What are your favorite period films?

[betweensunandmoon]

Mine are:

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
Captain Blood (1935)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Prince of Foxes (1948)
The Crimson Pirate (1952)
Scaramouche (1952)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Julius Caesar (1953)
The Music Man (1962)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Hello, Dolly! (1969)
The Sting (1973)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
The Great Gatsby (2013)

Comments

[muccamukk]

I love period films, I think some of my favourites are:

A Man for All Seasons, about Thomas More and Henry VIII.

Stage Beauty, which is about actors in the court of Charles II of England.

Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, an age of sail war movie.

A Dangerous Man, about T. E. Lawrence and Emir Feisal at the Paris Peace Conference.

Design for Living, OT3 Noel Coward comedy.

Love and Friendship, a Lady Susan adaptation with a fun ending.

Twelve O'Clock High, about the US bomber command in WWII.

The Guns of Navarone, WWII action movie, mostly because it's immensely slashy.

Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, about processing war trauma in the 1950s.

[meridian_rose]

Nice! I wouldn't have thought to include all those later ones as period pieces but of they are :)

[sea_changed]

I love that you list a lot of older movies--seeing how people in the past interpreted the past is always fascinating. I especially love Singin' in the Rain--for many, many reasons, but in this case particularly because of how it interprets an era that was not that long before it was made (and that a lot of people working in Hollywood in the 50s still remembered) but was in a lot of ways a whole different world.

I love Sunset Boulevard for the same reason (though obviously the tone is extremely different), and in that case it has the extra layer of much of the cast having worked in the silent era and having had careers that in some way mirrored their characters'. Watching the industry interpret its own past is fascinating.

[thisbluespirit]

Good question!

My film watching is always kind of random, but some favourite historicals are:

The Mummy (1999)

The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers (the 1970s version, aka where they only paid them for one film but made two)

Gosford Park

Enigma (2001)

Shakespeare in Love

The Wicked Lady (1947, with Margaret Lockwood playing highwayman)

Plus a bunch of adaptations and things, too.

[greerwatson]

I'm very fond of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Made in 1969 (based on a 1961 book), it's another one set in a period that would have been familiar to quite a few middle-aged people at the time, i.e. the Spanish Civil War.

A lot of "interpretation" went into its making. I read the book long after I saw the movie; and I was astonished at the differences. IMO, it's much better. It's a crafted whole, in a way that the book wasn't.

[rosefox]

Putting in a vote for the 1995 film of Jane Austen's Persuasion! Just superb. And Errol Flynn's Robin Hood has very little historical accuracy to speak of but it's just so much fun.

[fawatson]

Hope and Glory (WWII blitz told from a child's perspective)

Schindler's List (also WWII, though a less optimist aspect of it)

A Passage to India

Goodbye Mr Chips (either the original 1939 film with Robert Donat or the recent TV adaptation with Martin Clunes - definitely NOT the musical remake with Peter O'Toole which was pretty awful) - all adaptations of Hilton's novel.

[fucktheg0ds]

I too like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mummy, and Stage Beauty. Dangerous Beauty is another good one.

And I can't believe no-one's said it yet, but Robin Hood: Men in Tights! Best Robin Hood movie.

[opus72]

Aaaaaaamadeus! God what a well-made movie. Accuracy whatever, it's my favorite.

I do also like Doctor Zhivago a lot. Always interesting looking at how the 60s interpreted the 1910s/20s (even though it seems to get ever so slightly hammier every time I watch it lmao.)

Eroica (2003) just...makes the Beethoven scholar in me really happy. I can't think of any other "Composer Movie(tm)" that revels in its own historical nerdiness that much.

The King's Speech is up there too.

[duskpeterson]

(First of all: Can we have a separate thread about TV series? There are *so* many good period series.)

My favorite period movies:

"Lawrence of Arabia." WWI. Includes an English & Arab male friendship plotline. Achingly beautiful cinematography and soundtrack.

"Gallipoli." Australian, WWI. Just about killed my heart when I first saw it as a college student.

"The Railway Children." 1970 version, although the darker 2000 version is worth watching too. (The actor playing the eldest girl in the 1970 version plays the mother in the 2000 version.) Middle-class English children suddenly turn poor, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lots of steam locomotives.

"Maurice." Early-twentieth-century English young men fall in love with each other, then must deal with homophobia. One of the many Merchant-Ivory historical dramas that is worth watching.

"Victor/Victoria." Gay/trans comedy set in 1930s Paris. Stars Julie Andrews as a drag queen. Yes, you read that right.

"Lilies." Obscure but award-winning French-Canadian film about a group of Quebecois prisoners who force a bishop to watch them act out a tale about a 1910s gay romance. All the parts, including the female characters, are played by men. Gets just as surreal as you'd imagine.

"Race for the Double Helix" (aka "Double Helix" aka "Life Story"). About the discovery of DNA. Both dramatic and funny, with a wonderful performance by Jeff Goldblum and a really good depiction of the female scientist who was later publicly disparaged by the men who owed their fame to her hard work.

"Much Ado about Nothing." 1993 version. Stars Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. 'Nuff said.

"Titanic." 1997 version. Okay, yeah - abounds with anachronistic behavior. But how many ship disaster movies can you see where they filmed it by sinking an actual ship?

[earthspirits]

I see we share several favorites - especially The Crimson Pirate and the Flynn films. But they're all great choices, fun list!

[rebecca_selene]

I too love The Mummy, and also:

Fingersmith

The Handmaiden

Belle

Red Cliff

Tipping the Velvet

[isabellerecs]

Oh man, I feel like there should be more but my brain has seized up :P

The Untouchables (1987)
Glory (1989)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Persuasion (1995)
The Mummy (1999)
Gladiator (2000)
Remember the Titans (2000)
Master and Commander (2003)
The Last Samurai (2003) {the only movie Tom Cruise is acceptable in}

[dimity_blue]

No one's mentioned "Hobson's Choice"?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047094/

It was made in b/w in 1954 and set in Manchester in the 1880s. Henry Hobson owns a boot shop and has 3 daughters. The boot shop's success is down to Willie Mossop, te 18 shilling a week boot-hand who has a natural gift for leather.

Maggie, the eldest daughter, decides she's going to marry Willie and turn him into the man he should be.

He's terrified at the thought, Henry's furious, but Maggie's not to be stopped.

It's a comedy and it's a romance, and it's one of my favourite films.