Topic: 18th Century

Direction Masaki Kobayashi

Cast Toshirô Mifune · Yôko Tsukasa · Go Kato · Tatsuya Nakadai

Plot In 1725, during a peaceful period in Japan, Isaburo, a veteran samurai, lives placidly with his wife and his son. One day, his honor and moral principles will be at...

Direction Abel Gance

Cast Albert Dieudonné · Gina Manès · Edmond Van Daële · Antonin Artaud

Plot A biopic of Napoleon which spans approximately 16 years. It covers Napoleon's childhood, his first strategic victory (a schoolyard snowball fight), his rise through the ranks after the Revolution and...

Direction Stanley Kubrick

Cast Ryan O'Neal · Marisa Berenson · Leon Vitali · Patrick Magee

Plot 18th century rural Ireland. After his father is killed in a duel, Barry Lyndon lives with his mother. He is in love with his cousin, Nora Brady, but she gets...

Direction Ursula Macfarlane · Damon Thomas · Francesca Kemp

Cast Paul Rhys · Charles Hazlewood · David Bamber · Casper Harvey

Plot A dramatized documentary on the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Direction Milos Forman

Cast Tom Hulce · F. Murray Abraham · Elizabeth Berridge · Simon Callow

Plot In a lavish 18th Century parlor in Austria, an elderly man is found, by his servant, with his throat slashed. The wound is self-inflicted, and the man is the little-known...

Direction Stephen Frears

Cast Glenn Close · John Malkovich · Michelle Pfeiffer · Keanu Reeves

Plot Based on the infamous novel LES LIASONS DANGEREUSES by Choderlos de Laclos and the subsequent Christopher Hampton play, set in pre-revolutionary France, a cunning Marquise (Glenn Close) and a seductive...

Direction Roland Joffé

Cast Robert De Niro · Jeremy Irons · Ray McAnally · Aidan Quinn

Plot A visually stunning epic, THE MISSION recounts the true story of two men--a man of the sword (Robert De Niro) and a man of the cloth (Jeremy Irons)--both Jesuit missionaries...

Direction Peter Ustinov

Cast Robert Ryan · Peter Ustinov · Terence Stamp · Melvyn Douglas

Plot H.M.S. Avenger is headed into battle against the French fleet during the Napoleonic Wars, and the dark shadow of two recent mutinies in the English fleet concern Captain Vere. He...

Direction Josef von Sternberg

Cast Marlene Dietrich · John Lodge · Louise Dresser · C. Aubrey Smith

Plot In this re-imagining of Catherine the Great’s life story, filmmaker Josef von Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich supply some of the most eye-popping images and outrageously decadent antics in early...

Direction Frank Lloyd

Cast Charles Laughton · Clark Gable · Franchot Tone · Herbert Mundin

Plot MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is the classic tale of one of the most infamous adventures on the high seas. The story is based on the fictional accounts written by Charles...

Direction Robert Siodmak

Cast Burt Lancaster · Eva Bartok · Nick Cravat · Torin Thatcher

Plot Burt Lancaster plays a pirate with a taste for intrigue and acrobatics who involves himself in the goings on of a revolution in the Caribbean in the late 1700s. A...

Direction Tom Hooper

Cast Paul Giamatti · Laura Linney · Sarah Polley · David Morse

Plot Based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, 'John Adams' taps into the uncertainty and intensity surrounding the birth of the American republic and its first 50 years. With the fervent...

Direction George Sidney

Cast Stewart Granger · Eleanor Parker · Janet Leigh · Mel Ferrer

Plot In 18th-century France, a young man masquerades as an actor to avenge his friend's murder.

Direction François Truffaut

Cast Jean-Pierre Cargol · François Truffaut · Françoise Seigner · Jean Dasté

Plot A movingly austere recreation of the true story of a young boy returned to 19th-Century society after growing up in the wild.

Direction Peter Watkins

Plot A reconstruction of the Battle of Culloden, the last battle to take place on British soil, as if modern TV cameras were present.

Direction Nikolaj Arcel

Cast Mads Mikkelsen · Amanda Collin · Simon Bennebjerg · Melina Hagberg

Plot In the mid-1700s, Danish King Frederik V declared that the wild heath of Jutland should be tamed, cultivated, and colonized so that civilization could spread and new taxes be generated...

Direction Robert Enrico · Richard T. Heffron

Cast Klaus Maria Brandauer · Jane Seymour · François Cluzet · Jean-François Balmer

Plot A history of the French Revolution from the decision of the king to convene the Etats-Generaux in 1789 in order to deal with France's debt problem. The first part of...

Direction Céline Sciamma

Cast Noémie Merlant · Adèle Haenel · Luàna Bajrami · Valeria Golino

Plot France, 1770. Painter Marianne is commissioned by a countess to paint the wedding portrait of her daughter Héloïse. While posing as her hired companion, Marianne is instructed to complete the...

Direction Hiroshi Inagaki

Cast Yûzô Kayama · Tatsuya Mihashi · Akira Takarada · Koshiro Matsumoto

Plot A young lord attempts to combat the official corruption endemic to the Shogunate, only to be placed in an impossible conflict of duties. He refuses to bribe a Chancelor who...

Direction Jacques Rivette

Cast Anna Karina · Liselotte Pulver · Francine Bergé · Micheline Presle

Plot In eighteenth-century France a girl (Suzanne Simonin) is forced against her will to take vows as a nun. Three mothers superior treat her in radically different ways, ranging from maternal...