Gone With the Wind
Having conquered the musical back in 2001 with Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann reunites with actress Nicole Kidman for the epic movie Australia.
Australia is a romantic action-adventure set in northern Australia prior to World War II, centers on an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland.
When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Hugh Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land.
So here at FemaleFirst we took a look back at some of cinema's greatest epics.
Gone With The Wind
Is perhaps the most famous sweeping epic that ever made it to the big screen and is still held in as high regard today as it was when it was released in 1939.
Scarlett O'Hara is in love with drippy Ashley Wilkes, and is devastated when he announces that he plans to marry his cousin Melanie.
She pleads with Ashley to marry her instead, but then, on the first day of the Civil War, she meets mercurial Rhett Butler. A man to match her strength of character and romantic desires, Butler changes the course of her life.
Sparks fly between Rhett and Scarlett at their first encounter and continue throughout Scarlett's first two marriages. Scarlett and Rhett finally wed, but Scarlett continues to pine for her beloved Ashley.
Despite hunger, and the burning of Atlanta, Scarlett survives the war and its aftermath, but ultimately loses the only man she really loved.
The film received ten Academy Awards, a record that stood for twenty years, and is now considered one of the most popular films of all time.
Ben Hur
it was Ben Hur that surpassed Gone With The Wind's ten academy Awards wehen it went on to win eleven in 1959, equalled only by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
In the Roman province of Judea, Jews return to the city of their birth for the census. A bright star in the night over Bethlehem marks the birth of Jesus Christ. Years later, Roman commander Messala (Stephen Boyd), who was brought up in Judea, takes command of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. His Jewish boyhood friend Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) greets him. Messala is delighted. But when Judah refuses to name Jewish patriots, Messala sentences him to the slave galleys and imprisons his mother, Miriam (Martha Scott), and sister, Tirzah (Cathy O'Donnell). Judah vows revenge.
For three years Ben-Hur suffers the brutalities of Roman war galleys, until he is freed, adopted, and brought to Rome by Quintus Arrius, the Roman Admiral whose life he saves in battle.
Though lauded as an athlete and desired by Flavia, a wanton, Ben-Hur insists upon returning to Jerusalem in the hope of tracing his family. On the way he encounters Sheik Ilderim, a lusty Arab who plans to race his chariot against the Romans at the Jerusalem games.
Having astonished the Sheik by his horsemanship, Ben Hur arrives at his derelict home and immediately confronts Messala, who tells him that his mother and sister are dead.
Ben-Hur now agrees to ride for Ilderim in the chariot race against Messala. He drives Messala to the ground, fatally injured, and accepts the victor's laurel from the Governor, Pontius Pilate.
But Messala has his revenge. With his dying breath he tells Ben-Hur that Miriam and Tirzah are alive but lepers.
Over the years Ben Hur's popularity has not diminished as many recognise the effort to get a movie of this scale shot in a time before computers. And now almost fifty years after it was released Ben Hur remains the grandest of Hollywood's classic biblical epics.
Spartacus
Released in 1960 Spartacus followed the rebellious slave, who has never been free, forced to be a gladiator.
Starring Kirk Douglas the film was based on Howard Fast's novel and directed by Stanley Kubrick it is widely regarded as one of the best sword and sandal movies of all time.
After Varinia, the woman he has fallen in love with, is bought by Crassus (Laurence Olivier) Spartacus leads a slave uprising across Italy that soon has thousands marching on Rome, recruiting people as they go.
Rome sends army after army to squash the rebellion but Spartacus and his army, who are heading to the coast to escape on the ships if Cilician pirates, defeat them all.
But the pirates have been bought by Rome and offer to take only Spartacus, the pregnant Varinia and Spartacus's senior officers, to Asia to live like kings. But Spartacus refuses to leave behind the rest of his men and they find themselves surrounded by three Roman armies.
They fight for their freedom but the rebel army is defeated. In the movie's most memorable scene the surviving members of the rebel army are told that they will not be harmed if they identify Spartacus.
One by one they all stand up claiming they are Spartacus and they are condemned to crucifixion.
The sixities was the prime time for the sword and sandal epic with the likes of Ben Hur and El Cid also gaining notority as some of the greatest epics committed to film.
Cleopatra
Epic saga of the legendary Queen's reign from the time Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt until her death some 18 years later.
Cleopatra is portrayed as a schemer, firstly to gain control over the Egyptian kingdom from her brother with whom she ruled jointly.
Having gained the confidence of Caesar, they become lovers and she bears him the son he never had. Her attempts at ensuring that the boy takes his rightful place in Rome are thwarted when Caesar is assassinated and she flees back to Egypt.
Many years later Marc Antony, now responsible for the eastern half of the Roman Empire, seeks an alliance with Egypt. He and Cleopatra become lovers and form a military alliance but are forced to retreat after losing a major naval encounter at Actium. Both eventually take their own lives.
When this film was released, it was known as much for its opulent filmmaking as it was for its huge budget overruns--it took two years to film because of Taylor's various ailments and a major script rewrite by Joseph L. Mankiewicz as well as the very public and tempestuous offscreen affair between costars Taylor and Richard Burton, who duplicated their romance on the silver screen as the doomed Cleopatra and her true love, Marc Antony.
Zulu
Based on actual events, this film takes place in 1879 at Africa's Roarke's Drift, a military post occupied by 97 British soldiers. And is one of the biggest war movies and perhaps the only epic in this genre of film.
The Englishmen receive word that they are about to be besieged by 4,000 Zulu warriors armed with spears and even rifles.
The soldiers stay and fight the warriors, desperately using everything they can find to withstand the onslaught.
Australia is released 26th December
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Having conquered the musical back in 2001 with Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann reunites with actress Nicole Kidman for the epic movie Australia.
Australia is a romantic action-adventure set in northern Australia prior to World War II, centers on an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland.
When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Hugh Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land.
So here at FemaleFirst we took a look back at some of cinema's greatest epics.
Gone With The Wind
Is perhaps the most famous sweeping epic that ever made it to the big screen and is still held in as high regard today as it was when it was released in 1939.
Scarlett O'Hara is in love with drippy Ashley Wilkes, and is devastated when he announces that he plans to marry his cousin Melanie.
She pleads with Ashley to marry her instead, but then, on the first day of the Civil War, she meets mercurial Rhett Butler. A man to match her strength of character and romantic desires, Butler changes the course of her life.
Sparks fly between Rhett and Scarlett at their first encounter and continue throughout Scarlett's first two marriages. Scarlett and Rhett finally wed, but Scarlett continues to pine for her beloved Ashley.
Despite hunger, and the burning of Atlanta, Scarlett survives the war and its aftermath, but ultimately loses the only man she really loved.
The film received ten Academy Awards, a record that stood for twenty years, and is now considered one of the most popular films of all time.
Ben Hur
it was Ben Hur that surpassed Gone With The Wind's ten academy Awards wehen it went on to win eleven in 1959, equalled only by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
In the Roman province of Judea, Jews return to the city of their birth for the census. A bright star in the night over Bethlehem marks the birth of Jesus Christ. Years later, Roman commander Messala (Stephen Boyd), who was brought up in Judea, takes command of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. His Jewish boyhood friend Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) greets him. Messala is delighted. But when Judah refuses to name Jewish patriots, Messala sentences him to the slave galleys and imprisons his mother, Miriam (Martha Scott), and sister, Tirzah (Cathy O'Donnell). Judah vows revenge.
For three years Ben-Hur suffers the brutalities of Roman war galleys, until he is freed, adopted, and brought to Rome by Quintus Arrius, the Roman Admiral whose life he saves in battle.
Though lauded as an athlete and desired by Flavia, a wanton, Ben-Hur insists upon returning to Jerusalem in the hope of tracing his family. On the way he encounters Sheik Ilderim, a lusty Arab who plans to race his chariot against the Romans at the Jerusalem games.
Having astonished the Sheik by his horsemanship, Ben Hur arrives at his derelict home and immediately confronts Messala, who tells him that his mother and sister are dead.
Ben-Hur now agrees to ride for Ilderim in the chariot race against Messala. He drives Messala to the ground, fatally injured, and accepts the victor's laurel from the Governor, Pontius Pilate.
But Messala has his revenge. With his dying breath he tells Ben-Hur that Miriam and Tirzah are alive but lepers.
Over the years Ben Hur's popularity has not diminished as many recognise the effort to get a movie of this scale shot in a time before computers. And now almost fifty years after it was released Ben Hur remains the grandest of Hollywood's classic biblical epics.
Spartacus
Released in 1960 Spartacus followed the rebellious slave, who has never been free, forced to be a gladiator.
Starring Kirk Douglas the film was based on Howard Fast's novel and directed by Stanley Kubrick it is widely regarded as one of the best sword and sandal movies of all time.
After Varinia, the woman he has fallen in love with, is bought by Crassus (Laurence Olivier) Spartacus leads a slave uprising across Italy that soon has thousands marching on Rome, recruiting people as they go.