The 14 Best War Films That Won Best Picture

Silent-era dogfights, trench horror, desert epics and modern bomb squads: the Academy has rewarded battlefield stories across nearly a century, and not every winner aged equally well.

1. 1
   Schindler's List

   Spielberg's 1993 black-and-white drama about a businessman who saved over a thousand Jews in the Holocaust.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Patton

   The 1970 biopic of the Second World War general, anchored by George C. Scott's Oscar-winning turn.
   594pts
3. 3
   Lawrence of Arabia

   David Lean's 1962 epic about T. E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt of the First World War.
   514pts
4. 4
   Braveheart

   Mel Gibson's 1995 epic of William Wallace and the Scottish wars of independence.
   466pts
5. 5
   Dances with Wolves

   Kevin Costner's 1990 Western about a Civil War officer who joins a Lakota community.
   411pts
6. 6
   All Quiet on the Western Front

   The 1930 adaptation of Remarque's novel about German schoolboys broken by trench warfare.
   348pts
7. 7
   Wings

   The 1927 silent First World War aerial epic that won the very first Best Picture Oscar.
   348pts
8. 8
   The English Patient

   A 1996 wartime romance told through the memories of a burned pilot in an Italian villa.
   274pts
9. 9
   The Deer Hunter

   A 1978 drama following three steelworkers before, during and after the Vietnam War.
   274pts
10. 10
    From Here to Eternity

    A 1953 drama of soldiers in Hawaii on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
    274pts
11. 11
    Mrs. Miniver

    A 1942 wartime drama following an English family through the early years of the Second World War.
    187pts
12. 12
    Platoon

    Oliver Stone's 1986 Vietnam War film drawn from his own service as an infantryman.
    187pts
13. 13
    The Hurt Locker

    Kathryn Bigelow's 2008 thriller about a bomb disposal team in Iraq, the first Best Picture for a female director.
    0pts
14. 14
    The Bridge on the River Kwai

    David Lean's 1957 tale of British prisoners forced to build a railway bridge for their Japanese captors.
    0pts

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