TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: War [2 Discs]

"Turner Classic Movies' Greatest Films Collection constitutes a series of ""themed"" packages of films; this particular volume hones in on four movies from the war genre, produced over the 27 year span of 1938-1965. The set begins in 1965, with Ken Annakin's epic Battle of the Bulge - starring Telly Salavas, Robert Shaw and Robert Ryan in a dramatic recreation of the titular December 1944 WWII battle. The second feature jumps back to 1938, for the legendary Edmund Golding's The Dawn Patrol, starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven in a remake of Howard Hawks's 1930 saga about World War I aviators and the futility of war per se. The 1939 adventure Gunga Din (seen here in its original black-and-white, and not in the colorized version) stars Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in the George Stevens-directed comic adventure about a trio of soldier comrades in 1800s India who divide their time between battling a group of savages and raising hell. Finally, the 1951 Operation Pacific brings in the Duke himself, John Wayne, as a navy commander in charge of a military unit on the Pacific Front of World War II; Patricia Neal co-stars as Wayne's romantic interest."