And based on books written by an Englishman
Just a few I’d say. Das Boot, The Blue Angel and Metropolis spring to mind. I’m not sure what you mean by “epic” or on such a scale, but what about a few of the spaghetti westerns?
There are a lot of Thai ones, too. Siam Sam, how did King Nareusan do in theaters? It was all over the billboards when I was in Thailand for New Year’s.
Just to be clear…do animated films count, or not?
A couple of months ago, I saw a new historical film from China (Hong Kong cast and production, lots of foreign money) called A Battle of Wits. It’s not rigorously accurate history, but the premise and execution are quite well done (it’s based on a comic, I think). Story has a middle-sized city in an ancient era caught between larger warring kingdoms. At the beginning of the film, after many years of staying under the radar of their battling neighbors, they’ve come to the attention of one of the warlords passing through on his way to begin yet another attack. The city’s leaders are arguing about whether to surrender to the warlord’s expected ransacking of their city for supplies, or to resist. They appeal to a mysterious tribe with the reputation of military genius, begging for assistance; this tribe sends them a single strategist who uses all of the city’s limited resources in an attempt to rebuff the warlord’s assault. The warlord, no strategic slouch himself, responds first with overwhelming force, and then when that doesn’t work, with canny tactics of his own. It’s definitely an epic movie; the filmmakers built most of the city that is the story’s central setting, most in mockup, but some of it actually in functional form, and then surrounded it with thousands of extras playing the warlord’s army. Pretty good movie, unusual in its thinking-warrior theme and tone, and definitely an epic.
Maybe this is just my own interpretation, but I think of epics as being large in scope - either geographically, in terms of time, or both. While I love Das Boot, 90% of the movie takes place in a claustrophobic sardine can.
And as far as spaghetti Westerns go, I totally agree. Sergio Leone’s “Man With No Name” trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) are foreign films with a very epic feel.
What makes a movie “American” then? LOTR wasn’t nominated for “Best Foreign Film”.
I’d nominate “Once Upon a Time In the West” before any of the Clint trilogy as epic.
Luo Ye Gui Gen (lit. Falling leaves return to the roots; English title is something like “The Long Road Home”) is an epic Chinese tale about a man trying to bring his dead friend home, as per request. He goes through a ton of different locations, and each encounter tingles with legendary vibrations. Actually, on second thought, it’s more like the Odyssey, which I counted as an epic, but probably not what the OP is going for.
Still a great movie, so I’ll still leave this as a plug instead of deleting the post 
Heh. I’m thinking the OP might have meant “Asian” when he said foreign. Otherwise, I’d like to nominate Lawrence of Arabia. 
Of course there are!
In Indian cinema we have plenty of movies on Alexander the Great, whom we called “Sikander”.
We have tons of movies on the Indian revolution. Also lots of things on the British overtaking.
Mahabharat, Ramayan, and the Gita all have had movies made out of them. Also Krishan-Leela.
No.
Production logistics are the same for animating one dancing crab in Akron as for animating 100,000 thousand dancing crabs in Istanbul. Both can be done by the exact same crew in a studio in Burbank.
Wereas,
Filming 2 people in Akron as opposed to filming 10,000 people in Siberia are 2 radically different things. See the difference?
However, there is a debate possible on what makes a film an “epic”.
First thing that came to mind for me was the Indian film Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, which was a four-hour movie about cricket. Had a budget of about 6 million bucks. A lot of money for a production of that kind, but in Hollywood that kind of petty cash would only take care of Colin Farrell’s fluff girls.
The Jade Warrior was a big Finnish-Chinese collaboration film that premiered last year. It combines Finnish Kalevala mythology with kung-fu. Not that great of a movie, story-wise, but the visuals are pretty awesome and it’s an interesting project.
“This film, which is basically the longest narrative film ever made, is a 15-1/2 hour episodic exploration of the character of Franz Biberkopf, “hero” of Alfred Döblin’s acclaimed novel, as well as the Alexanderplatz area of Berlin that he inhabits.”
Napoleon (1927). Running times: Spain:222 min (DVD edition) / UK:330 min (2000 restoration) / USA:235 min (1981 restored version).
It did well, but it was pretty much guaranteed to. The problem with films like this in Thailand is it’s almost required for the locals to go see it. You’re like a bad citizen if you don’t. My Thai wife is always complaining about this. From all accounts, this was not a very good movie, so we didn’t watch it. But it raked in the money using the patriotic angle. If it has anything whatsoever to do with royalty past or present, you’ll not find anyone willing to admit publicly it was NOT the best film they’ve ever seen bar none. Privately, they might tell a different story.
There was another film like that a few years ago called Suriyothai. God-awfully long and rambling. The wife and I blew that one off, too, but a fellow farang, another American, went to see it. He said the theater was packed, but when he looked around, the Thais were all looking at their watches or nodding off or staring at the ceiling. Francis Ford Coppola actually picked that one up and re-edited it for viewing in the US. Tightened it up, lopped I think it was 43 minutes off of it, and it was STILL almost 2 1/2 hours. But it was probably a much better movie after he finished with it.
I’d argue that wether or not a film is defined as an epic ought to have more to do with the film’s content than means of production. An animated Laurence of Arabia would still be an epic film, even if they never had to send a camera crew to Tunis.
[Nitpick]Berlin Alexanderplatz was originally a multipart miniseries for German TV that was fused together into a single film for showings outside the country. I’m not sure if it would quality since this would be like combining all the episodes of one season of “The Sopranos” into a movie.[/Nitpick]
In any case, there’s the 1968 Soviet version of War and Peace that ran for eight hours.
I do begin to see, thanks to your charity in explaining the difference to us. However, since a debate is “possible”, it might be useful to agree upon some criteria.
Personally, I think whether a movie is epic or not has more to do with the scope and imagination of the story depicted than with the logistical challenges of filming it. Thus, by my criteria, an animated movie could well be considered epic. For example, Millennium Actress. Would have cost a fortune to make live-action – yet, as an animated movie, it still had an epic “feel” for me.
Interesting. I agree that the production involved in filming is not all of the definition of an epic. I was pointing out the difference as I see it between live and animated.
Sounds like I need to start a new thread.