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Best War Movies of the 1960s, Ranked by IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDB
60 war films from the 1960s are in our catalog; the 50 best are ranked below. Top of the list is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), at 8.3 on IMDb. The average IMDb score across this list is 7.5. Biggest split between audiences and critics: Battle of Britain, 7.0 on IMDb against 44 on Metacritic.
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| # | Movie | Genre | IMDb | Tomato | Meta | TMDB | Director |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb '1964 | Comedy / War | 8.3 | 97% | 97 | 8.1 | Stanley Kubrick |
| 2 | Lawrence of Arabia '1962 | War | 8.3 | 93% | 100 | 8.0 | David Lean |
| 3 | The Great Escape '1963 | Drama / War | 8.2 | 94% | 86 | 7.9 | John Sturges |
| 4 | The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer '1961 | War / Drama | 8.8 | - | - | 8.4 | Masaki Kobayashi |
| 5 | The Battle of Algiers '1966 | Drama / War | 8.1 | 99% | 96 | 7.9 | Gillo Pontecorvo |
| 6 | Ivan's Childhood '1962 | Drama / War | 8.0 | 100% | - | 7.8 | Andrei Tarkovsky |
| 7 | Doctor Zhivago '1965 | Drama / Romance / War | 7.9 | 82% | 69 | 7.6 | David Lean |
| 8 | The Shop on Main Street '1965 | Drama / War | 8.2 | 100% | - | 7.1 | Ján Kadár |
| 9 | The Longest Day '1962 | War / Drama | 7.7 | 83% | 75 | 7.6 | Ken Annakin |
| 10 | Shame '1968 | War / Drama | 8.0 | 67% | - | 7.5 | Ingmar Bergman |
| 11 | The Dirty Dozen '1967 | Action / War | 7.7 | 82% | 73 | 7.6 | Robert Aldrich |
| 12 | War and Peace '1968 | Drama / War / Romance | 8.3 | 100% | - | 7.7 | Sergei Bondarchuk |
| 13 | Zulu '1964 | Drama / War | 7.7 | 97% | 77 | 7.4 | Cy Endfield |
| 14 | The Train '1964 | War / Thriller | 7.8 | 94% | 80 | 7.6 | John Frankenheimer |
| 15 | Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! '1966 | Comedy / War | 7.8 | - | - | 7.9 | Gérard Oury |
| 16 | The Hill '1965 | Drama / War | 7.8 | 75% | 81 | 7.5 | Sidney Lumet |
| 17 | Two Women '1960 | Drama / War | 7.7 | 88% | - | 7.8 | Vittorio De Sica |
| 18 | Where Eagles Dare '1968 | War | 7.6 | 84% | 63 | 7.5 | Brian G. Hutton |
| 19 | The Guns of Navarone '1961 | Drama / War | 7.5 | 92% | 72 | 7.3 | J. Lee Thompson |
| 20 | The War Game '1966 | War | 7.9 | 93% | - | 7.7 | Peter Watkins |
| 21 | Closely Watched Trains '1966 | Comedy / Drama / War | 7.6 | 90% | - | 7.2 | Jiří Menzel |
| 22 | Chimes at Midnight '1965 | Comedy / Drama / War | 7.6 | 96% | 94 | 7.2 | Orson Welles |
| 23 | Everybody Go Home! '1960 | Comedy / War / Drama | 7.7 | - | - | 7.6 | Luigi Comencini |
| 24 | The White Sun of the Desert '1969 | Action / Drama / War | 7.6 | - | - | 7.2 | Vladimir Motyl |
| 25 | The Sand Pebbles '1966 | Drama / War | 7.5 | 86% | - | 7.2 | Robert Wise |
| 26 | Sink the Bismarck! '1960 | War / Drama | 7.2 | 86% | - | 6.9 | Lewis Gilbert |
| 27 | In Harm's Way '1965 | War / Drama | 7.3 | 37% | - | 6.6 | Otto Preminger |
| 28 | Shenandoah '1965 | Western / War | 7.3 | 100% | - | 7.0 | Andrew V. McLaglen |
| 29 | El Cid '1961 | Action / Drama / Romance / War | 7.2 | 93% | 79 | 6.8 | Anthony Mann |
| 30 | Hell Is for Heroes '1962 | War | 6.9 | 86% | 76 | 6.5 | Don Siegel |
| 31 | The Bedford Incident '1965 | Drama / Thriller / War | 7.3 | 87% | - | 7.0 | James B. Harris |
| 32 | The Red and the White '1967 | War / Drama | 7.5 | 95% | - | 7.0 | Miklós Jancsó |
| 33 | Taxi for Tobruk '1961 | Drama / War | 7.2 | - | - | 7.1 | Denys de La Patellière |
| 34 | The Night of the Generals '1967 | Thriller / Mystery / War / Crime | 7.2 | 43% | - | 6.8 | Anatole Litvak |
| 35 | Von Ryan's Express '1965 | War / Action / Thriller | 7.1 | 90% | - | 7.1 | Mark Robson |
| 36 | Ship of Fools '1965 | Drama / Romance / War | 7.1 | 63% | - | 6.6 | Stanley Kramer |
| 37 | Hell in the Pacific '1968 | Drama / War | 7.2 | 67% | - | 7.0 | John Boorman |
| 38 | Morituri '1965 | Action / Drama / Thriller / War | 7.0 | 75% | - | 6.7 | Bernhard Wicki |
| 39 | The Blue Max '1966 | War / Action / Drama | 7.1 | 100% | - | 6.8 | John Guillermin |
| 40 | Weekend at Dunkirk '1964 | Drama / War | 6.9 | - | - | 6.9 | Henri Verneuil |
| 41 | Burn! '1969 | Drama / War | 7.1 | 80% | 72 | 6.8 | Gillo Pontecorvo |
| 42 | The 300 Spartans '1962 | War | 6.5 | - | - | 6.5 | Rudolph Maté |
| 43 | Battle of Britain '1969 | War / Action / Drama | 7.0 | 67% | 44 | 6.8 | Guy Hamilton |
| 44 | The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! '1966 | Comedy / War | 7.0 | 83% | 69 | 6.5 | Norman Jewison |
| 45 | The Carabineers '1963 | War / Drama / Comedy | 6.7 | 80% | - | 6.5 | Jean-Luc Godard |
| 46 | The Alamo '1960 | War / Western | 6.8 | 55% | - | 7.1 | John Wayne |
| 47 | Exodus '1960 | Drama / War | 6.7 | 65% | 70 | 6.7 | Otto Preminger |
| 48 | 55 Days at Peking '1963 | War / Drama | 6.7 | 57% | - | 6.9 | Nicholas Ray |
| 49 | Is Paris Burning? '1966 | War / Drama | 6.8 | 75% | - | 7.2 | René Clément |
| 50 | Operation Crossbow '1965 | Drama / War / Thriller | 6.6 | 75% | 70 | 6.7 | Michael Anderson |
Our catalog covers roughly the 8,800 most-rated films on TMDB, so lesser-known titles may be missing. Order uses a confidence-weighted IMDb score so a perfect score from a handful of votes does not beat a well-established classic; the scores shown are the raw ones.
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Other genres in the 1960s
Action of the 1960s Animation of the 1960s Comedy of the 1960s Crime of the 1960s Drama of the 1960s Fantasy of the 1960s Horror of the 1960s Mystery of the 1960s Romance of the 1960s Sci-Fi of the 1960s Thriller of the 1960s Western of the 1960s
Directors on this list
Stanley Kubrick David Lean John Sturges Masaki Kobayashi Andrei Tarkovsky Ken Annakin Ingmar Bergman Robert Aldrich John Frankenheimer Gérard Oury Sidney Lumet Vittorio De Sica
Actors on this list
Peter Sellers George C. Scott Peter O'Toole Alec Guinness Steve McQueen James Garner Tatsuya Nakadai Omar Sharif Julie Christie John Wayne Robert Mitchum Liv Ullmann