Great looking historical period films

Sansho the Bailiff
Gate of Hell
Kwaidan
The Magnificent Ambersons

Dangerous Liaisons
Fanny and Alexander
and as infamous as it is, Heaven's Gate is pretty stunning to look at.

Days Of Heaven

and good grief yes, The Leopard is a must for anyone reading this thread.

not a movie but I currently watch the tv show "war & peace" and it looks pretty good.
especially the army uniforms !

in a very different way, Rohmer's "l'anglaise et le duc" is interesting as he used paintings of old Paris instead of real sets.
http://buf.com/films/langlaise-et-le-duc/

and the already mentioned "Draughtsman's Contract" by Greenaway is magnificent (like many others here).

great thread

Seeing as RAG also asks for 'fantasy', I also want to put in a word for the early full colour Hammer films shot by Jack Asher, the Poe/Corman films shot by Floyd Crosby, and various Italian horror movies by the likes of Bava and Freda - post-Vertigo candy-coloured Gothic nightmares, inhabiting a historical never never land, all lovingly decorated and costumed.

There's lots of Hong Kong films but trying to think of some special in this regard.
Same with peplum/sword & sandals and medieval films. Indian films are a complete blind spot for me.

These are overwhelmingly long but a quick skim might refresh memories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_period_drama_films_and_series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_period_drama_films_set_in_Asia

I think McCabe & Mrs. Miller is great looking but my definition of 'great looking' may differ from others'.

Re: Indian Film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLASLzQhOqQ

The Virgin Suicides.

I'm only being partly silly--even the original post says "it can be fantasy or even contemporary with the setting/clothes appeal of a historical film." A great-looking and meticulous recreation of the '70s is just as valid to me as Barry Lyndon (which, yes, looks amazing).

― clemenza, Monday, February 6, 2017 6:51 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Same w/Spielberg's Munich.

La Nuit De Varennes
Fellini Casanova
The Founder
Silence
Pretty much any Mizoguchi set pre-20th century

In the Mood for Love seems an easy Hong Kong choice

The Leopard

See also Senso and Ludwig. I assume we could probably put Visconti's complete catalog under this heading?

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

http://www.cinestylography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Picnic-at-Hanging-Rock-movie-11.jpg

Multiple periods and genders: Orlando (1992)

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5d/3c/e2/5d3ce2dc079c6b4d35c93b83cbcb0e88.jpg
https://i2.wp.com/www.frockflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1992-Orlando1.jpg

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a great call up thread - watched it recently and it's one of the most evocative movies I've ever seen visually. Many scenes in the school are packed with almost occult symbolism (including lots of mirrors). A treat for the eyes really.

really love Monty Python & The Holy Grail's mucky, foggy medieval England.

The Duellists

https://iknowwhereimgoing.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/vlcsnap-2013-06-25-15h51m02s99.png

Duelists is good. But better if you fantasize about the young Keitel.

http://silverscreenmodes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Duellists-screen-2-672x372.jpg

The Conformist

Getting into fantasy again, Duke Of Burgundy and Morgiana have a really great look. Tale Of Tales too.

Barry Lyndon is such a great choice not just cos it looks great and has good costume design, it was shot with natural light, meaning it more or less looks exactly how it would have looked before the electric light.

i like Amadeus's glam baroque style

https://media.giphy.com/media/z6CuYOlY3h2aA/giphy.gif

FrockFlicks, a stirringly opinionated site on these films, has a few choice words on Amadeus

Admittedly, I probably wouldn't have nearly as great an interest in period film if it didn't provide an excuse for heaving bosoms on film. Does this make me a bad person?

Barry Lyndon is great because it was shot with an amazing camera that gives "natural light" which, because light is a quantity in all films, doesn't look like natural light on film.

Not so much a camera, but a f/0.7 lens originally made for the NASA Apollo lunar program to capture the far side of the moon in 1966. Basically it lets in 8 times as much light as a typical lenses around f/2.0.

As someone who cherishes a Summilux and craves a Nocticron, I would gawk at a Noctilux and worship the Zeiss f/0.7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmSDnPvslnA

I geek out over all those lenses and considered, being a photographer who *could* improve his craft on the cheapest lens, how to get a noctilux.

it's a great look but really given any camera and a focused directorial vision you could do a historical look. lots of smoky inside times back then, the uncorrected nearsightedness, and the subjectiveness of time

really the light limit was on film able to capture it all on top of the lens

The Godfather is obviously a great looking recreation of the '40s--can't vouch for its accuracy, but I think you can see a Jake LaMotta poster at some point in the film.

Was trying to think of a relatively recent film that gets the '50s or '60s right, and nothing immediately jumped to mind. (American Graffiti's close enough to its historical period to make it fairly easy.)

Maybe Something in the Air for the '60s?

(I hate 97% of all costume dramas...I'm trying to hijack the thread.)

Carol for the fifties? Wong Kar-wai for the sixties.

Rossellini's The Taking of Power by Louis XIV is very lush for a tv movie. I love the court scenes at the end where he has risen to such olympian status that people even have to courtesy his food as it is wheeled past them.

xxxxpost

Did Far From Heaven get the 50s right? I do know it looked gorgeous.

I thought "The Founder" did a good job of evoking the '50s.

^^^ I was going to suggest Far From Heaven yesterday. I don't know if the film gets much love around here, but yeah I think its hyper-stylized Sirkism looks beautiful. xp

Ed Wood does good 50s

Far From Heaven definitely got Sirk right... But it's quite stylized and pastichy. Carol more inspired by photography, somehow seemed more 'right' to me. Both films good, Carol better.

yes FFH struck me as an accurate representation of what '50s cinema looked like.

favorite period evocative:

Hard to be a God
Winstanley
Puce Moment

beautiful 60's, though otherwise flawed:

A Single Man
Llewyn Davis
The Dreamers

And Lean's Zhivago and Lawrence

I'm not the greatest fan of Llewyn Davis, but as an evocation of time and place, its impeccable.

Flowers of Shanghai also. I mean, every Hou, but Flowers of Shanghai especially. Pure visual opium.

I think what Deleuze writes about Visconti in his chapter on crystal images is some of the best writing on historical cinema ever, btw. So evocative. The whole idea is hit and miss, I still don't really understand what Ophuls and Renoir has to do with anything, but borrow the book, and just read that couple of pages.

Was trying to think of a relatively recent film that gets the '50s or '60s right, and nothing immediately jumped to mind.

That Thing You Do! does some good 60s. (Shot by Tak Fujimoto.)

A Field in England

most of these films just make me wonder what the poor people of the time were doing/looked like

Field in England is gorgeous

(specifically referring to European elite costume dramas listed)

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

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