HF Can We Make a List of All of the Civil War Movies?

Historical-Fiction
An old comedy I recently came across: A Southern Yankee (1948) starring Red Skelton, Arlene Dahl, and John Ireland. The General (1926) and Mooching Through Georgia (1939) both starring Buster Keaton.
 
Wikipedia has a very extensive list of Civil War films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_and_television_shows_about_the_American_Civil_War

I feel that there are a lack of good ones though. I've seen a lot of Civil War movies and these are the only ones I think are actually good and relatively realistic:

Gettysburg (1993).
Glory (1989).
Andersonville (1996).
Pharaoh's Army (1995).

"Honorable" mentions would be:

The General (1926), more of a comedy and not too realistic but still quite an entertaining movie.
Gods and Generals (2003), boring and dumb story but genuinely good battle scenes especially Fredericksburg.
Ride with the Devil (1999), dumb story but some good battle/skirmish scenes in the Missouri guerrilla war.
Cold Mountain (2003), dumb story but an interesting portrayal of the South in the later part of the war.
Wicked Spring (2002), very dumb story but good battle scene in the first fifteen minutes.
 
Last edited:
Joel McRae in "Stars in my Crown" and Will Rodgers in"Judge Priest" both played veterans of the war though the movies themselves were not about the Civil War. And let's not forget Elvis in "Love Me Tender". John Wayne's "The Searchers" was one of post civil war westerns.
 
Ride with the Devil (1999), dumb story but some good battle/skirmish scenes in the Missouri guerrilla war.

Cold Mountain (2003), dumb story but an interesting portrayal of the South in the later part of the war.

I liked both these stories. By dumb do you mean unlikely? If so, I can't see them as any dumber than Huckleberry Finn. Whoever heard of a white boy and a negro man on a rafting trip in the antebellum south?
 
I liked both these stories. By dumb do you mean unlikely? If so, I can't see them as any dumber than Huckleberry Finn. Whoever heard of a white boy and a negro man on a rafting trip in the antebellum south?

I guess I just mean boring and unrelatable to me. I like Huckleberry Finn because I think it's really funny and entertaining and it's at least plausible.

I actually do like the part of Cold Mountain with Jude Law returning home but the long cutbacks to Nicole Kidman and that other woman I just found really boring and melodramatic, but I don't remember it that well so maybe I should see it again.

Ride with the Devil I just found boring throughout and I couldn't relate to any of the characters. Why was that black guy fighting for the Confederacy? Why was the main character when he's German and the Confederates hate Germans so much they purposely shoot him in the leg at one point? Why did that woman try to say he was the father after she had sex with another guy and why was he okay that and married her? All odd to me.
 
Hateful Eight, the Taratino movie, is postwar but includes a USCT veteran, a Confederate veteran, and a letter from Lincoln.

Not sure about the original, but the remake of 3:10 to Yuma has a main character (played by Christian Bale) who is a Union veteran wounded during the war. None of the scenes are during the war, although the effects of the wound (physical and mental) are indirectly relevant to the plot.
 
Not sure if someone posted it but Dances with Wolves. I know the whole movie isn’t about the Civil War but a little bit of it is in the movie. Then Kevin Costner becomes Dances with Wolves😂
 
By dumb do you mean unlikely? If so, I can't see them as any dumber than Huckleberry Finn. Whoever heard of a white boy and a negro man on a rafting trip in the antebellum south?

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called
Huckleberry Finn. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
Ernest Hemingway-Green Hills Of Africa
 
Let's don't forget the Navy guys:

"Ironclads" , a 1991 TV movie:
uURA4alWvpDeYaut86dXLpnPovD.jpg
 
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called
Huckleberry Finn. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
Ernest Hemingway-Green Hills Of Africa

Yes, but realize that I wouldn't hesitate to argue with Mr. Hemingway about that if he were here. :smile: The old drunk.
 
Some older ones my Dad enjoyed

The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd. TV movie 1980

Prince of Players about Edwin Booth with reference to his brother

Quantrell's Raiders

Two Flags West

Kansas Raiders

The Great Missouri Raid


Sorry if they mentioned before.
 
I just remembered a movie that should be on your list, if it isn't already: C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004). There's enough there to offend just about everybody. (And my suggesting it is NOT an endorsement!)
 
Hemingway may have drank to excess at times, but he would have made a hell of a great fishing partner.

Of course he would have! And I would have loved to have told him his opinion of Huckleberry Finn was wrong over drinks.
 
"The Keeping Room" with Sam Worthington, Haley Steinfeld, Muna Otero and Brit Marling. 2015
Although a slow start (back at home), it winds into the emotional and physical trials that many home front Southern rural women faced near the end of the war while their men were away at war. Depicts a complicated relationship between slave and owners.
It's a realistic (I've read many diaries) Southern home front view that portrays that not all Yankees were heroes and some had hearts yet how the war could effect their psyches. A melancholy confrontation near the end not to be missed!
1580917892210.png
1580917936388.png
 
Last edited:
Hi. I’m new here so will probably browse awhile before commenting much. But I do have a few movies to add to your list. Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t seen Cold Mountain mentioned. Also North and South. Oh, and Friendly Persuasion — one of my favorites.
 
I guess I just mean boring and unrelatable to me. I like Huckleberry Finn because I think it's really funny and entertaining and it's at least plausible.

I actually do like the part of Cold Mountain with Jude Law returning home but the long cutbacks to Nicole Kidman and that other woman I just found really boring and melodramatic, but I don't remember it that well so maybe I should see it again.

Ride with the Devil I just found boring throughout and I couldn't relate to any of the characters. Why was that black guy fighting for the Confederacy? Why was the main character when he's German and the Confederates hate Germans so much they purposely shoot him in the leg at one point? Why did that woman try to say he was the father after she had sex with another guy and why was he okay that and married her? All odd to me.
I always felt the love story in Ride With The Devil got in the way of an otherwise excellent movie. It's actually a reasonably accurate and fair representation of the western Missouri guerrillas. The black character is based most on a real life character named John Noland who really did ride with Quantrill. He's an enigma because no one can fully explain why he did that. He was most likely a mixed race man (a "mulatto" of his age shows up on census records for the Noland farm) and was probably the half brother or half cousin of the other Nolands who rode with Q. He simply went to war with his family. There were a couple of other black guys who scouted for Quantrill, but Noland seems to have been the most prominent. You will see him in several of the post war reunion photos of the Quantrill guerrillas. I can't say why the author chose to make Jake a German immigrant's son. It's a fiction, after all. But to this day there are heavily German immigrant populated towns in Lafayette County and elsewhere in Missouri. Many of those immigrants came to American to flee civil war in Germany, and, yes, most of them did side with the union or with home guard militias. The guerrilla Dave Poole hated the German community at Concordia, Missouri, and raided them a number of times. I've never read a reason for his hatred, unless it was pure nativism. The character Pitt Mackinson (who shoots Roedel) is based on the real life Archie Clement, who might have turned on anyone he perceived as getting in his way. I launched a thread on the death of Archie Clement a few years ago, which you might find interesting. It illustrates that he was considered unpredictable and dangerous well after the war's end.
 
Back
Top