favorite epic films
- Thread starter hffan2000
- Start date
Ah, the epic. That certain realm where somebody like Cecil B. DeMille can go out there, show a bunch of scantily-clad dancing girls, old men with beards, and folks with swords and sandals dying and call it religious art.
Okay, that was harsh. That is my feeling on DeMille though.
Epics? Sure, I like some of them.
The great master of ambiguity, David Lean, has the Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia to his credit. Only trouble is they weren't really directed, so much as made to look nice and be thought about out in such a way that they could appeal to anybody.
Then's there's Stanley Kubrick, with 2001: A Space Oddyssey and Spartacus. 2001, of course, is perhaps the greatest sci-fi film ever made, but it also finds it's fault in one of the great flaws of the epic - long, long, nice-looking scenes that don't have much purpose - I mostly point at the ten minutes before the infamous "aging in the Baroque apartment near Jupiter" scene. Spartacus, for a "sword-and-sandal," was rather good, actually, most notable in my opinion for the character development.
Well, those ones stand out in my mind, and I did like them. But one must admit that, like any other genre, there are a great many epic films that fall into these same kind of traps over and over again. Mainly, the tendency to be rather overblown. Even the greatest of epics are likely to succumb to that.
Okay, that was harsh. That is my feeling on DeMille though.
Epics? Sure, I like some of them.
The great master of ambiguity, David Lean, has the Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia to his credit. Only trouble is they weren't really directed, so much as made to look nice and be thought about out in such a way that they could appeal to anybody.
Then's there's Stanley Kubrick, with 2001: A Space Oddyssey and Spartacus. 2001, of course, is perhaps the greatest sci-fi film ever made, but it also finds it's fault in one of the great flaws of the epic - long, long, nice-looking scenes that don't have much purpose - I mostly point at the ten minutes before the infamous "aging in the Baroque apartment near Jupiter" scene. Spartacus, for a "sword-and-sandal," was rather good, actually, most notable in my opinion for the character development.
Well, those ones stand out in my mind, and I did like them. But one must admit that, like any other genre, there are a great many epic films that fall into these same kind of traps over and over again. Mainly, the tendency to be rather overblown. Even the greatest of epics are likely to succumb to that.