Top Ten Picks for Costume Flicks

Things have taken a confessional turn here at Walking the Berkshires. Having just outed my alter ego "Sterkfontein the dwarf", I may as well forgo any hope of salvaging what shreds of respectability I retain and go right ahead and embrace another guilty pleasure.  Yes, gentle readers, I have an unabated passion for what George MacDonald Fraser calls "that flawed glory of the cinema, the costume picture."  Sand and Sandals, Knights in Tights, wooden ships and iron men: if it's a period piece with a cast of thousands it commands my attention.

That is not to say I'll watch and enjoy just any dreary epic simply because the wardrobe department went over budget and some English toff prances about with a sword.  I have a low tolerance for anachronisms and artless plots, and Hollywood had subjected us to legions of films with these dreadful flaws.  No amount of attention to historical accuracy can salvage a poor screenplay, bad direction and uninspired acting.  Still, my heart goes out to some of the magnificent failures of the genre as well as its crowning glories, and surprisingly enough Hollywood quite often gets history right and provides a rollicking good tale besides. 

The costume picture is fundamentally a romance with history.  A splendid film like Gallipoli or a harrowing one like Paths of Glory may brilliantly convey the appalling waste and disillusion of the Great War period but these movies are intended to make profound statements.  Costume epics, on the other hand, are meant to be escapist fun as well as good history.  They can teach us much as they swashbuckle across our imaginations, but they ain't quite respectable, and it's hard sometimes to distinguish the inspired from the insipid.  A bit like our beloved blogosphere.

So as a public service to like-minded readers, I offer Walking the Berkshires' Top Ten Picks for Costume Flicks.  Subjective evaluation criteria are as follows: 

• Must be set in a recognizable historical period between the dawn of civilization and the death of Queen Victoria.  Anything after that has too much baggage to be both good history and a playful romp.
• Must convincingly recreate the period in question, true to the spirit of the times and faithful to the historical details that make it come alive on screen.  Must stand up to scrutiny. No ray-bans on Viking rowers, and no blue woad on William Wallace.
• Historical personages must remain in character.  Screenwriters should resist the temptation to project the norms and attitudes of the present on the past (Dances with Wolves).  Above all, actors must have style.  Not even Al Pacino could save the odious Revolution.
• A visionary art department and inspired location scouts will trump special effects wizardry any day.  Tom Berenger's beard and rotund reenactors doomed Gettysburg.
• Films that stand alone should make you yearn for a sequel.  Films in a series should make you rent them back to back and binge view from beginning to end, then join the fan club and wait on pins and needles for news of new episodes.
• The forgoing not withstanding, films that are all pomp and no circumstance need not apply.

So what made the cut?

The Vikings: I still get shivers from Kirk Douglas and his long ships pulling up the fjord.

The Lion in Winter:  Christmas with the dysfunctional Plantagenets.

The Black Swan:  The best pirate movie from the golden age of swashbucklers.  Laird Cregar's Sir Henry Morgan alone is worth the price of admission.

All 15 films in the Sharpe series.  Sean Bean is Richard Sharpe, an officer elevated from the ranks of a rifle company in Wellington's Peninsula army.  Sharpe does for the infantry what Aubrey and Maturin do for Nelson's Navy.

Waterloo:  It's all there:  the ragged English squares and the French cavalry, Hougoumont and the demise of the Old Guard.  Rod Steiger's Napoleon is Oscar-worthy.  Best lines: Uxbridge - "By God, I've lost my leg."  Wellington - "By God, so you have!"

Zulu Dawn:  Filmed on location at Isandlwana in South Africa, the horns and belly of Cetshwayo's impi sweeping across the veld and up the long slope to devour the British makes Custer's Last Stand pale in comparison.

The Man Who Would Be King:  No need for a cast of thousands with Connery and Caine as two British non-coms carving out a doomed kingdom for themselves in Central Asia.

Red River:  For my money the best of the John Wayne westerns.  Its epic cattle drive from Texas to Abilene has never been equaled in film.

Shakespeare in Love:  Marvelously conceived, modestly contrived, the Elizabethan stage has never been imagined better.

The Three Musketeers (and the Four):  No apologies for this one.  Oliver Reed is Athos incarnate.

Honorable mentions for dead-on historical depictions in otherwise flawed films go to Trevor Howard as Earl Cardigan in The Charge of the Light Brigade,  Alec Guinness as Charles I in Cromwell, and Cate Blanchett as the Virgin Queen herself in Elizabeth.

That's my top ten, at least for today  What costume flicks would make it on yours?

Comments

[Andichan]

more recent, but I love "Marie Antoinette;" it's a little slow, but sitting with glazed eyes staring at the costumes usually fills in the gaps. :)

[Bill West]

"The Man Who Would Be King" is my all time favorite historical drama followed closely by "The Lion in Winter".But I have a shameless addiction to pirate movies since I saw Errol Flynn duel Basil Rathbone along the beach in "Captain Blood". I know, I know, not historically accurate stuff but I plead exposure to it at age 7. I was too young to know better and by the time I did it was too late. Countless Sunday afternnoon showings of Errol Flynn movies had me hooked. John Wayne movies too.

Oh..and all those Italian Hercules movies but for a different reason. The English dubbed dialogue never fails to crack me up.

Ah, the shame!

[gracchi]

Shenandoah the Jimmy Stewart western about the civil war must be a candidate partly because its so good about the sadness of war and the heartbreak that that causes in people. One film you've forgotten though it does have glaring historical inaccuracies is Bergman's Seventh Seal- its an amazing film the scenes where a witch is burnt alone make it one of the great depictions of history around.

[GreenmanTim]

This is the fun of a subjective list with nebulous - if explicit - criteria. There is no costume flick section of your local Blockbuster store. Westerns, Action / Adventure, Drama and Comedy are all possible sources for the genre. Those that are strictly war movies aren't quite what I had in mind - otherwise Breaker Morant, the Cruel Sea, and a host of other worthy films would jostle for position on my list.

fb - Gangs and Ballad of Little Jo are excellent films and most certainly fit. I considered another that you introduced me to and it almost made the cut - Babette's Feast. (I owe you a profound debt for the music of Richard Thompson, too.) As for Meet Me in St. Louis, you make me rethink my timeline (more reflective of my period biases than the end of costume romance). Fred and Ginger would sweep back into view as well, although they stand as part of the historic record of the 30s rather a nostalgic look back at their own era.

Dan - High adventure and a period look are perhaps my prime criteria. O Brother is a treasure and certainly deserving of consideration. The Mission is EXACTLY the kind of film that sparked this post. A River Runs Through It works as well, though I agree with fuzzyturtle that it was hard to admire the storm lashed rigging with Brad Pitt at the helm. I feel the same way about Daniel Day Lewis endlessly running leatherstocked through the wilderness in Last of the Mohicans. I might add that the mountains of North Carolina are geologically and botanically NOT the great northern forest above Fort Edward. Mind you, towering cliffs at tidewater Yorktown were laughably out of place in the utterly contempable Revolution.

Life of Brian and Holy Grail...what to do about these farcical, excessive glories? On the plus side, they have achieved the cult status that some of the best costume epics command, and Brian in particular feels like the real time and place (thanks to George Harrison financing the film). Comedy can work in costume flicks (Tom Jones and Musketeers), but sheer absurdity deserves its own subcategory in the genre. I would add King of Hearts to such a list. Probably not Robinhood: Men in Tights. Tough call.

FT - Karate Flicks were inexcusably slighted. Seven Samuri and Ran would be my top choices. As for eye candy, Montgomery Cliff simply smolders in Red River.

Now, who wants to stand up for HBO's Deadwood and Rome? Gritty, coarse and drenched in blood and exposed flesh, there is no denying their success at capturing the feel of their periods and presenting memorable characters. I have enjoyed both, but I tend toward a lighter touch with my choice of costume flicks.

Thanks for the comments and keep them coming!

[Dan Trabue]

Huh! One of the reasons I liked "River..." was because I thought it was pretty true to the book.

Or maybe it was just that I liked the book so much that I was pre-inclined to like the movie?

[fuzzyturtle]

"Enter the Dragon ". I like karate flicks. :)

"A River Runs Thru It" (mentioned in replies) seemed to be a different movie than the book as I remember it. Kind of like "The Natural", which was supposed to be a morality play (we read alot of Malamud in high school. "Damn Pengiuns" as the Blues Brothers would say). Its as if the screenwriter MISSED THE POINT of the book. What is it with Robert Redford and rewriting stories...??

but I didn't notice the costumes. Brad Pitt kept distracting me .. haha.

[Dan Trabue]

On a serious note, would "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" fit in to this category? It's one of my favorite movies, period and it seems to me to be a faithful recollection of the time period.

"The Mission" and "A River Runs Through It" would be my other two additions.

LOVE all three of those movies.

[Dan Trabue]

One of my alltime favorite lines from such a film is no less than John Wayne as the soldier at the foot of the cross in The Greatest Story Ever Told, where he utters in his own John Wayne drawl, "Ah truly, this was the sonofGod!"

But that is more for its grand awful-ness than enjoyment.

[Dan Trabue]

You have a couple of glaring oversights in the twin Python costume flicks: Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

[frumiousb]

I have to confess to having a soft spot for Gangs of New York, despite its flaws. I also like The Ballad of Little Jo.

It just misses your cut-off dates, but I've also got a secret fetish for Meet Me in St. Louis. It's one of my comfort films.