I tend to like films that take place in a specific time period — not just historical films that try to portray actual historic figures and historic events — but films that revolve around a specific time and place. Even if it’s completely unrealistic and non-historic, like the horror-comedy Army of Darkness (1992), which takes place in “Medieval times,” supposedly the year AD 1300, with characters named “Lord Arthur” and “Duke Henry the Red.”
Someone recently asked me what my ten or twelve favorite films are. That is like asking what my favorite color is. Some shade of orange or green or yellow or red.
But I was able to come up with a list. This list doesn’t even include an M. Night Shyamalan film that I never seem to get tired of seeing: Signs (2002), or the hordes of horror films I have collected, or one of my all-time favorite directors, Quentin Tarantino, or my favorite Dutch director, Alex Van Warmerdam; indeed this list only includes one non-English language film. But the list does include one of my all-time favorite writing/directing teams: the Coen brothers.
Anyway, here are twelve of my favorite films, in order from oldest to newest, but it really doesn’t do justice to the dozens and dozens and dozens of other films that could just as easily be on this list:
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz, director), based on an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, it takes place in Vichy-controlled French Morocco during WWII. genre: classic romantic drama; starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman
Lifeboat (1944, Alfred Hitchcock) from a story by the great American novelist John Steinbeck, the entire film is set on a lifeboat launched from a passenger vessel that was sunk during WWII. genre: drama thriller; starring Tallulah Bankhead
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed), screenplay by the great English novelist Graham Greene, it takes place in Allied-occupied Vienna following WWII. genre: film noir; starring Joseph Cotten
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, Robert Mulligan), based on the novel by Harper Lee (widely considered to be the greatest American novel of the 20th century), it takes place in the fictional Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. genre: southern drama; starring Gregory Peck
Hud (1963, Martin Ritt), based on the novel “Horseman, Pass By” by Larry McMurtry (the title of which is taken from the famous line by Irish poet William Butler Yates), considered an “Anti-Western,” it is centered around a Texas cattle ranch in 1954 during an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. genre: revisionist western; starring Paul Newman
Doctor Zhivago (1965, David Lean), based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, it takes place in the time leading up to and during WWI, the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War. genre: epic drama romance; starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie
Paper Moon (1973, Peter Bogdanovich), adapted from the novel “Addie Pray” by Joe David Brown, it takes place in Kansas and Missouri during the Great Depression. genre: comedy-drama; starring Ryan and Tatum O’Neal
The Elephant Man (1980, David Lynch), adapted from surgeon Frederick Treves’s personal account and Ashley Montagu’s anthropological profile of the severly deformed Joseph Merrick, it takes place in 19th century London. genre: surrealist drama; starring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt
Fargo (1996, Joel and Ethan Coen), takes place in Minnesota in 1987. Don’t miss Season 1 (takes place in 2006) and Season 2 (takes place in 1979) of the TV series Fargo, set in the same fictional universe as the film, all of which claim: “This is a true story. The events depicted took place in Minnesota in ____. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” genre: black comedy crime thriller; film starring Frances McDormand and William H. Macy
Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet), takes place in Montmartre in the late 1990’s. genre: romantic comedy; starring Audrey Tautou
There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson), inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil!,” it takes place during the Southern California oil boom at the turn of the 20th century. genre: epic drama; starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, Wes Anderson), inspired by the writings of Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, it takes place in a fictitious Central European country on the verge of war in the 1930’s. genre: comedy; starring Ralph Fiennes