Of all the genres film has housed throughout its 100+ year history, none exhibit the gravitas and grandiosity of the medium quite like epic cinema. Flaunting the idea that bigger is better, the greatest epic movies are defined by their magnitude, encompassing everything from the sheer scale of their stories to the sweeping grandeur of their technical mastery, the swelling scope of their thematic journeys, and the impressionable impact of their characters and performances.

The biggest, bravest, and boldest cinematic triumphs of the last three-quarters of a century are a testament to this, with the decades from 1950 onwards featuring some of the most heroic highlights of Old Hollywood and monumental masterpieces of modern filmmaking, taking the form of period pieces, war dramas, fantasy odysseys, and crime thrillers. Defined by their long runtimes and lasting legacies, these esteemed classics of film history represent some of the greatest spectacles cinema has ever seen.

Key Highlights

• Epic Cinema: Epic films are characterized by their grand scale and emotional depth.
• Timeless Classics: Many epic films have left a lasting legacy in cinematic history.
• Iconic Examples: Notable epics include ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘There Will Be Blood’, and ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
• Influential Directors: Renowned filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa have shaped the genre.

10

‘Ben-Hur’ (1959)

Few decades have embraced the scope and spectacle of epic cinema quite like the 1950s. While many of the great titles from the era do show their age through their stilted visual displays and their more methodical and laborious approach to storytelling, there are some epics from that time that continue to excite and enthrall all these years later. Ben-Hur is perhaps the greatest example of this, with its tale of betrayal and revenge combining with its daring bravado to conjure a heart-racing odyssey of hearty heroics and high drama.

Charlton Heston stars as Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince in 1st century Jerusalem who is sentenced to years of slavery when he is falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother. Incensed by the betrayal, he secures his freedom with an opportunistic turn of fate and returns to Jerusalem with a hunger for vengeance. Emotionally intelligent, especially in how it uses its injustice and enormity to evoke impassioned feelings from viewers, Ben-Hur is the quintessential rousing epic. Its spectacle is as mighty as its mammoth 212-minute runtime, and it has proven itself to be the most timeless and enduring of Hollywood’s great epics of the 1950s.

9

‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007)

The evil of greed and American capitalism has seldom been depicted on screen with such piercing and powerful an impact as it was in Paul Thomas Anderson’s brutal epic There Will Be Blood. Set amid the Californian oil boom at the turn of the 20th century, it follows enterprising prospector Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he ventures out west in pursuit of wealth and influence. Amid his success, Daniel’s insatiable appetite for riches and power only grows more volatile, and he experiences a villainous turn spearheaded by his ferocious rival with duplicitous local preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano).

Fueled by Day-Lewis’ commanding performance that manages to be both bleakly disturbing and entirely transfixing, There Will Be Blood uses its magnitude to pry into notions of wealth, status, religion, and corruption with a keen eye towards how those ideas exist within American culture. Also flaunting an atmospheric grandiosity courtesy of Robert Elswit’s gloriously imposing cinematography and Johnny Greenwood’s unsettling score, the film stands as the embodiment of a brand of evil that is uniquely American, a cutthroat brutality veiled behind a false veneer of family community. An epic of overwhelming glory, There Will Be Blood is one of the great pictures of 21st century cinema thus far.

8

‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975)

One of the most stunningly beautiful visual spectacles cinema has ever seen, Barry Lyndon represents the legendary Stanley Kubrick at his meticulous and mighty best. The period epic follows Irish rogue Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) as an awkward situation concerning a romance, his cousin, and a duel sees him leave his modest family home to enlist in the army. With morally questionable opportunism, Barry cheats and maneuvers his way to the height of European society, enchanting the wealthy though incredibly depressed Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) to supplant her elderly husband, taking the moniker Barry Lyndon in the process.

What is so fascinating about the story is that Barry’s journey isn’t necessarily an odyssey of calculating cunning but rather an indulgence in vice and fortune complemented by advantageous self-interest and a con artist’s charm. With its barbed sense of humor, painterly cinematography of gorgeous candlelight and majesty in nature, and the enormous scope with which it explores one complicated man’s life, Barry Lyndon is epic filmmaking at its most ravishing and splendid. It fills its 185-minute run with sways of favor, punishment, and ambition, conjuring a rousing picture of desire and consequence that scintillates with every passage of its crafty protagonist’s rise and fall.

7

‘Ran’ (1985)