Inspired by the thread “Which Books Would Make Good Movies?” I started thinking of all the great stories in history which have either been ignored, or done poorly in the 30s and 40s and afterward forgotten.
I think that a new movie about the six wives of Henry VIII could be a great movie if filmed today. With shadowy lighting, intricate costumes, minute attention to detail, this could be not only a movie with a compelling storyline, but also one which is a visual feast.
I’d also like to see a movie about the great influenza epidemic. I wonder why it was never explored before.
There are also so many fascinating historical figures and exciting events which could make for great cinema . . . who or what would you like to see on the big screen?
Well, I wouldn’t say “The Private Life of Henry VIII” was done poorly. That’s a pretty good movie, there. So was the 1970’s miniseries “Six Wives of Henry VIII”
The Battle of Verdun, based on Alaistair Horne’s The Price of Glory*. The fighting in Ft. Vaux and Ft. Douamont would be quite a specticle (though it should be portrayed in pitch darkness).
Two I always thought would be great for a movie that actually ARE being done are Alexander the Great and serial killer H. H. Holmes. Ironically, both projects are DiCaprio projects.
I think fantastic miniseries could be based on the lives of Mark Twain (especially seeing how his observations and friends found their way into his writing), William Randolph Hearst (who knew everybody who was anybody from the 1890s-1940s), and Truman Capote (who knew everybody who was anybody from 1950-1970s). A non-hagiographic biography of Helen Keller could be fantastic (one that follows her from “The Miracle Worker” through her passionate belief in women’s rights, socialism, birth control, etc.) could work well.
The Montgomery Clift movie Freud was revolutionary for its time, but it could be done so much better now.
Others that I think need good movie bios (they’ve had them, but they generally sucked):
While I doubt there’d be an audience, a great miniseries could be based on Herod the Great (and make a star of whoever played Mariamne). Other movies based on ancient people I’d like to see:
-A movie about the bar Kockhba revolt,
-A film adaptatation of Gore Vidal’s JULIAN
-A miniseries of Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars
(Gore Vidal’s) Burr
Sarah Bernhardt
Hermann Göring (a likeable man who little by little becomes completely corrupt and evil and bloated)
Almost any of the Founding Fathers would be great (especially Jefferson or Franklin) so long as it didn’t try to portray them either as saints or as villainous dead white men. With the 200th anniversary of the Lewis & Clark expedition coming up it would also be time for a great movie about them that would have some of the most beautiful scenery ever shot and make a star of whoever played Sacagawea. (Gerard Depardieu would seem a shoe-in for her husband.)
It’s excellent- the definitive portrayal of Henry and of his wives. It is on DVD now (though Netflix strangely doesn’t have it). Many of the same actors continued their roles in it’s sequel minseries, ELIZABETH R- had it not been a miniseries, Glenda Jackson would have won an Oscar for every episode.
In HENRY, Keith Michell plays the title role from the time he’s a young and passionate teenager until he’s the bloated and sick old tyrant we know from the portraits. In ELIZABETH, Glenda Jackson plays the title character from 15 to 70, equally believable as the beautiful scared adolescent and as the old woman in the clown make-up.
Actually, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF CHARLES LAUGHTON would be an interesting movie. He and Elsa had an interesting union (and that’s not just because he was gay).
I have been reading about the German steel and munitions robber barrons, the Krupps. There are several movies there.
Gustav Krupp lived in the overbearing shadow of his father. He was by all accounts very successful at the business. Married with two daughters. Had a secret life though. Young boys on the Isle of Capri. Blackmail. Coverup by the Kaiser. Wife sent to sanitarium. Mysterious “sudden death” by Herr Krupp.
Alfred Krupp (the last Krupp to own the place) was tried at Nuremburg for war crimes (slave labor, arming Germany in the early '30s, a whole laundry list of crimes). Found guilty, stripped of all assets, sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Korean war breaks out, Western Governments need German industry back in production to fight communism. Krupp gets pardon, gets everything back, and within 2 years, is 12th largest company in the world. 15 years later, he is dead, his son not interested in running a company, company goes public, then into bankruptcy.
Arnt Krupp (the son of above), leads a post war playboy jet-set lifestyle, takes cash over running his family’s business, apparently bisexual, contracts AIDS, dies penniless.
Oddly enough, I’ve never seen a single movie about the Byzantine Empire. A fascinating movie could be made about Justinian and his great general, Belisarius. Or, in the late Empire, the Fourth Crusade, in which Western European Christians conquered Greek Christians instead of the Muslims in Syria.
Speaking of Crusades, the leper King of Jersualem, Badouin (latinized to Baldwin) deserves a movie.
I’d also like to see a movie about the early years of ballooning, especially after they learned how to isolate hydrogen and fill balloons with it. (It takes nerve to name your hydrogen balloon Meteor.)
There are areas of WWII that haven’t been covered in movies. For instance, there was fierce fighting in the Aleutians.
The Marquis de Mores, a French nobleman who came to the US and ran a cattle ranch in the Dakota territory in the 1880s. He ran into trouble with some local rustler types and others who didn’t like him because he was a foreigner who wanted to fence in his ranch and got into a couple gunfights. He wound up returning to France and died in battle in North Africa.
Lord Baden-Powell- first a spy, later a military hero, then founder of Boy Scouts and husband in one of the most bizarre marriages in history (it was a May-December union- he slept on his wife’s balcony rather than in her bed, even when it was snowing, though they did have three children), would be interesting. Lots of filming opportunities in Africa and throughout Europe. (BP was so obsessed with Peter Pan that he named his son Peter and nicknamed one of his daughters Wendy).
Ditto on Byzantium: the First or the Fourth Crusade could be a great miniseries, or the soap-opera trashy marriage of the empress Zoe and Michael IV, or the murder of Zoe’s grandfather by his wife. The casting call for 9,000 one-eyed Bulgarians for Uncle Basil would also be neat.
Actually, there are two Alexander the Great movie projects going on and will both be released around Thanksgiving 2004. One is the DiCaprio version (with Nicole Kidman as well), the other is going to be directed by Oliver Stone with Colin Farrell (and Anthony Hopkins as Ptolmey, it’s rumored–not sure if he has signed up yet).
Mary and Abe Lincoln and their sons would make for good drama. I like the Mark Twain idea. I am currently reading For God, Country and Coca-Cola that would be a good mini-series.
Alcibaides (of the Peleponesian Wars) and Talleyrand (French Statesman)…both changed ideologies/allegiances as often as most of us change our pants - and lived in very interesting times…
…actually I have never seen a film about Naopleon that wasn’t deeper than the costume drama level.
Another interesting figure of the Napoleonioc era was Haiti’s Toussaint L’Ouverture.
From American History, while Gangs of New York touched on thism, the Draft Riots of 1863 were a fascinating and very terrifying episode in history.
James Brown (although I guess he’s not really historical yet… his story has it all: great music, sex, waaaay too many drugs, cross country car chases, shootouts. It’s a natural.
For actual historical value, I’d nominate Slavomir Rawicz. He was a Polish officer taken prisoner by the Russians in 1939… tortured… sent to a prison camp in Siberia… escaped with some companions and walked all the way to India (through Siberia, the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas). More info here
