Scale defines the historical epic, and the best entries here are the ones that know scale isn’t the subject. Dreyer built his Joan of Arc almost entirely out of close-ups.
A Man for All Seasons is a series of conversations in rooms. Both are epics because of what is at stake and not what’s on screen.
The other pattern is that the strongest films in the form are about a person refusing. More refusing an oath, Joan refusing a recantation, Becket refusing a king, Marguerite refusing to stay quiet. Spectacle surrounds them and the drama is a fixed position.
A thousand extras on a hillside don’t impress me much on their own. What moves me is one stubborn human being refusing to bend while a king leans on them, and the films at the top of this list all understand that. When an epic forgets it, all I can feel is the money being spent. Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year.
1. The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974)
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"The best Dumas adaptation ever filmed, and the cast did not know they were making two."
These two films take the top of this list because Richard Lester solved a problem nobody else has.
A swashbuckler can be funny or it can be exciting, and almost every attempt at both produces something that’s neither. Lester made the comedy come from incompetence and not from jokes. That means the audience laughs and the danger stays intact.
The duels are the evidence. Men slip in mud, get tired, drop things, fight in inconvenient clothing and win by cheating. William Hobbs choreographed them to look like actual seventeenth-century fights instead of fencing exhibitions, and the result is both the funniest and the most convincing swordplay in the genre.
The production is notorious for a separate reason. Lester shot both films at the same time and the studio released them as two pictures, so the cast were paid for one and appeared in two. The resulting litigation produced the Salkind clause, now standard in actors’ contracts, requiring a contract to state how many films are being made. William Hobbs choreographed the fights to look like actual seventeenth-century combat, with men slipping in mud, tiring and winning by cheating.
Lester shot both films at the same time and the studio released them separately. That produced the Salkind clause now standard in actors’ contracts.
The comedy comes from incompetence and not from jokes. That’s why the duels are funny and the swords stay sharp.
These are my favorite swashbucklers. Nobody else has made sword fights this funny and this frightening at the same time, and the trick is so simple that it galls me how rarely anybody copies it. Let the ground be wet and the men be tired. My only quibble is with the studio, which split one shoot into two releases and short-changed the cast doing it.
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
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"An epic assembled almost entirely from faces."
This is the argument that an epic doesn’t require scale. Dreyer’s silent film covers the final day of Joan’s trial and is shot almost entirely in close-up against blank walls, with the period, the architecture and the crowd removed from the frame.
What that leaves is an interrogation. Maria Falconetti’s performance is the foundational work of screen acting and was reportedly obtained through conditions on set that would end a director’s career now. She never made another significant film.
A fire destroyed the negative, another destroyed a second version assembled from outtakes, and a complete print was found in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital in 1981. The film survived by accident and is still the most intense thing on this page.
Dreyer shot almost entirely in close-up, with Falconetti’s face filling the frame for most of the film and almost no establishing shots at all.
A fire destroyed the original negative, and a complete print was found in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital in 1981. Falconetti never made another film, and Dreyer reportedly extracted the performance through conditions that wouldn’t be permitted now.
This film unnerves me more than most horror movies. Falconetti’s face fills the screen and there’s nowhere to look away to, and by the end of the trial I feel like I’ve been sitting in that room. The one sour note is how Dreyer reportedly pulled that performance out of her, and I can’t look at that face without wondering what it cost.
3. Robin Hood (1938 / 1973 / 1991 / 2010), Contrast Review
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"Four adaptations, and the 1938 one solved it so completely that nobody has improved on it."
The 1938 Warner production is the canonical version and one of the great American films of the 1930s, and the reason it’s here alongside three later attempts is that the comparison makes the argument for it. Curtiz and Keighley shot it in early three-strip Technicolor with Flynn, Rathbone and de Havilland, and Korngold’s score. The confidence is total. Nobody in it is conflicted, the film doesn’t apologize for the adventure, and it assumes the audience wants exactly what it’s giving them.
Each later version adds something the original deliberately lacked. The 1991 adds grit, the 2010 adds a psychological backstory and a political structure, and each addition costs the thing that made the 1938 film work. The pattern is instructive well beyond this property.
Rathbone was an accomplished fencer and the final duel is staged largely in shadow thrown on a wall.
Korngold wrote the score as though for an opera and effectively established what a Hollywood adventure score would sound like for fifty years.
Each later version adds grit or a political structure, and each loses the confidence the 1938 film had.
4. Ben-Hur (1959)
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"Eleven Oscars, and the chariot race still earns every one of them."
Ben-Hur set the ceiling for the biblical epic, and nobody has broken through it since. William Wyler already had three directing Oscars when he took it on, and he won a fourth for this. The film took eleven Academy Awards, a record that stood alone until Titanic tied it in 1997.
The story is a friendship that turns into a blood feud.
Judah Ben-Hur and Messala grew up together in Jerusalem. Messala comes home a Roman tribune, a roof tile slips during a parade, and he sends Judah to the galleys and his mother and sister to a cell. Stephen Boyd plays Messala as a friend who chose Rome, and that makes him far worse than any cartoon villain could be.
Charlton Heston carries the whole arc. He’s a prince, then a galley slave, then the adopted son of a Roman consul, then a man with one race left to win. Hugh Griffith won an Oscar as the sheik who hands him the horses, and he’s the warmest thing in the picture.
The Christ story runs underneath the revenge story for three and a half hours without preaching once, and by the end it has taken the revenge apart. It grossed about $146 million on a $15 million budget. I rate it a ten because it’s studio filmmaking at full strength, and it still plays.
5. War and Peace (1966-1967)
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"Seven hours and twenty minutes, four films, and the most expensive Soviet production ever mounted."
Bondarchuk’s adaptation is on this list as the outer limit of what the form can physically achieve. Released in four parts between 1966 and 1967, with the resources of a state behind it, including Soviet Army units numbering in the tens of thousands.
The Borodino sequence is the last time a battle of that scale will be staged with people. Everything comparable since has been generated, and the difference is visible in a way that no amount of rendering has closed.
It’s also faithful to Tolstoy and not merely enormous. That’s the harder achievement. The ballroom sequence and the Moscow fire are the two that show the production could do intimacy and catastrophe with equal control. The Soviet production ran over six years, used tens of thousands of soldiers as extras, and remains the most expensive film ever made when adjusted.
Bondarchuk suffered at least one heart attack during production and directed sequences from a stretcher. The Borodino sequence uses no visual effects at all. That’s why the scale is unarguable in a way digital crowds never are.
Nobody will ever do this again, and that makes me a little sad whenever I think about it. Tens of thousands of real soldiers on a real field look different from a computer’s best guess, and your eye knows it even when your brain doesn’t. Put that next to Tolstoy’s ballroom and the Moscow fire, handled with the same care, and I can’t find a thing to knock off.
6. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
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"Two con men, one crown, and a friendship that outlasts the kingdom."
This film was worth the wait. John Huston spent about thirty years trying to get it made, first with Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable in mind.
When he finally shot it at sixty-eight he had Sean Connery and Michael Caine, in the only feature those two ever made together. You’d never guess it from the way they play off each other.
Kipling’s novella sends two British ex-soldiers from 1880s India into Kafiristan to make themselves kings.
Connery’s Danny Dravot starts out ambitious and ends up believing he’s a god. Caine’s Peachy Carnehan sees the danger coming the whole way and follows his friend anyway. The film cares about that loyalty far more than it cares about the crown.
Christopher Plummer plays Kipling himself, listening as Peachy tells the story, and Saeed Jaffrey’s Billy Fish nearly steals it. Huston also gives the people of Kafiristan a dignity that seventies adventure films mostly didn’t bother with, and it makes the con uglier. It’s the adult adventure film at its peak, the line that runs from Gunga Din through Huston’s own Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Ten out of ten, and I’ll argue with anybody who wants to knock it down a point.
7. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)
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"The best religious satire ever filmed, and it is scrupulously careful about what it is attacking."
Life of Brian holds its position through precision. It’s a comedy about a man mistaken for a messiah, and across its entire running time it never once mocks Christ, who appears briefly, delivers the Sermon on the Mount accurately, and is treated straight.
The target is followers. People mishearing the sermon from the back, arguing over a gourd and a sandal, splitting into factions over nothing, and demanding that a man who wants to be left alone tell them what to do. That distinction is maintained scene by scene. That’s why forty years of attacks on it have never landed.
It was banned in several countries, picketed on release, and financed by George Harrison, who mortgaged his house because he wanted to see it. It also works as a well-made historical film about first-century Judea. George Harrison financed it and mortgaged his house because he wanted to see it. That’s the most expensive cinema ticket ever bought.
The film was banned in several countries and picketed on release, and the Pythons defended it in a televised debate that’s better than most of the criticism.
The crucifixion finale is a real risk and works because the film has been rigorous about attacking followers instead of the figure.
The discipline is what I admire most. The Pythons knew exactly who they were laughing at, the crowd and the hangers-on, and they never took a cheap swipe at the man himself.
That restraint is what lets the crucifixion finale get away with it. My reservation is the stretches where the sketch-show habits take over and the story stalls for the sake of a gag.
8. Spartacus (1960)
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"Kubrick’s least Kubrick film, and it broke the blacklist."
Spartacus is here for a piece of history larger than anything in the film. Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, was credited under his own name for the first time since the blacklist, at Kirk Douglas’s insistence, and President Kennedy crossed a picket line to see it.
As a Kubrick picture, it qualifies only technically. He replaced Anthony Mann a week into shooting, had no script control, and later distanced himself from it. Douglas was producing and the picture is his. What holds up is Olivier, Laughton and Ustinov circling each other in the Roman scenes. They’re better than the slave revolt they frame. The I’m Spartacus sequence has been parodied into meaninglessness and still works in context.
Kubrick was brought in after Anthony Mann was removed and has since disowned it as the only film he didn’t control.
Dalton Trumbo was credited under his own name for the first time since the blacklist, at Kirk Douglas’s insistence. That effectively ended it.
The I’m Spartacus sequence is the most parodied scene in cinema and still works because the film earned it across three hours.
9. A Man for All Seasons (1966)
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"An epic in which almost nothing happens except conversations, and it is about silence."
This is the most precise film on the list and the least spectacular. Zinnemann’s adaptation of Bolt’s play follows Thomas More’s refusal to endorse Henry VIII’s marriage, and More’s entire strategy is to say nothing at all.
The drama is a legal question. Silence has historically been construed as consent, so the state can’t convict a man who won’t speak of denying the supremacy, and the film is about the state’s steady work to get around that.
Paul Scofield had played it on stage and won Best Actor for the film. Robert Shaw’s Henry is on screen for one scene and dominates the memory of the whole picture. That’s a lesson in how little screen time a well-written king requires.
Bolt adapted his own play and the film is two hours of people trying to get one man to sign something. Paul Scofield had played the part on stage for years and won Best Actress’s male equivalent for a performance built almost entirely on stillness.
The argument about the silence, that qui tacet consentire videtur, is the whole film and is conducted in legal Latin without condescension.
This film holds my attention more than any battle on the page, and all it has is a man keeping his mouth shut. The state tries one angle after another to make his silence count as a crime, and it’s a vicious thing to watch. Robert Shaw’s single scene as Henry is so strong that I wish the film had found an excuse for one more.
10. Henry V (1989)
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"Branagh at twenty-eight, and Agincourt is mud, not glory."
Branagh directed and starred in his first feature at twenty-eight and cast Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, Judi Dench, Brian Blessed and Robbie Coltrane around himself. That’s either confidence or recklessness. Branagh made his film in deliberate opposition to Olivier’s 1944 version. Olivier made that one as wartime morale and staged Agincourt as pageantry. Branagh’s is filthy, exhausting and fought in standing water, and he presents the victory as survival and not triumph. The Non Nobis sequence, a single unbroken shot carrying the dead across the field while the hymn builds, is the best thing in any Shakespeare film. Four and a half minutes, one take, no dialogue.
Branagh was twenty-eight and cast Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, Judi Dench, Brian Blessed and Robbie Coltrane around himself.
It exists in deliberate opposition to Olivier’s 1944 version, which staged Agincourt as pageantry, and Branagh’s battle is fought in standing water.
The Non Nobis sequence runs over four minutes in a single unbroken shot with no dialogue. Branagh had the nerve to answer Olivier at twenty-eight, and I admire the hell out of him for it. His Agincourt is mud and exhaustion, and when Non Nobis starts over that long walk through the dead, I’m overwhelmed. My one complaint is that the young director sometimes can’t resist lingering on the young star.
11. Captain Blood (1935)
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"A doctor, a slave, a pirate, and the Warner Bros. swashbuckler born in one picture."
Peter Blood is an Irish doctor who treats a wounded rebel after the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, gets sold into slavery in Jamaica for his trouble, escapes and turns pirate. Michael Curtiz directed it from Rafael Sabatini’s novel, and Warner Bros. took a huge gamble on an unknown twenty-six-year-old named Errol Flynn after Robert Donat dropped out.
The gamble made two stars. Flynn swaggers through it like he’d been doing this for years, and Olivia de Havilland, nineteen and nearly as new, plays the planter’s niece who buys him.
They’d make eight films together. The duel on the beach with Basil Rathbone’s French pirate set the template Flynn would perfect three years later in Robin Hood.
It’s a historical epic in the Warner key: real history at the edges, the Glorious Revolution arriving just in time to redeem the hero, and a very large fleet of models at the climax.
It got four Oscar nominations including Best Picture. I rate it an eight. It’s creakier than Robin Hood and more fun than it has any right to be.
12. El Cid (1961)
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"Anthony Mann directing Heston, and the ending is a dead man strapped to a horse."
El Cid sits just below the top tier because it’s magnificent to look at and thinner than the films above it. Mann shot it in Spain with real castles, real cavalry in the hundreds, and a Miklós Rózsa score. Heston plays Rodrigo Díaz as an idealized figure instead of a person. That’s period-correct for the legend and limits what the film can do with him. Sophia Loren reportedly disliked the experience and it doesn’t show. The final image, the corpse armored and strapped upright to ride out at the head of the army, is one of the great endings in the form and the film has spent two and a half hours justifying it. Mann shot in Spain with real castles and cavalry in the hundreds, and Miklós Rózsa’s score is among the last of the great Hollywood epic scores.
Heston plays Rodrigo as an idealized figure instead of a person. That’s period-correct for the legend and limits the drama. The final image, the corpse armored and strapped upright to ride out at the head of the army, is one of the great endings in the form.
I could look at El Cid all day. Real castles and cavalry in the hundreds, with Rózsa’s music over them, give it a weight no studio set can fake.
What I miss is a person. Heston’s Rodrigo is a statue for most of the picture, so I spend two and a half hours admiring him without caring much, and then that last ride moves me anyway.
13. Becket (1964)
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"Burton and O’Toole, and the film is a break-up."
Becket is on this list as a two-hander that happens to be wearing an epic’s costume. Glenville adapts Anouilh’s play, in which Henry II and Thomas Becket move from drinking companions to enemies once Becket is made Archbishop and unexpectedly starts taking the job seriously. The historical accuracy is loose and the film is honest about being a play. What it’s is Burton and O’Toole at full power in scenes written for two actors who can hold a room, and the friendship is convincing before it’s destroyed.
O’Toole played Henry II again four years later in The Lion in Winter. That’s the better film and covers the same king twenty years older.
Glenville adapts Anouilh’s play, in which two drinking companions become enemies once one of them is made Archbishop and starts believing in it.
The premise that Becket was Saxon is invented, which Anouilh later admitted, and the film keeps it because the class difference drives the story.
Burton and O’Toole are at full power in scenes written for two actors who can hold a room.
Burton and O’Toole are why I’d sit through this, and they’re worth it. Two actors that good going at each other across a table beat any battle scene. My reservation is the history. Anouilh invented a chunk of it, and I’d have liked the film better if it hadn’t dressed a stage play up as an epic.
14. The Last Duel (2021)
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"The same events three times, and the third telling is labelled the truth."
The Last Duel is here for its structure. Scott adapts Eric Jager’s account of the 1386 trial by combat between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris over Marguerite de Carrouges’s accusation of rape, and tells it three times.
The differences between the versions are the argument. In the men’s accounts the changes are tiny, self-flattering and unnoticed by the teller: a hand held slightly longer, a glance reinterpreted, a debt described as a favor. The third chapter is headed with a title card stating that it’s the truth.
It failed commercially, which Scott attributed publicly to the audience instead of the marketing, and the duel itself is the most brutal thing he’s staged.
The differences between the three accounts are small and self-flattering: a hand held longer, a debt described as a favor, a refusal remembered as reluctance.
The chapter heading on the third version simply states that it’s the truth. That’s the film’s only editorial intervention.
It failed commercially and the duel is the most brutal thing Scott has staged, filmed in a sustained sequence with no cutaways.
I keep thinking about this one. Two men retelling the same events and flattering themselves is more chilling to me than the duel, and the duel is brutal. My reservation is the cost of the structure. The truth doesn’t arrive until the third pass, and the second telling drags while I wait for it.
15. Ulysses (1954)
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"Kirk Douglas in a Homeric co-production that never quite reaches its own scale."
Ulysses is the bottom of this list because the source resists the format. Camerini’s Italian-American production compresses the Odyssey into under two hours. That means each episode gets a few minutes and none of them accumulate. Douglas is well cast and Silvana Mangano doubles as Penelope and Circe. It’s a clever piece of casting the film never fully exploits.
The Cyclops sequence is the best thing in it and the strengths are heavy without reaching the level of the major epics of the period.
Kirk Douglas plays Odysseus in an Italian production with Mario Bava working on the effects. That’s the most interesting fact about it. The cyclops sequence uses forced perspective and a single enormous eye, and is the only part of the film with any real invention.
It compresses the Odyssey into ninety-seven minutes, so most episodes get a scene each and none of them accumulate.
16. Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
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"Nineteen million dollars, two directors, and a Brando accent."
MGM spent more than $19 million on this and got about $13 million back. Carol Reed started the picture and Lewis Milestone finished it, and Marlon Brando’s interventions on set had a lot to do with the switch. You can see the fights in the finished film.
Brando plays Fletcher Christian as a clipped English aristocrat, a deliberate break from Clark Gable’s version in 1935. Trevor Howard’s Bligh is the better performance. He brings the authority the story needs, and he’s the one you believe when the two of them share a deck. The Tahiti location work is gorgeous, and the ship sequences have real scale. The screenplay never gives that scale anything to do. The 1789 mutiny should play like a pressure cooker, and here it drifts for long stretches while the camera admires the water. It’s on this list as the historical epic that shows what happens when the money outruns the script. Richard Harris turns up as seaman John Mills, and for a few scenes the film wakes up. Six out of ten. Watch it for the photography and for Howard.
Down this list, the money wins too often and the story loses. The films I’d fight for put one person under pressure and kept the camera on them, from Joan’s face to More’s silence. Mutiny on the Bounty had MGM’s checkbook and no idea what to point it at, and that’s a waste I still can’t forgive.
