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Gone with the Wind (1939)
If Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara represents the Old South in Gone with the Wind, then her selfish vanity paints a pricklier portrait of this historical culture than one might expect, deserving nothing less than the sweeping Technicolor grandeur of what may be Hollywood’s most ambitious historical epic put to film.
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Island of Lost Souls (1932)
Dr. Moreau’s twisted biological experiments are brought to disturbing, expressionistic life in Island of Lost Souls, immortalising H.G. Welles’ classic sci-fi story onscreen as a horror fable complete with fearsome prosthetics, treacherous villainy, and a tightly-plotted script cautioning against the dangers of interfering with nature.
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1900 (1976)
Bernardo Bertolucci’s bold artistic statement on the eternal struggle between fascism and socialism comes full circle in his period epic 1900, echoing formal patterns across the lives of two friends from opposing sides of the class divide, and landing the full weight of their intrinsic connection as operatically as the decades of Italian interwar history…
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See How They Run (2022)
There are whodunits which may be more sophisticated in their construction, but See How They Run still makes for a visually adventurous and hilariously fun meta-study of the genre, borrowing a great deal from Wes Anderson’s stylistic repertoire to break down and assemble its conventions into a sharply witty mystery set in 1950s London.
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Summer Interlude (1951)
Marie and Henrik aren’t the first lovers in an Ingmar Bergman film to be brutally torn apart, but they are first to be developed with such visual splendour and warmth, as Summer Interlude dreamily calls back to those nostalgic, youthful vacations that seemed to go on forever, flourishing in the tiny tensions and pleasures of…
