Looking for Elizabethan era films

[commissarmoody]

Looking for Elizabethan era films for some inspiration.

[Captain Blood]

Elizabeth.
Elizabeth - the Golden Age.
The Sea Hawk.
Shakespeare in love.

[commissarmoody]

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. 

[OSHIROmodels]

I suppose Blackadder would count but it's not much of a film and very silly 

The Three Mustekeers is set in the later wars of religion but it might be a bit to late for your needs 

cheers

James

[joroas]

Anne of  a Thousand Days
Lady Jane Grey
The Tudors series
Henry VIII

[commissarmoody]

Thanks guys,
And i guess I mean the French Huguenot wars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion

[Lowtardog]

The last valley, Flesh and Blood

[Steve F]

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

[n815e]

Anonymous.

[Steve F]

I've never seen this, but my mind is now boggling.

[marcusluis]

Solomon Kane!!

[Arthur]

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

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

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  

[Arthur]

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

... 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

[Arthur]

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

[Hildred Castaigne]

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.