Saturday, August 2, 2008

World's Best Drama Films

Films in gold won Best Picture
  • 12 Angry Men (bw)
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (bw)
  • All About Eve (bw)
  • Amadeus
  • The Apartment
  • Broadcast News
  • Citizen Kane (bw)
  • Dominick and Eugene (drama)
  • Elmer Gantry (drama, bw)
  • Empire Falls (mini-series)
  • Fearless (Peter Weir's)
  • Good Will Hunting
  • Housekeeping
  • Hud (bw)
  • The Hustler (bw)
  • The Last Picture Show (bw)
  • Little Foxes (bw)
  • The Magnificent Ambersons (bw)
  • Midnight Cowboy
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (bw)
  • Munich
  • Network
  • Nicholas Nickleby (8 hr)
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • On the Waterfront
  • Seven Days in May
  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • Stars Fell on Henrietta
  • The Sweet Hereafter
  • The Sweet Smell of Success (bw)
  • Terms of Endearment
  • To Kill a Mockingbird (bw)
  • Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (bw)
Foreign Language Drama
  • Babel (Mexico)
  • The Conformist (Italy)
  • El Norte (Mexico)
  • The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italy, bw)
  • The Grand Illusion (France, bw)
  • Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (France)
  • Kolya (Czech)
  • L'America (Italy)
  • La Dolce Vita (Italy)
  • The Motorcycle Diaries (US, in Spanish)
  • The Return of Martin Guerre (France)
  • To Live (China)
Docu-dramas, based on true stories
  • A Beautiful Mind
  • Alexander Nevsky (Russia)
  • All the President's Men
  • Citizen X
  • Dead Man Walking
  • Downfall (Germany)
  • Drugstore Cowboy
  • Elizabeth
  • Finding Neverland
  • Gandhi
  • Hope and Glory
  • In Cold Blood
  • The Last Emperor
  • The Madness of King George
  • Mongol (Russia)
  • The Motorcycle Diaries
  • The Name of the Rose
  • Norma Rae
  • October Sky
  • Reds
  • Reilly, Ace of Spies (mini-series)
  • Searching for Bobby Fisher
  • Songcatcher
  • Sybil
  • Tucker: A Man and His Dream
  • The World's Fastest Indian
Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring are two halves of the same novel, released simultaneously; theater goers could see the movie back-to-back as a double feature, or come back another day for the second part. This is an all-time classic, not to be missed. Nicholas Nickleby (played by Roger Rees) was a film version of the 8-hr London play; it was performed four nights a week in 2-hr segments; on Saturday it was performed in 2-four hour segments with a one hour lunch break. This is easily the best Dickens novel on film. I believe it was only 60 actors who played 250 roles. Milos Foreman directed both Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Bernardo Bertolucci directed both The Conformist and The Last Emperor.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The Name of the Rose is based on a true story??? Umberto needs to hear about this.

José Sinclair said...

I read that Umberto got the original story idea from actual church records of the investigation, then he novelized it. Many works of 'fiction' are loosely based on true stories, they just imagine the fully detailed drama to make it into a story that may interest others more.

Which did you enjoy more, The Da Vinci Code, or the non-fiction Holy Blood, Holy Grail, where Dan Brown's ideas came from for the novel?