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Miniatures Adventure => Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts => Topic started by: commissarmoody on September 24, 2012, 07:21:09 AM
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Looking for Elizabethan era films for some inspiration.
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Elizabeth.
Elizabeth - the Golden Age.
The Sea Hawk.
Shakespeare in love.
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Thanks for the start, Captain Blood!
I am also including under this question the low country's, the French religious wars, Spanish, Spanish Armada, Border Reavers, and Ireland beyond the pale action. :D
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I suppose Blackadder would count but it's not much of a film and very silly :D
The Three Mustekeers is set in the later wars of religion but it might be a bit to late for your needs ???
cheers
James
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Anne of a Thousand Days
Lady Jane Grey
The Tudors series
Henry VIII
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Thanks guys,
And i guess I mean the French Huguenot wars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion
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The last valley, Flesh and Blood
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As already recommended by Captain Blood, appropriately enough, The Sea Hawk - a swashbuckler directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn (along with Olivia de Havilland and Claude Raines - they'd all go on to make the definitive Adventures of Robin Hood and most of them would also make the film Captain Blood). Dame Flora Robson plays Queen Elizabeth.
Flynn reappeared in Elizabeth and Essex, with Bette Davis in the other title role.
Shekhar Kapur's two Elizabeth films, also on the Captain's list, are visually gorgeous and blessed with terrific performances from Cate Blanchett. The first is a strong personal story, the second more of a jingoistic pageant. As with pretty much everything on celluloid or digital video, don't trust them as history.
The 1970s version of The Prince and the Pauper is a little early (being set around the accession of Edward VI), and nearly sunk by the almost unbelievably bad performance of Mark Lester as the look-alikes, but it was written by George Macdonald Fraser and directed by Richard Fleischer with something of the fizz, humour and energy of the Three Musketeers films (also written by Fraser) which were their obvious model; Oliver Reed is tremendous as the drunken hero; there's a cast list to boggle at (Charlton Heston, Ernest Borgnine, Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch, David Hemmings, George C Scott ...) and Lalla Ward is splendidly haughty as the Lady Elizabeth.
You'd think that anglophone cinema would have made films about Drake and Raleigh, but I can't think of any specifically. There was a TV series called The Adventures of Sir Francis Drake in the 1950s, but I haven't seen it. It was an adventure series in the mould of the successful Robin Hood. Glenda Jackson's performance in the TV series Elizabeth R is legendary, but I admit that I haven't seen that either. She reprised the role in Mary, Queen of Scots, opposite Vanessa Redgrave as Mary. Jimmy McGovern (creator of Cracker among other things) wrote a striking pair of TV dramas about Mary and her son, James VI and I, called Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
Stretching the period a little into James's English reign also gives us Terence Malick's The New World, based on the story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. There's also Disney's animated Pocahontas, of course.
For the French religious wars, there's the bloody and brilliant La Reine Margot, with Isabelle Adjani, from the Dumas novel about the incident that gave us the word "massacre". Shamefully, I am ignorant of other films of the period in other languages.
Then there's Shakespeare. The 1970s-1980s BBC productions, available in a DVD boxed set as The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, generally have more Elizabethan (or Jacobean)-flavoured productions than the movies. For what they might actually have looked like when performed at the time, see the opening scenes of Olivier's version of Henry V. The reconstructed Globe Theatre has also released videos of some of its productions. Shakespeare in Love is an absolute hoot.
As for productions of other playwrights of the period, I'm drawing almost a blank. There's a film of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus with Richard Burton in the lead and Elizabeth Taylor silent as Helen of Troy, but it's a bit of an oddity - it was made as a fundraiser for the Oxford Playhouse, and all the other roles are taken by members of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Alex Cox's version of Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy is set in one of those clichéd but cheap post-industrial wastelands the director is so fond of. Surely there must be some spanish-language films based on the plays of Lope de Vega?
Finally, Google threw up this list, which might be useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_the_16th_century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_the_16th_century)
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Anonymous.
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(http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w519/SteveFlanaganUK2/2012%20-%2009%20-%20Sept/Cervantes_FilmPoster_zpsa7bf970a.jpg)
I've never seen this, but my mind is now boggling.
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Solomon Kane!!
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The last valley, Flesh and Blood
The former would be a little late (TYW in the mid-1630's) and the latter a bit early (late 1490's) for the Elizabethan age.
For the French Wars of Religion, Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot is an excellent recommendation indeed, as is Bertrand Tavernier's La Princesse de Montpensier :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Princess-Montpensier-DVD-Mélanie-Thierry/dp/B005A2EFQ8/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348509836&sr=1-1 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Princess-Montpensier-DVD-Mélanie-Thierry/dp/B005A2EFQ8/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348509836&sr=1-1)
Henry of Navarre is another offering dealing with the same period, though I haven't seen it and can't vouch for its quality :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Henry-Navarre-DVD-Julien-Boisselier/dp/B0051GHTNE/ref=pd_bxgy_d_h__text_b (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Henry-Navarre-DVD-Julien-Boisselier/dp/B0051GHTNE/ref=pd_bxgy_d_h__text_b)
Though the film takes place after the end of Elizabeth's reign (it begins in the 1610's with the Spanish war in Flanders and ends in 1643 at Rocroi), the first half of Captain Alastriste has a certain Elizabethan swashbuckling quality to it. The film is seriously flawed as it tries to cram too many of Arturo Perez-Reverte's novels into a two and a half hour narrative, but it's by no means unwatchable and there are some good moments in it :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Captain-Alatriste-The-Spanish-Musketeer/dp/B0052L2VFO/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348510277&sr=1-1-spell (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Captain-Alatriste-The-Spanish-Musketeer/dp/B0052L2VFO/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348510277&sr=1-1-spell)
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Also forgot Fred Zinnemann's A Man For All Seasons (perhaps a bit early for you as it takes place during the reign of Henry VIII, but if The Tudors qualify as Elizabethan, then so does this one) :
http://www.amazon.com/Man-All-Seasons-Special/dp/B000LPR6GA/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1348510692&sr=1-2&keywords=a+man+for+all+seasons (http://www.amazon.com/Man-All-Seasons-Special/dp/B000LPR6GA/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1348510692&sr=1-2&keywords=a+man+for+all+seasons)
... and Ken Russell's The Devils, which is finally available on a legit and watchable DVD from the BFI. Not an Elizabethan film from a purely historical perspective (the action takes place in C17th France during the reign of Louis XIII), but the costumes and Derek Jarman's set design give the movie a very Elizabethan feel :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Special-DVD-Oliver-Reed/dp/B0065N0SN0/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348511060&sr=1-1 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Special-DVD-Oliver-Reed/dp/B0065N0SN0/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348511060&sr=1-1)
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Also also forgot John Ford's Mary of Scotland starring Katharine Hepburn :
http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Scotland-Katharine-Hepburn/dp/B000G6L0EI/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1348511668&sr=1-1&keywords=mary+of+scotland (http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Scotland-Katharine-Hepburn/dp/B000G6L0EI/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1348511668&sr=1-1&keywords=mary+of+scotland)
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Flynn reappeared in Elizabeth and Essex, with Bette Davis in the other title role.
Essex lost a battle in my garden.
That is my claim to fame.
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The television series Elizabeth R (with Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth at various stages in her life) is quite good...
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The television series Elizabeth R (with Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth at various stages in her life) is quite good...
Along with the Henry VIII series (which is 10 times better than The Tudors! even now being 40 years older) are probably some of the best BBC dramas around and well worth watching for period inspiration.
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Thanks all, I just watched "The Sea Hawk" and am scouting about for the other films.
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Just watched Elizabeth the golden years, it looked great. :-*
Glad to see it finally made, I fhink the script was written early in 1940 ;)
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Cry of the Banshee is Elizabethan Not-Hammer starring Patrick Mower and Vincent Price
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There is of course the Errol Flynn version of the Prince and the Pauper.
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"Captain from Castile" with Tyrone Power is set during Cortez' conquest of Mexico - a little early for the period (beginning of the 16th century, rather than the last quarter), but the costumes are really closer to mid-to-late century. Most of the Conquistadors are wearing morions (and not a sallet in sight); this was must be one of those films that gave people the impression that it was particularly a Spanish helmet. Nice scene of the Conquistadors firing a tiny cannon (ala the Wargames Foundry gun).
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Yep, a very good film, but don't expect spectacular battle scenes. The campfire dance between Jean Peters and Tyrone Power is more than worth the price of admission though.
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.....er "Blackadder II" from the BBC :D
Just dont take it too seriously.... lol
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You mean Elizabethan era Puritans didn't sit on a spike at the dinner table?? (one spike per couple -with the woman sitting on the man's lap because a second spike wouldn't be frugal).
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LOL! I haven't watched Black Adder in years. And its on instant watch on Netflix, going to watch it now. Thanks for all the ideals all. I just watched "fire over England" And "Captain from Castile"
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Forgot to add two Errol Flynn films: Don Juan; and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.
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What about "Aztec Rex" ? ;)
"Taking place in 1521 on the coast of Mexico, a group of Aztecs worships and makes sacrifices to a pair of living Tyrannosaurus rex. A group of conquistadores led by Hernán Cortés later arrive on the location and venture into the forest to make camp...."
This is the worst film I have have ever seen! so bad it was good! :o
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Some Brazilian/Portuguese ones here
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MVoP4IxV10w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/H_t79RdEt8Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/A2mOrUs31yU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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(http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w519/SteveFlanaganUK2/2012%20-%2009%20-%20Sept/Cervantes_FilmPoster_zpsa7bf970a.jpg)
I've never seen this, but my mind is now boggling.
So many innuendos. :o
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Along with the Henry VIII series (which is 10 times better than The Tudors!)
The Tudors can be hilariously bad. It has been derisively named "Sexy Tudors" over here. The inestimable Kate Beaton had some great cartoons on the subject:
(http://www.harkavagrant.com/history/sexytudors.png)
I think the CBC blew half its budget on The Tudors because the whole time that I lived in Toronto, every bus and every subway car was plastered with Jonathan Rhys Meyers' pouting face and ten yards of cleavage. I believe we've all learned a valuable lesson here, and that is William Cecil may have been a crack statesman, but if he wants to me to give a shit about him he better start hitting the gym.
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yeah the Tuders, was a little over the top on the sexiness element. But it at least got my GF at the time interested in history for a bit. ;D
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Henry de Navarre is a good film, if not quite as good (IMHO) as La Reine Margot. I suspect however it may be slightly more historically correct!
I can vouch for Le Princess de Montpensier too.
Don't be put off by the subtitles. No-one does costume dramas films like the French.