Great looking historical period films

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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

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