Subgenre Sampler
Classics > Epic: 80 Films to Buy & Rent
Les Miserables (1935)
- Dir. Richard Boleslawski
Feat. Fredric March, Charles Laughton
- Most faithful of the numerous film versions of Victor Hugo's novel, chronicling the lifelong harassment of reformed petty thief Ferric March by the…
Cleopatra (1934)
- Dir. Cecil B. DeMille
Feat. Claudette Colbert, Warren William
- Claudette Colbert stars as the sultry Roman Empress in this baroque De Mille version. Most noted for the lavish barge scene and some startling action…
Tarzan The Fearless / Tarzan And The Trappers (1933-1958)
- Dir. Charles Haas, Robert F. Hill
Feat. Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Gordon Scott
- "Tarzan The Fearless" is feature film stitched together in the 1960's from the first four chapters a 12–part 1933 serial starring Buster Crabbe…
Sign of the Cross, The (1932)
- Dir. Cecil B. DeMille
Feat. Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, Charles Laughton…
- Pre–Code Hollywood epic from director Cecil B. DeMille, based on the Wilson Barrett play of the same name.
Forms a biblical trilogy with…
Storm Over Asia (Potomok Chingis-Khana) (1928)
- Dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin
- An epic of silent Russian cinema to rival Eisenstein, this is set around a young Mongol fur–trapper who is swindled by traders and develops a…
End of St. Petersburg, The (1927)
- Dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin
Feat. Vera Baranovskaya, Aleksandr Chistyakov
- The tensions that exploded with the 'October Revolution' in Russia, 1917 are schematised here using understated characterisations (of workers and…
Hunchback Of Notre Dame,The (1923)
- Dir. William Worsley
Feat. Lon Chaney
- Perhaps the first classic version of Victor Hugo's novel about a hunchback who becomes lovestruck with a gypsy lass in 18th century Paris. Features…
Orphans of the Storm (1921)
- Dir. D.W. Griffith
Feat. Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut…
- Vivid melodrama with the sisters Gish caught up in the turmoil of the French Revolution, encountering misery and love along the way.
Intolerance (1916)
- Dir. D.W. Griffith
Feat. Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh
- Staggeringly ambitious film has a rightful place in many critic's 'all–time' lists. Its mammoth story unfolds in four parts simultaneously…
Birth of a Nation (1915)
- Dir. D.W. Griffith
Feat. Lillian Gish
- The cinema's first major epic marked the birth of an artform – newly defining the artistic boundaries of the medium. It retains much of its…