943, after their successful mission on the Greek island of Navarone, Major Keith Mallory (Robert Shaw) and Sergeant John Miller (Edward Fox) are sent to find and kill Nicolai. Originally thought to be a traitor who informed the Germans about Miller and Mallory during the Navarone mission, Nicolai is now known to be Colonel von Ingorslebon, a dedicated German spy believed to have infiltrated the Yugoslav Partisans as "Captain Lescovar" (Franco Nero)." (Wikipedia)

Lesley-Anne Down

"In London during the Second World War, Lieutenant David Halloran (Harrison Ford), an American B-25 bomber pilot with the Eighth Air Force based in England, and Margaret Sellinger (Lesley-Anne Down) an English nurse, meet on Hanover Street in a chance encounter during the Blitz." (Wikipedia)

Embeth Davidtz

"In Kraków during World War II, the Germans had forced local Polish Jews into the overcrowded Kraków Ghetto. Oskar Schindler, an ethnic German, arrives in the city hoping to make his fortune. A member of the Nazi Party, Schindler lavishes bribes on Wehrmacht (German armed forces) and SS officials and acquires a factory to produce enamelware. To help him run the business, Schindler enlists the aid of Itzhak Stern, a local Jewish official who has contacts with black marketeers and the Jewish business community. Stern helps Schindler arrange loans to finance the factory. Schindler maintains friendly relations with the Nazis and enjoys wealth and status as "Herr Direktor", and Stern handles administration. Schindler hires Jewish workers because they cost less, while Stern ensures that as many people as possible are deemed essential to the German war effort, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps or killed." (Wikipedia)

Sandra Bullock

"This film is largely based on Hemingway's real-life experiences in the First World War as a young ambulance-driver in Italy. He was wounded and sent to a military hospital, where he shared a room with Villard (who later wrote the book the movie is based on) and they were nursed by Agnes von Kurowsky. Hemingway and Kurowsky fell strongly in love, but somehow the relationship didn't work out." (Wikipedia)

Juliette Binoche

"In the final days of the Italian Campaign of World War II, Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working and living in a bombed Italian monastery, looks after a critically burned man who speaks English but cannot remember his name. They are joined by Kip, a Sikh sapper in the British Army who defuses bombs and has a love affair with Hana before leaving, and David Caravaggio, a Canadian Intelligence Corps operative who was questioned by Germans and has had his thumbs cut off during a German interrogation. He questions the patient, who gradually reveals his past." (Wikipedia)

Nicoletta Braschi

"Later during World War II, after Dora and her mother have reconciled, Guido, his Uncle Eliseo, and Giosuè are seized on Giosuè's birthday. They and many other Jews are forced onto a train and taken to a concentration camp. After confronting a guard about her husband and son and being told there is no mistake, Dora volunteers to get on the train in order to be close to her family. However, as men and women are separated in the camp, Dora and Guido never see each other during the internment." (Wikipedia)

Keira Knightley

"...Briony (Ronan), now 18, has joined Cecilia's (Knightley) old nursing corps at St. Thomas's in London because she wants to be of some practical use to society after giving up an offer she received from Cambridge. Her attempts at contacting her sister go unanswered as Cecilia cannot forgive her for Robbie's unjust imprisonment. Robbie, gravely ill and wounded, finally arrives at the beaches of Dunkirk where he waits to be evacuated." (Wikipedia)