Great looking historical period films

A Serious Man evokes a very different '60s feel too

to Llewyn Davis I mean

A Serious Man evokes a very different '60s feel too

They filmed scenes in my (downscale) neighborhood grocery as it hadn't been updated since the 60s.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

another Kubrick: Paths of Glory

perfectly captures an era still caught between 19th & 20th centuries

Les Enfants du Paradis
Lola Montes
The Scarlet Empress
Forever Amber maybe?

loads of Ken Russell films, esp The Devils, Lisztomania + Savage Messiah

A Room With a View

and, I assume but haven't seen, other Merchant-Ivory films

Partie De Campagne

Pialat's "Van Gogh"!

(I can watch that one over and over)

I never saw that one - I watched the Altman Van Gogh which came out roughly at the same time. Might have to check that one out.

Is Altman's Van Gogh flick worth a look? The biopic is generally my least favourite film genre but, although it directly preceded The Player (officially his big 90s comeback, after a decade spent in the wilderness), I do remember it getting a good deal of praise at the time.

I liked it a lot at the time. The Gauguin character is probably more spot on than Roth's Van Gogh. But it still seemed quite moving at the time. It's more about his caring brother's essential patronage and his mental illness than the overwrought genius stuff.

I lied it a lot also. I don't think it looked all that good though. I supposed it was doing s now looks like then thing.

The Altman is good but Pialat's is on a whole 'nother level.

Pialat's Van Gogh is fantastic - and when Jacques Dutronc puts on a hat in the film, he looks a lot like Jandek!

I watched most of The Leopard last night. You all were right, it is stunning.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/7f/f7/94/7ff794f6d6ca61c5d0941286a1c283ff.jpg

you don't do multiple sittings for a Leopard viewing :(

I saw The Leopard projected once with an awkwardly placed 'intermission' enforced by the venue dividing up that long dialog scene w/Lancaster and his friend up in the hills.

It was 1 am, I couldn't keep going. Finished now though. What a great film. The ball scene is just perfect.

Larrain's "NO"

No

No pun intended. But it looks like crappy video shit. By design, and I like the film, and adore the director more and more, but it doesn't look 'good'...

Has anybody seen S. Bondarchuk's "War&Peace" ?
It's supposed to be a 7h (!) masterpiece.

War & Peace was a state propaganda project. In the battle of Borodino, some 100,000 Soviet soldiers from near Moscow garrisons were lent to the production, so all of those moving masses in the distant background are Soviet battalions doing parade drills. The Russian MoD hosts [this sequence](http://eng.mil.ru/en/multimedia/video/films/more.htm?id=2045@morfVideoAudioFile) on their website.

However, Bondarchuk is fascinated with goofy/distracting camera angles (eg, at Borodino, an overhead shot taken on a 300 m zip-line traversing the melee at the Raevsky redoubt), and the editing is fairly jarring/abyssmal in court dialogue scenes. Acting is also overwrought/theatrical rather that cinematic. So while I recommend everyone see it at least once, practically obligatory for anyone interested in the Napoleonic Wars, I wouldn't say its great looking.

Anyone seen the German film Paula from last year?

Frederik B wrong re: "NO". It's shot on crappy video hence the "crappy video shit" look but it captures the look of an early '80s Latin America (in this instance Argentina) perfectly. Having spent a lot of time in early '80s Colombia I can vouch for this.

Polanski's Tess

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, February 6, 2017 4:28 PM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes.

NO takes place neither in Argentina nor in the early eighties...

Sorry. Chile, late '80s. A massive difference. You win.

A massive difference.

Well, yeah...

Anyways, my point was just that it's not particularly supposed to be what I'd call 'great looking'. As I said, I like the film, and I adore the crappy video look.

The Banquet/Legend Of The Black Scorpion

Aguirre: The Wrath of God definitely has that "immersed in a genuinely remote world" feel mentioned upthread.

Yes! I once remember hearing a quote from Kubrick second-hand (so I dunno if its legit, and I certainly ain't quoting it properly) about how with Barry Lyndon he wanted to make a period piece that was so accurate that watching it was like visiting an alien planet. As much as I love BL, I think Aguirre achieves that more effectively than any film I've ever seen.

Aguirre is a minor miracle, and no one involved ever topped it.

Also...

Campion's Bright Star is very pretty.
http://images3.static-bluray.com/reviews/2857_5_large.jpg

Ebiri on Bondarchuk's War and Peace, referenced above. I really can't find the time to see it at Lincoln Center, hoping I'll get to see it at home later this year.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/the-wild-story-behind-sergei-bondarchuks-epic-war-and-peace.html

The Favourite
Mr Turner

I haven't seen The Favourite or Farewell My Queen but I assumed the latter was a new film. Maybe it just got a boost from the association.

Leigh's new one, "Peterloo", great looking as well but not half the film "Mr Turner" was. As I was watching I wished he would just make a killer William Blake biopic - "Peterloo" captures the look and feel of Blake's England.

"Rembrandt Fecit"
"Goya In Bordeaux"

Angelique series from the 60s starring Michele Mercier - classic or dud?

Loved Portrait Of A Lady On Fire last night, especially as I've been a bit worried by how so many films look recently, this gives me a bit of hope.

I'm sure I've seen something else in the past year, maybe The Lighthouse?

Matteo Garrone's Dior advert is pretty damn nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYOrGvVh7mk

15 minutes mind

Been hunting around for gothic romance films. Dragonwyck was only out on bluray a few years ago and now goes for silly money. Corridor Of Mirrors is only on region A bluray. Annoying.

Some baffling choices in here but it's extensive
https://www.silverpetticoatreview.com/gothic-romance-movies-tv-shows-period-dramas/

I seen Corrdior Of Mirrors, it looks lovely, a shame that Edana Romney had such a short acting career and it seems like it was a fight to keep this role (and she co-written it). It's Christopher Lee's first big screen appearance (he's an acquaintance at the night club)

Enki Bilal did a movie on the moon set in the future but went way retro for visuals

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXAcZhiWkAASIYa.jpg

Alain Corneau & Pascal Quignard's All The Mornings Of The World. Good classical music film.

^ Good film, singlehandly reintroduced Marais' music to the non-French world.

I recently watched Rohmer's "Marquise of O", and that definitely goes here. It's a brilliant and faithful adaptation of Kleist's novella to begin with, definitive really. Rohmer captures the vogueish "classical" fashion - "Greek" hairdos for women, curled at the front, tied up in a bun at the back, long white dresses resembling a chiton. The bourgeois white-walled house environments are also perfect. I feel Rohmer learned from Barry Lyndon how to exploit natural light for maximum effect and clarity, but the candlelit scenes are well done too. There is a particular candlelit scene, possibly the most horrifying, which is reproduced exactly as it is in the book, and you feel that historically this was as it was.
Herzog must have been paying attention to this, he cast Bruno Ganz (the count in this film) in Noseferatu a couple of year later, but it's a consciously different tack, romantic taste prevails over the classical in the home, hair and clothing.