Genre analysis: Epic Historical Films

Epic films often take an historical or imagined event, mythic, legendary, or heroic figure, and add an extravagant setting and lavish costumes, accompanied by grandeur and spectacle and a sweeping musical score. Epics, costume dramas, historical dramas, war film epics, medieval romps, or 'period pictures' are tales that often cover a large expanse of time set against a vast, panoramic backdrop. In an episodic manner, they follow the continuing adventures of the hero(s), who are presented in the context of great historical events of the past.

Epics are historical films that recreate past events. They are expensive and lavish to produce, because they require elaborate and panoramic settings, on-location filming, authentic period costumes, inflated action on a massive scale and large casts of characters. Biopic (biographical) films are often less lavish versions of the epic film

Epics often rewrite history, suffering from inauthenticity, fictitious recreations, excessive religiosity, hard-to-follow details and characters, romantic dreamworlds, ostentatious vulgarity, political correctness, and leaden scripts. Accuracy is sometimes sacrificed: the chronology is telescoped or modified, and the political/historical forces take a back seat to the personalization and ideological slant of the story (i.e., the 'poetic license' of Oliver Stone's controversial JFK (1991))

Important Epic/Historical film directors are D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. De Mille

The first great category of cinematic epics is the silent epics. The first American epic was early cinematic pioneer D. W. Griffith's Biblical spectacle Judith of Bethulia (1914), a little known four-reel feature film weaving together two Apocryphal stories about the 40-day Assyrian siege of the walled Judean city of Bethulia. Griffith's most influential and complex film, noted for its technical virtuosity and dynamic editing (although controversial for its southern point of view) was the first blockbuster film The Birth of a Nation (1915). It reproduced the Civil War and Reconstruction Periods (including various battles, Lincoln's assassination, and the aftermath) and told of the war's effects upon two families (the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons) with a specific ideological slant that distorted its historical veracity. This almost three-hour film's screenplay was based upon Thomas Dixon's novel and play The Clansman.

Griffith's directorial counterpart, who specialized in extravagant epics throughout his entire career spanning both the silent and sound eras, was film showman Cecil B. De Mille. In reaction to Griffith's epic Intolerance (1916), Cecil B. DeMille (still at Famous Players-Lasky Corp., soon to be Paramount) went on to make his first large scale spectacle/epic film titled Joan the Woman (1916), one of the first epic biopics. It was DeMille's version of the Joan of Arc story starring opera star Geraldine Farrar and Wallace Reid. Its release coincided with the US entry into The Great War (and echoed the raging conflict), and the film served as propaganda for the Allies, with its framing story set in the English trenches of World War I. The film received critical acclaim and was greeted with modest box-office success. De Mille continued during his early film career with a series of silent Biblical or religious epics - a specific subgenre. In the 50s, the sound era brought more Biblical, historical, or Grecian/Roman times epics, alongside the development of colorful wide-screen Cinemascope to lure viewers away from their home televisions with free programming.

CASE STUDY: Intolerance

More recent examples of biographical epics include the following films:

• George C. Scott's unforgettable portrayal of the cantankerous WWII general in the highly-regarded Patton (1970)
• Sir Richard Attenborough's $22 million production of Gandhi (1982) featured Oscar-winning Ben Kingsley as the saintly 20th century Indian Mahatma - pacifist and spiritual leader
• the multiple award-winning film adaptation of the musical Broadway hit Amadeus (1984), from director Milos Forman, viewed the antics of young musical prodigy Mozart (Tom Hulce) [In its year of winning the Oscar competition, it was running against two other big pictures: David Lean's A Passage to India (1984) and The Killing Fields (1984)]
• Bernardo Bertolucci's honored epic of the Chinese Ching Dynasty and the life of Pu Yi, China's last emperor in the Best Picture-winning The Last Emperor (1987)
• Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995) with Anthony Hopkins as the scandalous 37th President of the US and Joan Allen as his supportive, long-suffering wife Pat
• writer/director Spike Lee's epic film Malcolm X (1992) told the life story of the slain civil rights leader with a great performance from Denzel Washington
• Attenborough's reverential Chaplin (1992) chronicled the life story of silent comedian and film-maker Charlie Chaplin (Robert Downey, Jr.)
• Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1995) was about the maverick, low-budget, Hollywood director (Johnny Depp) of cult films
• Alan Parker's musical biography Evita (1996) showcased Madonna playing the role of beloved Argentinian Eva Peron