Best Movies Set During the Cold War

Sean Connery plays a British book publisher who learns about a manuscript that outlines the Soviet Union’s anti-nuclear missile capabilities while visiting Moscow during the Cold War. He’s recruited by British intelligence and the CIA to investigate its editor, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. In the process, he falls in love with her and tries to protect her family. Also starring Roy Scheider and James Fox, this is one of the last thrillers made during the Cold War.

Director Alfred Hitchcock weighed in on the Cold War with this thriller. Paul Newman played an American physicist who stuns his family by defecting to East Germany. His fiancée (Julie Andrews) follows him behind the Iron Curtain and discovers he’s actually a double agent who’s trying to uncover Soviet nuclear secrets. When his cover is blown, the couple must make a perilous trip back to America.

William Hurt plays a Russian detective who investigates the murders of three people at Gorky Park, a Moscow amusement park. As he makes progress on the case, which is turning into an international political conspiracy, the KGB doesn’t seem interested in solving it. An American, played by Lee Marvin in one of his last major roles, offers leads, though he might be as dangerous as the KGB.

Following his success as Harry Palmer in “The Ipcress File,” Michael Caine returned as the wisecracking British spy in “Funeral in Berlin,” based on a Len Deighton novel – a film criticized for its slow, disjointed pace. This time he’s sent to East Berlin to collect a communist defector, disguising him as a corpse to get him through the Berlin Wall – but the situation is not what it appears to be.

Charlize Theron plays an undercover agent for the British secret service group M16 sent to Berlin during the latter stages of the Cold War to investigate the murder of a colleague and retrieve a list of double agents. As soon as she arrives, it’s become apparent she’s been set up. There’s plenty of martial arts action in this thriller, which also stars James McAvoy and John Goodman.

Christopher John Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee were real-life boyhood friends from California who were arrested for espionage. Their story became a 1979 book and then this film. Boyce (Timothy Hutton) was a defense industry employee who became disillusioned with CIA interference in the internal affairs of other nations in the 1970s. He sought out Soviet contacts and sold top-secret U.S. satellite technology information to the Soviet Union. Lee (Sean Penn) was a drug dealer who used the opportunity to pass along information to the Soviet Union for financial gain.

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is the film version of the famed John Le Carré novel – a complicated story about betrayal in the ranks of the U.K.’s spies (there was also a 1979 BBC miniseries based on the book). The British secret service MI6 sends an agent (Mark Strong) to meet with a Hungarian general who knows the identity of a Soviet spy within the organization, but the general is assassinated before he can reveal the mole’s identity. Recently retired agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is called back to find the mole. The film also starred Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, and Stephen Graham.

Small-time movie producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) decides that the darkening mood of dread and fear surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis is the perfect time to release his schlocky sci-fi thriller “Mant” at a movie theater in Key West, Fla., the closest U.S. point to Cuba. Joe Dante’s film looks at the crises of teenagers who are going to the movie.

“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” is the film adaptation of a memoir by game-show creator Chuck Barris (“The Dating Game,” “The Gong Show”), who in his other life was allegedly a hitman for the CIA. Sam Rockwell looks and acts very much like Barris. Clooney both directed the film and co-starred as Barris’s “handler.” The movie also featured Julia Roberts and Drew Barrymore.

Tom Hanks starred as the title character, a real-life U.S. congressman who, with disheveled CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), helps support the Afghan resistance during the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979 to 1989. Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Mike Nichols, it earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Hoffman.

One of Woody Allen’s early, zany comedic efforts featured Allen as Fielding Mellish, a nebbish from New York who tries to impress his social-activist girlfriend by joining resistance fighters in the fictional Latin American country of San Marcos. He eventually becomes the leader of the country and then is targeted by American intelligence, which accuses him of attempting to overthrow the U.S. government.

Richmark Widmark starred as the virulently anti-communist captain of the American ship USS Bedford, which is engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with a Soviet submersible in the North Atlantic Ocean off Greenland. His actions lead to catastrophic results. Sidney Poitier also starred, as a photojournalist onboard the ship.

“Thirteen Days” refers to the timeframe of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The tension-filled film starring Kevin Costner captures the interplay among the main players in the Kennedy administration as they try to work with the Soviet Union to defuse the crisis, which put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

One of the more inventive Cold War-themed films , “WarGames” starred Matthew Broderick as a student who accidentally hacks into a military supercomputer while searching for a video game. He creates a game titled Global Thermonuclear War that activates America’s nuclear arsenal in response to a simulated threat from the Soviet Union. Once he realizes there is a countdown to Armageddon, he enlists the help of his girlfriend (Ally Sheedy) to stop World War III.

Richard Burton embodied John le Carré‘s archetypical world-weary spy in this film, playing British agent Alec Leamas as he takes on one more assignment before he retires. He poses as a disgraced former MI5 agent in East Germany to get information about colleagues who’ve been captured. When he gets picked up, he discovers a web of intrigue unlike anything he’s seen in his career.

In the 1950s, as Sen. Joseph McCarthy seeks to expose communists in America, CBS News journalist Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) focuses on revealing the lies and character-assassination tactics of McCarthy’s Senate investigation. While the CBS news team produces stories challenging the senator’s charges, they face pressure from the network’s sponsors to desist. The movie title is taken from Murrow’s signoff.

“The Hunt for Red October,” adapted from Tom Clancy’s novel, is about a Soviet submarine commander (Sean Connery) who wants to defect to America. The sub, the Red October, is detected by the U.S. military but it is unclear to them what the sub’s intentions are. It’s up to CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) to find out and avoid a catastrophic confrontation.

“From Russia with Love” is Sean Connery’s second appearance as James Bond. This time, 007 goes to Turkey, where he’s tasked with helping a beautiful Soviet consulate clerk (Daniela Bianchi) defect. In the meantime, the criminal organization S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is trying to kill Bond to avenge the death of Dr. No (the eponymous villain in the first Connery-Bond film).

Michael Caine became a major star in the 1960s, and “The Ipcress File” – based on a novel by Len Deighton – was one of his best movies of the period. Caine plays Harry Palmer, a wry-humored spy who’s investigating the kidnapping and brainwashing of British scientists. Palmer is unlike the era’s quintessential spy James Bond in that he lives modestly, wears glasses, and does his own cooking. A TV series loosely based on the film, came out this year.

As Cold War tensions rise, a lawyer (Tom Hanks) is assigned to negotiate the release of Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of the U2 spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union, in exchange for a convicted Soviet KGB spy (Mark Rylance). The critically acclaimed film is based on a true story. Co-written by the Coen Brothers, it earned Rylance a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Crime novelist Mickey Spillane co-wrote this twisting and turning film noir about detective Mike Hammer and his girlfriend, who become entangled in a dark plot involving torture of women and a scientist conducting deadly experiments that might involve nuclear energy. The movie’s climax was one of the most intriguing of the era.

Samuel Fuller’s film noir is about a pickpocket (Richard Widmark) in New York City who unknowingly snatches a woman’s wallet that contains a message intended for enemy agents. Soon, a communist spy ring targets him and uses the woman to find him and retrieve the message.

John Frankenheimer made his mark in the 1960s by directing films depicting Cold War tension, and “Seven Days in May” is one of his best efforts. Burt Lancaster played an American general leading a plot to overthrow a president (Frederic March) who supports a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Rod Serling of “Twilight Zone” fame wrote the riveting screenplay.

“Fail Safe” is about a technological glitch that sends American jets on a mission to drop nuclear bombs on Moscow, and the frantic, disturbingly realistic, attempts to recall the aircraft. Henry Fonda starred as the president who pleads with the pilots to call off their mission. The motion picture maintains unrelenting tension throughout its length.

Fear of communist infiltration of the highest echelons of government manifested itself in “The Manchurian Candidate.” The film starred Frank Sinatra as a Korean War veteran trying to stop a U.S. serviceman, played by Laurence Harvey, who has been brainwashed by communists to assassinate a U.S. presidential nominee – an act that would lead to a takeover of the American government. The film was remade in 2004 starring Denzel Washington.

A boy encounters and befriends a giant robot from outer space at the height of the Cold War in 1957 and tries to keep him away from a U.S. government agent who is bent on destroying the robot. The animated feature opens with a visual of the Soviet satellite Sputnik orbiting the Earth.

Post-war Vienna is divided into zones supervised by the victorious allies – the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain, and France. Amid the destruction there is tension between East and West in the shadowy rubble of the city as American novelist Holly Martins (Josep Cotten) tries to track down an old friend, Harry Lime (Orson Wells), who’s taken advantage of the post-war chaos to sell black-market penicillin.

“North by Northwest” is in the pantheon of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films. The movie is about an advertising executive (Cary Grant) who goes on the run because he’s mistaken for a government agent by foreign spies (led by James Mason) and also falsely accused of murder. Along the way, he falls in love with a woman (Eva Marie Saint) whose loyalties he begins to doubt. Among the film’s classic scenes is Cary Grant being chased by a biplane.

Marlon Brando plays a longshoreman who can no longer look the other way at the insidious influence organized crime has on the Hoboken docks. The movie launched Brando into cinema stardom. Director Elia Kazan, who was criticized for naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee, tried to equate Brando’s testifying before a committee investigating criminal activity in the motion picture with naming names to HUAC.

This black comedy about nuclear armageddon featured Peter Sellers playing multiple roles, including a German-accented adviser (rumored to lampoon Henry Kissinger) to the president, also played by Sellers. The film came out prior to a non-satirical thriller with the same theme, “Fail Safe” (No. 7 on this list), which was released later in 1964.