Lists: 20 Costume films

We love a good costume or period drama here at The Projector: Here's 20 of the best to continue our Lists: (we are not including biblicals or epics)

• THE SCARLET EMPRESS - 4 from the 1930s. Dietrich stuns in 1934 in Von Sternberg's amazing sets.
• MATA HARI - Garbo ideal and looks dazzling, 1931
• MARIE ANTOINETTE - MGM's opulent 1938 retelling with a perfect Norma Shearer. Kitsch classic.
• JEZEBEL - Bette got the kudos in 1938 through with this classic Wyler - and that red dress in black and white.   

• 4  by Luchino Visconti:  THE LEOPARD. No-one does classic costume drama like Visconti (until Kubrick came along with BARRY LYNDON). This 1963 epic is sheer bliss, particularly that long ballroom sequence at the climax, as Burt and Claudia dance to that Verdi waltz .... sheer cinema, (as per my many comments at Visconti label)
• DEATH IN VENICE. Even if one does not like the film much one has to admire how stunning it recreates the Venice lido, and Dirk's performance. I met him in 1970 at the BFI when he was promoting it. 
• LUDWIG. The new full version on 4-disk bluray is long overdue, as per recent review. Romy and Helmut are sheer perfection. 
• L'INNOCENTE. Luchino's final, directed from a wheelchair in 1976, looks so stupendous, as per review Visconti label. 
  

• MOONFLEET and QUENTIN DURWARD (below) both 1955, are the height of 1950s MGM costume dramas,  I love them both. Stewart Granger, Joan Greenwood, George Sanders ideal here. 
• QUENTIN DURWARD - as are Robert Taylor and Kay Kendall among those French chateaus.
• THE VIKINGS - Jack Cariff shot this in Norway and its still fantastic now. 
  
• TEMPEST - An Italian spectacle from De Laurentiis and Lattuada in 1958, Silvana Mangano shines as does Viveca Lindfors as Catherine The Great. I liked it as a kid. 
• EL CID - Anthony Mann's timeless saga set in medieval Spain, Heston and Loren at their peaks.
• TOM JONES - Tony Richardson's 1963 romp looks perfectly 18th Century, with great roles for Finney, York, Greenwood, Evans, Griffiths etc. 
• DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES. Polanski makes this 1967 vampire comedy look perfectly period too, as per recent review below. 
  
• THE LION IN WINTER. We love this view of medieval England as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II go head to head in 1968. 
• BARRY LYNDON. THE Kubrick classic? I can watch it over and over, particularly that scene at the gaming tables by candelight as the Countess of Lyndon locks eyes with Barry, as the music throbs ....
• THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. Scorsese's perfect costume drama from 1992.
  
• A ROOM WITH A VIEW and MAURICE: We have to include Merchant-Ivory's best, great performances and period detail. 
• MARIE ANTOINETTE. Sofia Coppola's very modern take on the doomed French queen has a lot of great moments too and some perfect casting.
• Zeffirelli too with ROMEO AND JULIET and BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON.
  

• And on television: Working our way through all 14 episodes of the 1982 classic series THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN, mesmerising stuff set in India in 1942 and 1943. 
• Those Jane Austens: the BBC's impresive PRIDE AND PREJUDICE from 1996, the lovely 1995 film of PERSUASION and Ang Lee's SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, and the tv remake .... as per reviews, 
• And the BBC's smouldering Mr POLDARK returns for 9 episodes of Series Three on Sunday. Ideal Sunday night stuff to relax with a G&T as 'Poldark and handsome' rides his trusty steed Seamus over those 18th Century Cornish cliffs, with Demelza and all the usual characters, Again, most of these covered in detail at labels. 

People We Like - continued ... some British actors

Douglas Hodge, and as Grimes in the current DECLINE AND FALL. (He was a terrific Zaza in LE CAGE AUX FOLLES a few years back).

Rory Kinnear, and as the Frankenstein monster in PENNY DREADFUL.  (also recently in THE IMITATION GAME, SKYFALL, SPECTRE, and theatre including another HAMLET and THE THREEPENNY OPERA). 

Patrick Baladi may have started off playing Nancy in a school production of OLIVER! but is kept busy now, in the current LINE OF DUTY among others - we like him in  the STELLA series with Ruth Jones, where he looked good wearing leathers, and he marries a man in Tom Hollander's REV.

Hugh Bonneville, now that he has left the Earl of Grantham behind at DOWNTON ABBEY, seems to be having fun, amusingly dragging up in PADDINGTON (right), and being hilarious in DAVID WALLIAMS & FRIEND, as well as BBC series W1A, and that surprise turn in DA VINCI'S DEMONS. Looking forward to PADDINGTON 2. 

Daniel Boys, actor and singer, recently seen in the BOYS IN THE BAND revival.

Then of course there's Tom Hollander, and Aidan Turner (POLDARK and handsome! - see Poldark label.)

Poldark (and handsome) returns ....

We have had to wait 16 months for the second series of POLDARK on the  BBC, Sunday nights will be more tolerable now, as we return to those wild Cornish land and seascapes as our smouldering hero (Aidan Turner) rides his trusty steed and copes with all that drama, topless down the tin mines, or comforting his wife Demelza (or Grizelda, as a friend insists on calling her), and there are some new interesting characters too. Good too to see that veteran character actress Caroline Blakison as the old granny shufflng her tarot cards .... 10 episodes, so better order in some more gin & tonics. (see Poldark label for review of first series.). Aidan is one of these actors who certainly can wear those period costumes.

We will have to check out that horror series BEING HUMAN, looks quite intriguing - with pre-POLDARK Aidan with Russell Tovey ...

How not to do Agatha Christie ?

Another AND THEN THERE WERE NONE - from the BBC shown three nights after Christmas. Reviewers and some bloggers have liked it (hello Mark), but am I the only one who found it excruciating? - dragged out to three hours, the life seemed sucked out of it. I have not read Christie' original or seen the 1945 film version, but my sister assures me it followed the book faithfully, with everyone dead at the end, leaving a puzzle for the police when they finally get to that deserted island with 10 bodies, off the coast of Devon, in 1939.

Well I much prefer the glossy 60s and 70s versions: TEN LITTLE INDIANS in 1965 where Hugh O'Brien and Shirley Eaton are the main young couple, Fabian and Daliah Lavi provide the glamour and the oldies are Wilfrid Hyde White as the judge and Dennis Price as the doctor, plus Stanley Holloway and Leo Genn. That was a zippy Harry Alan Towers production set in a Swiss mountain top fortress. 
The 1974 AND THEN THERE WERE NONE was a very glossy international production with the bonus of being filmed in Iran, with leads Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer, French stars Stephane Audran and Charles Aznavour (who croaks one of his hits before being the first to expire), Richard Attenborough and Herbert Lom were judge and doctor, and we had not one but two Bond villains: GOLDFINGER Gert Frobe and Adolfo Celi. (see Christie label for more on these).

SPOILERS AHEAD: Both of the above had the main young leads surviving at the end, as that gun had some fake bullet - so they were able to spoil to real killer's plot ...... This new BBC version is very dark and gloomy, cue lots of bad weather and thunderstorms,  but also lots of unnecessary flashbacks, but the casting is the thing here: POLDARK's Aidan Turner shows how to wear a towel - as a low-slung sarong, Douglas Booth - he of the cheekbones one could grate cheese on - is the first to go, Toby Stephens looks very dashing, Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson, and Charles Dance ..... but in all it a long way from those glossy 80s all-star Christie adaptations one can enjoy any time.

Now for the BBCs new WAR AND PEACE, in 6 hours (their previous one in 1972, with a young Anthony Hopkins) ran for 20 episodes .... and includes sex scenes which Tolstoy "forgot to write" according to veteran adapter Andrew Davies ..... we have been warned!

Poldark and handsome

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Connoisseurs of BBC costume dramas are well served with the new series POLDARK, a re-boot of a 1970s series which I never saw. After a so-so new MOONFLEET (TV label) and a dreadful version of JAMAICA INN (too dark and murky and one could barely hear the mumbled dialogue) it is good to see a sunny Cornwall in this new series, from the popular novels by Winston Graham. 

Ross Poldark returns to England after fighting in the American Revolution. His family and friends thought he was dead. The woman he hoped to marry is now engaged to his cousin. His father is dead, and the property (a ti mine) he has inherited has been allowed to deteriorate. It is the late 1700s in Cornwall, England. This is a family drama, but is also about the challenges and conflicts between the rich and the poor. It is a time when fishermen are not catching much fish, tin and copper mines are closing down because prices are too low, but the price of food and rents are high. Ross faces the challenge of making his land productive, caring for the tenants who rely on him, and trying to win back the woman he loved - or finding a reason to live without her.

Cue lots of horse-riding on clifftops, nice period costumes, and a slow burn relationship between Poldark and the girl he rescues Demelza - particuarly after Demelza sees his skinny-dipping in the sea from the cliff tops .... This has turned out to be enormously popular here, with females (and not a few blokes) all agog over Irish actor Aidan Turner, the ideal brooding (complete with that scar) and he wears the period clothes well. Poldark. Last night's episode featured Robin Ellis, the original Poldark, as the judge with a harsh sentence for a poacher, despite our hero's pleading for him. Warren Clarke, in his last role, has some juicy moments too as Podark's uncle whose son has married Elizabeth, Ross's beloved.  

Its all perfect for late evening Sundays with a gin and tonic to hand - ditto MR SELFRIDGE and INDIAN SUMMERS (set in a very colourful Simla in India in the 1930s). We are being spoiled at the moment. If the BBC want more Cornish swashbuckling I recommend a new version of Daphne Du Maurier's FRENCHMAN'S CREEK (I saw the 1944 film recently and this lady and the pirate saga could do with a re-boot too). 

Another new series BANISHED has got a lot of attention too, I have not seen any of it yet, but may tune in this week to see the beefed up, butched up Rossell Tovey in the lead - Russ is also in the gay LOOKING on as well now, where he usually has trouble keeping his clothes on each week ....