The 25 Greatest Historical Epics
by temple1865 | created - 02 Dec 2010 | updated - 02 Dec 2010 | PublicFrom the Red Sea to the beaches of Normandy, lavish history in American film.
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1. Gone with the Wind (1939)
Passed | 238 min | Drama, Romance, War
A sheltered and manipulative Southern belle and a roguish profiteer face off in a turbulent romance as the society around them crumbles with the end of slavery and is rebuilt during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood | Stars: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil
Votes: 334,137 | Gross: $198.68M
Margrett Mitchell's tale of Georigans living through the Civil War and Reconstruction told in glorious technicolor. Filled with legendary performances by Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel, topped off by one of film's greatest orchestral scores and four hours long. It does not get more eipc than this.
2. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
PG-13 | 197 min | Drama, Romance, War
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger
Votes: 82,044 | Gross: $111.72M
David Lean's romantic epic, based on Boris Pasternak's novel set in Revolutionary Russia is a perfect representative of the genre.
3. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Approved | 218 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The story of T.E. Lawrence, the English officer who successfully united and led the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins
Votes: 314,208 | Gross: $44.82M
David Lean captures our fascination with the desert in this story of the First World War. A beautiful picture, perfect in every way.
4. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
PG | 161 min | Adventure, Drama, War
British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in occupied Burma, not knowing that the allied forces are planning a daring commando raid through the jungle to destroy it.
Director: David Lean | Stars: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa
Votes: 233,213 | Gross: $44.91M
David Lean's first epic, a POW movie set in the Pacific during World War II, both thirlling and inspiring, one of the best in a genre full of greats.
5. Schindler's List (1993)
R | 195 min | Biography, Drama, History
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall
Votes: 1,449,837 | Gross: $96.90M
Spielberg's finest work, one of the most moving films ever released.
6. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Passed | 152 min | Drama, War
A German youth eagerly enters World War I, but his enthusiasm wanes as he gets a firsthand view of the horror.
Director: Lewis Milestone | Stars: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Arnold Lucy
Votes: 67,654 | Gross: $3.27M
The First World War perfectly represented, another very moving film.
7. Titanic (1997)
PG-13 | 194 min | Drama, Romance
A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates
Votes: 1,279,524 | Gross: $659.33M
James Cameron breathing fresh life into the romatic epic genre, one of the all time greatest.
8. Ben-Hur (1959)
G | 212 min | Adventure, Drama
After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet
Votes: 253,550 | Gross: $74.70M
William Wyler take's Lew Wallace's tale to soring heights in this great movie, one of the most moving of all religious epics.
9. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
TV-PG | 195 min | Drama, History, War
The Stoneman family finds its friendship with the Camerons affected by the Civil War, both fighting in opposite armies. The development of the war in their lives plays through to Lincoln's assassination and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper
Votes: 26,330 | Gross: $10.00M
The movie that started it all. D.W. Griffith, the genre's pioneer.
10. Patton (1970)
GP | 172 min | Biography, Drama, War
The World War II phase of the career of controversial American general George S. Patton.
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner | Stars: George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Stephen Young, Michael Strong
Votes: 107,908 | Gross: $61.70M
George C. Scott's performace is one of the greatest in movie history. The Greatest of all World War II movies about Americans on the western front.
11. The Ten Commandments (1956)
G | 220 min | Adventure, Drama, Family
Moses, raised as a prince of Egypt in the Pharaoh's household, learns of his true heritage as a Hebrew and his divine mission as the deliverer of his people from slavery.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille | Stars: Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson
Votes: 77,807 | Gross: $93.74M
Cecil B DeMill's greatest work, the story of Exodus beautifully told with fanstastic performances by Charlton Heston, Yul Brenner and Anne Baxter.
12. War and Peace (1956)
PG | 208 min | Drama, Romance, War
Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia, including his disastrous 1812 invasion, serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of two aristocratic families.
Director: King Vidor | Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer, Vittorio Gassman
Votes: 10,860 | Gross: $12.50M
Often maligned and usually condiered inferior to its Russian counterpart, Paramount's War and Peace has everything an epic needs to be considered great, well directed, beautifully photographed and chalk full of stars. Audrey Hepburn's performance is one of the greatest in her legendary carrer.
13. Glory (1989)
R | 122 min | Biography, Drama, History
Robert Gould Shaw leads the U.S. Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices from both his own Union Army, and the Confederates.
Director: Edward Zwick | Stars: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman
Votes: 144,362 | Gross: $26.83M
The story of one of the first all black regiments to serve for the Union in the American Civil war wonderfully told, Denzel Washington's performance is legendary.
14. Gladiator (2000)
R | 155 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A former Roman General sets out to exact vengeance against the corrupt emperor who murdered his family and sent him into slavery.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed
Votes: 1,619,124 | Gross: $187.71M
Ben-Hur meets Spartacus with Russel Crowe, need I say more?
15. Spartacus (1960)
PG-13 | 197 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The slave Spartacus survives brutal training as a gladiator and leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic, as the ambitious Crassus seeks to gain power by crushing the uprising.
Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Mann | Stars: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton
Votes: 143,124 | Gross: $30.00M
Kubrick's beautiful story of servile insurrection. Kirk Douglas and Lawrence Olivier steal the show.
16. Apocalypse Now (1979)
R | 147 min | Drama, Mystery, War
A U.S. Army officer serving in Vietnam is tasked with assassinating a renegade Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest
Votes: 709,751 | Gross: $83.47M
Francis Ford Coppola's chilling Vietnam story.
17. The Godfather Part II (1974)
R | 202 min | Crime, Drama
The early life and career of Vito Corleone in 1920s New York City is portrayed, while his son, Michael, expands and tightens his grip on the family crime syndicate.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton
Votes: 1,363,491 | Gross: $57.30M
When gangster meets epic.
18. Reds (1981)
PG | 195 min | Biography, Drama, History
A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia, and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
Director: Warren Beatty | Stars: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann, Jerzy Kosinski
Votes: 24,706 | Gross: $40.38M
Warren Betty's story of American Jack Reed and Louise Bryant (played by Diane Keaton) in the Russian Revolution is one of the best of the Romantic Epics.
19. Gandhi (1982)
PG | 191 min | Biography, Drama, History
The life of the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British rule through his philosophy of nonviolent protest.
Director: Richard Attenborough | Stars: Ben Kingsley, John Gielgud, Rohini Hattangadi, Roshan Seth
Votes: 240,159 | Gross: $52.77M
An epic tale of an epic life.
20. Cleopatra (1963)
G | 192 min | Biography, Drama, History
Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt experiences both triumph and tragedy as she attempts to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome.
Directors: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Pamela Brown
Votes: 37,392 | Gross: $57.78M
Another epic tale of an epic life.
21. The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
G | 260 min | Biography, Drama, History
An all-star, large scale epic movie that chronicles the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
Directors: George Stevens, David Lean, Jean Negulesco | Stars: Max von Sydow, Dorothy McGuire, Charlton Heston, Michael Anderson Jr.
Votes: 11,911 | Gross: $15.47M
Title says it all.
22. How the West Was Won (1962)
G | 164 min | Adventure, War, Western
A family saga covering several decades of Westward expansion in the 19th century, including the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the building of the railroads.
Directors: John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, Richard Thorpe | Stars: James Stewart, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda
Votes: 23,309 | Gross: $46.50M
When western meets epic.
23. The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
R | 112 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
Three trappers protect the daughters of a British Colonel in the midst of the French and Indian War.
Director: Michael Mann | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Russell Means, Eric Schweig
Votes: 187,545 | Gross: $75.51M
Cooper's great piece of American literature perfectly personified by Daniel Day-Lewis.
24. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
R | 169 min | Drama, War
Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns
Votes: 1,495,705 | Gross: $216.54M
Spielberg's story of American heroism in Normandy.
25. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
PG | 129 min | Adventure, Drama, War
In 1880s India, two former British soldiers decide to set themselves up as Kings in Kafiristan, a land where no white man has set foot since Alexander the Great.
Director: John Huston | Stars: Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, Saeed Jaffrey
Votes: 52,013
Kipling's story is adapted into this great representation of the British Empire on film.
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