So, a coworker and I were trying to put together a list of epic films the other day, and I was wondering if we could get some help on the matter. Personally, when I think “Epic”, I tend to think of those older films where, not only the scenes were huge, but you had extra casts of hundreds, sometimes thousands. And they were generally about three hours long or so. So far, we’ve got a short list, but here goes:
Sparticus
Ben Hur
Cleopatra
Lawrence of Arabia
were the really big classical epics we could think of, and some of the more modern ones were:
Gladiator
The Lord of the Rings (both films)
I’m sure we’ve missed a lot, so who else knows of some great ones?
I wouldn’t call Deer Hunter an epic in the sense of Spartacus, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, et cetera. Yes, it’s three hours long, but it doesn’t have that cast of thousands. It seems more insular and centered on a small cast over a relatively short period of time.
I just saw Giant this past week, though, and I’d nominate that. Three hours, twenty-one minutes, three generations of characters, huge sweeping vistas; it screams ‘epic’ to me.
Nearly a third of Deer Hunter is all about the wedding. There are hundreds of extras involved in those scenes. Also there are many extras in the Nam sequences.
It’s a little more obscure than the movies named, but after reading the OP, this is what immediately popped to mind (I saw it in a theatre about two and a half years ago:)
Cabiria (1914)
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Intolerance (1916)
Civilization (1916)
Orphans of the Storm (1921)
The Ten Commandments (1922)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Ben-Hur (1925)
Metropolis (1927)
The King of Kings (1927)
Napoleon (1927)
Noah’s Ark (1929)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Cimarron (1931)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)
A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
San Francisco (1936)
The Good Earth (1937)
In Old Chicago (1937)
Lost Horizon (1937)
Marie Antoinette (1938)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Well, Actually it has been called an Epic by others. More with the muti-generational thing across 80 years then anything else. It’s also had enough impact that apparently real life mobsters were using stuff from the movies that didn’t exist beforehand.
What about The Seven Samurai and Gone with the Wind?
[aside]CyberPundit, I just saw Ran a couple weekends ago and absolutely loved it. It’s definitely an epic movie that you should check out as soon as you have the chance to.[/aside]
Robin Hood (1922)
The Iron Horse (1924)
The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924)
Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924)
Wings (1927)
Hell’s Angels (1930)
Things to Come (1936)
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1943)
Henry V (1944)
Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1945)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1958)
