BOT's Top 50 Historical Fiction Films - The Countdown

[The Panda]

Really enjoyed getting to put this list together, thanks everyone for playing along with the nerding out.  As one last treat, sometime this weekend I am planning to map all of the Top 100 films and their time periods and post it here.  Should be able to scroll over the different pins and see the location and time period of each movie by their pin.  

 

Without further ado, here is the number 1 movie which was practically uncontested for its spot.  Also one of the five films that I'd say are in contention for my all time favorite, it includes what I'd consider maybe the greatest scene in cinematic history which I'll post here.  If I ever have kids, I'll require them to watch this movie before they graduate.

 

 

 

"It's Hebrew, it's from the Talmud. It says, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.""

 

Historical Setting: World War 2, The Holocaust in Poland

 

Source from the Period

 

"July 8th 1942: “At three o’clock (Hello had left but was supposed to come back later), the doorbell rang. I didn’t hear it, since I was out on the balcony, lazily reading in the sun. A little while later Margot appeared in the kitchen doorway looking very agitated. “Father has received a call-up notice from the SS,” she whispered. “Mother has gone to see Mr. van Daan” (Mr. van Daan is Father’s business partner and a good friend.) I was stunned. A call-up: everyone knows what that means. Visions of concentration camps and lonely cells raced through my head. How could we let Father go to such a fate? “Of course he’s not going,” declared Margot as we waited for Mother in the living room. “Mother’s gone to Mr. van Daan to ask whether we can move to our hiding place tomorrow. The van Daans are going with us. There will be seven of us altogether.” Silence. We couldn’t speak. The thought of Father off visiting someone in the Jewish Hospital and completely unaware of what was happening, the long wait for Mother, the heat, the suspense – all this reduced us to silence.

 

October 9th 1942: “Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews. Miep told us about someone who’d managed to escape from there. It must be terrible in Westerbork. The people get almost nothing to eat, much less to drink, as water is available only one hour a day, and there’s only one toilet and sink for several thousand people. Men and women sleep in the same room, and women and children often have their heads shaved. Escape is almost impossible; many people look Jewish, and they’re branded by their shorn heads. If it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed. Perhaps that’s the quickest way to die. I feel terrible. Miep’s accounts of these horrors are so heartrending… Fine specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think I’m actually one of them! No, that’s not true, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. And besides, there are no greater enemies on earth than the Germans and Jews.”

 

October 20th 1942: “My hands still shaking, though it’s been two hours since we had the scare… The office staff stupidly forgot to warn us that the carpenter, or whatever he’s called, was coming to fill the extinguishers… After working for about fifteen minutes, he laid his hammer and some other tools on our bookcase (or so we thought!) and banged on our door. We turned white with fear. Had he heard something after all and did he now want to check out this mysterious looking bookcase? It seemed so, since he kept knocking, pulling, pushing and jerking on it. I was so scared I nearly fainted at the thought of this total stranger managing to discover our wonderful hiding place…”

 

March 29th 1944: “Mr. Bolkestein, the Cabinet Minister, speaking on the Dutch broadcast from London, said that after the war a collection would be made of diaries and letters dealing with the war. Of course, everyone pounced on my diary.”

 

February 3rd 1944: “I’ve reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can’t do anything to change events anyway. I’ll just let matters take their course and concentrate on studying and hope that everything will be all right in the end.”

 

July 15th 1944: “It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realize them.”"

- Extracts from the diary of Anne Frank (1942-44)
 

Historical Context

 

"In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By the end of the war in 1945, the Germans and their allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution."  The Nazis considered Jews to be the inferior race that posed the deadliest menace to the German Volk. Soon after they came to power, the Nazis adopted measures to exclude Jews from German economic, social and cultural life and to pressure them to emigrate. World War II provided Nazi officials with the opportunity to pursue a comprehensive, “final solution to the Jewish question”: the murder of all the Jews in Europe.  While Jews were the priority target of Nazi racism, other groups within Germany were persecuted for racial reasons, including Roma (then commonly called "Gypsies"), Afro-Germans, and people with mental or physical disabilities. By the end of the war, the Germans and their Axis partners murdered up to 250,000 Roma. And between 1939 and 1945, they murdered at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly German and living in institutions, in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

 

As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people seen as biologically inferior or dangerous. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war, viewed by the Nazis as the biological "carriers" of Bolshevism, were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or brutal treatment. The Germans shot tens of thousands of non-Jewish members of the Polish intelligentsia, murdered the inhabitants of hundreds of villages in “pacification” raids in Poland and the Soviet Union, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians to perform forced labor under conditions that caused many to die.  From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and other Germans whose behavior did not conform to prescribed social norms (such as beggars, alcoholics, and prostitutes), incarcerating thousands of them in prisons and concentration camps. German police officials similarly persecuted thousands of Germans viewed as political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, Freemasons, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of maltreatment and murder.

 

World War II provided Nazi officials the opportunity to adopt more radical measures against the Jews under the pretext that they posed a threat to Germany. After occupying Poland, German authorities confined the Jewish population to ghettos, to which they also later deported thousands of Jews from the Third Reich. Hundreds of thousands of Jews died from the horrendous conditions in the ghettos in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen and Waffen SS units, with support from the Wehrmacht, moved behind German lines to murder Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials in mass shootings as well as in specially equipped gas vans. Mass shootings of Jews continued throughout the war, many conducted by militarized battalions of the German Order Police. These shooting operations are estimated to have claimed the lives of more than 1.5 million Jews.  n late 1941, Nazi officials opted to employ an additional method to kill Jews, one originally developed for the “Euthanasia” Program: stationary gas chambers. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi Germany and its Allies deported nearly three million Jews from areas under their control to Nazi-occupied Poland. The vast majority were sent to killing centers, often called extermination camps, at Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were murdered primarily by means of poison gas. Some able-bodied Jewish deportees were temporarily spared to perform forced labor in ghettos, forced labor camps for Jews, or concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. Most of these workers died from starvation and disease or were killed when they became too weak to work.

 

In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called “death marches,” in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.  For the Western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced their “Victory Day” on May 9, 1945.  In the aftermath of the Holocaust, more than 250,000 survivors found shelter in displaced persons camps run by the Allied powers and the United Nations Refugee and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Between 1948 and 1951, 136,000 Jewish displaced persons immigrated to Israel, while others resettled in the United States and other nations outside Europe. Other Jewish displaced persons emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last camp for Jewish displaced persons closed in 1957."

- INTRODUCTION TO THE HOLOCAUST

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

 

Historical Accuracy

 

"A while ago Natalie Zemon-Davis wrote that authenticity is achieved if films represent the values, relations, and issues of a period, and let the differences of the past be, instead of remodeling the past such that it might resemble the present.100 Schindler's List implies rather the counter-argument: the impression of truth should be based on the current conventions of cinema and the convergence with present-day normative and political beliefs, namely the universalization and Americanization of the Holocaust after the fall of communism. Yet this antagonistic thesis is as one-sided as Zemon-Davis's. As we have seen, the impression of truth rather relies on balancing elements of the present and even the future with those that actually do refer to the past. This idea might be true for all forms of historical discussion;101 the decisive factor seems to be, however, that the times appear to blur seamlessly into each other, and that the historicizing, transient images being semiotically and emotionally charged, too give authority to a creation of meaning related to the present and the future.

 

It is this seamlessness, this skillful composition of intertextual references and different time layers, that are systemically concealed on the one hand and that are made accessible to reflection on the other, that has become a major point of criticism of Spielberg's movie. Good arguments have been made to criticize the narrative closing toward salvific history; beyond this, the ability to represent the Holocaust in a closed narrative has been generally challenged, followed by a plea for a radical self-reflexivity of postmodern cinema. But such criticisms miss the point that film thrives on its ability to make us forget that we are not dealing with immediate images, but with narratives. As a medium able to explain the world, cinema ideally delivers the images for the mythical narratives that give present meaning to the past. Facing contingent living conditions and increasingly unmanageable amounts of information, the need for an orientation in time, for reliance and certainty, is as urgent as ever. What we need is not a constant debunking of the portrayals films provide, but rather a general awareness that films are able to represent only particular truths from a particular perspective despite their apparent omniscience.

 

When cultural historians analyze films today, they do so mostly on the precondition of seeing them as a kind of "mentality reservoir," as artifacts that can provide information about the values and ideas that were common at a certain period of time. Regarding Schindler's List, such an analysis may be premature: the "Americanization" of the Holocaust, that is, the establishing of a transnational salvation-narrative focusing on Western values, has not recognizably passed its zenith yet, despite (or maybe because of) 9/11. Nevertheless, developments have occurred: authenticity has ceased to be the sole silver bullet regarding the issue of the Holocaust. Since the second half of the 1990s, there has been in the cinema an increasing number of satirical discussions of the so-called "final solution" and Nazism overall.107 This trend can be seen as an indication that both forms have become a part of the common knowledge of popular culture, a trend to which Schindler's List has contributed a good deal.

 

Apparently, historical authentication is not necessary in order to create evidence. The next generation has decided to apply its own standards. The debate between Saul Friedlander and Martin Broszat has shown that his tory and memory can be separated only in an ideal view, and that these two should rather be thought of as two poles of a continuum rather than as clearly distinguish able categories.108 Something similar could be said about the relationship of the aesthetic-artistic truth of film and the empirical (re)constructions of historiography, which are complementary and should likewise not be seen as independent from each other. However, this should not keep us from pointing out time and again the tensions between the different approaches, from discussing their associated capabilities and limits, and from reflecting upon their changing historical conditionality."

- Balanced Truth: Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" among History, Memory, and Popular Culture

Christoph Classen and Kirsten Wächter

History and Theory Vol 48, No. 2 Theme Issue 47: Historical Representation andHistorical Truth (May, 2009), pp. 77-102

 

 

The Film Itself

 

The Story

 

"Oskar Schindler is a vain and greedy German businessman who becomes an unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric German Nazi reign when he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews. Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp, it is a testament to the good in all of us."

 

Critic Review

 

""Schindler's List" is described as a film about the Holocaust, but the Holocaust supplies the field for the story, rather than the subject. The film is really two parallel character studies--one of a con man, the other of a psychopath. Oskar Schindler, who swindles the Third Reich, and Amon Goeth, who represents its pure evil, are men created by the opportunities of war.  Schindler had no success in business before or after the war, but used its cover to run factories that saved the lives of more than 1,000 Jews. (Technically, the factories were failures, too, but that was his plan: "If this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I'll be very unhappy.") Goeth was executed after the war, which he used as a cover for his homicidal pathology.

 

In telling their stories, Steven Spielberg found a way to approach the Holocaust, which is a subject too vast and tragic to be encompassed in any reasonable way by fiction. In the ruins of the saddest story of the century, he found, not a happy ending, but at least one affirming that resistance to evil is possible and can succeed. In the face of the Nazi charnel houses, it is a statement that has to be made, or we sink into despair.  The film has been an easy target for those who find Spielberg's approach too upbeat or "commercial," or condemn him for converting Holocaust sources into a well-told story. But every artist must work in his medium, and the medium of film does not exist unless there is an audience between the projector and the screen. Claude Lanzmann made a more profound film about the Holocaust in "Shoah," but few were willing to sit through its nine hours. Spielberg's unique ability in his serious films has been to join artistry with popularity--to say what he wants to say in a way that millions of people want to hear.

 

In ''Schindler's List,'' his brilliant achievement is the character of Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson as a man who never, until almost the end, admits to anyone what he is really doing. Schindler leaves it to ''his'' Jews, and particularly to his accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), to understand the unsayable: that Schindler is using his factory as a con game to cheat the Nazis of the lives of his workers. Schindler leaves it to Stern, and Spielberg leaves it to us; the movie is a rare case of a man doing the opposite of what he seems to be doing, and a director letting the audience figure it out itself.  The measure of Schindler's audacity is stupendous. His first factory makes pots and pans. His second makes shell casings. Both factories are so inefficient they make hardly any contribution to the Nazi war effort. A more cautious man might have insisted that the factories produced fine pots and usable casings, to make them invaluable to the Nazis. The full measure of Schindler's obsession is that he wanted to save Jewish lives and produce unusable goods--all the while wearing a Nazi party badge on the lapel of his expensive black-market suit.

 

BOT User Review

 

"Such an achievement." - @ShouldIBeHere

 

"The filmmaking on display is so good it transcends the utter blackness of the subject matter. I saw it five times in theaters. The first time, it was still in limited release, and I drove 40 miles to San Francisco to see it by myself (I was 19 and none of my friends were interested). There was this old man seated next to me (honestly, I didn't even really notice him until the end), and when the credits were rolling and everyone in the theater was just sitting there, pole-axed, he turned to me and said, "I was there, in one of those camps."I was so flabbergasted and stunned all I could manage was, "oh wow..." (Surely one of the more idiotic things I could've said), and then he got up and left.The 40-mile drive back home was a thoughtful and powerful one." - @Plain Old Tele

 

"I saw it when I was in University in Ottawa.  Saw it with 4 friends.  We drove home in silence.  No one knew what to say.  You're just speechless after watching something like that.  IMO, Spielberg didn't need that film to show us how good a film maker he was but for all those who just thought of him as someone who directed light hearted movies for kids, they never thought that again after this.  And I don't think you'll ever have another director have a year the way he did in 93.  Jurassic Park destroyed box office records and then Schindler's List kills it at the Oscars." - @baumer

 

"The movie that shows the beauty of the human soul and the pure filth and hatred of that same exact soul.A towering achievement." - @The Futurist

 

"one of the most powerful viewing experiences in film historyI really feel everyone should be required to see this movie, its humanity portrayed at its highest of highs and the opposite of thatand Liam Neeson got robbed for Best Actor with all due respect to Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (my favorite actor as well)Ben Kinglsey and Ralph FIennes are legendary as well" - @GiantCALBears

 

"Appropriate that my first review on the new site should be dedicated to the most moving, powerful, and best film of all time, Schindler's List. From top-notch acting, with a compelling lead by Neeson, who dominates as Oskar Schindler in one of the most moving roles I've seen on screen, to powerful storytelling, it's a must see. Fiennes delivers a haunting performance as psychotic Amon Goeth, the new "caretaker" of the camp. His performance is as captivating as Neeson's. Ben Kingsley also delivers a stunning performance. All around, excellent acting. The story is superbly crafted, and the ending is a tear-jerker. One of the greatest scenes in cinematic history is Schindler's personal epiphany of ways he could have helped save more Jews, by selling a car or a ring, etc. Very moving scene in a bleak and tearjerking movie that should be witnessed by everyone." - @The Creator

 

"Jesus Christ." - @Jack Nevada

 

"Even though I've seen this movie far fewer times than anything else in my all-time top ten, it's undeniably powerful and unforgettable. As great as Spielberg is with popcorn entertainment, his stark approach with this film is just right, and it's hard to think of other films that have struck as much of an emotional chord within me as this one." - @Webslinger

 

"This is why we watch movies. A masterfully crafted film that never loses your attention throughout the whole three hours. The writing, directing, acting, cinematography, editing, score are all of the greatest quality and this is without doubt one of the best movies ever made." - @darkelf

 

"One of the most emotionally draining movies I've ever seen, but also one of the best viewing experiences I've had. Such a poignant piece of film history done with class. Neeson and Fiennes haven't been better and should've won in their respective categories. The cinematography is one of my favorites of all time, and the girl with the red coat is one of my favorite scenes of all time. Every person should see this at least once in their life. Speilberg hasn't made a better film since." - @acsc1312

 

"What more can I say? Such a fantastic film." - @Spaghetti

 

Factoids

 

Schindler's List was directed by Steven Spielberg.  It received 143 points and 20 votes.

 

 

Countries Represented: Algeria (1), Austria (2), Belarus (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), England (1), France (3), Germany (2), Israel (2), Korea (1), The Ocean (3), Outer Space (1), Ottoman Empire (1), Poland (2), Japan (5), Russia (1), Scotland (1), Rome (1), Spain (1), United States (18), Vietnam (1)

 

Time Periods Represented: 16th Century (2), 17th Century (2), 18th Century (2), 19th Century (5), 1920s (2), 1930s (3), 1950s (2), 1960s (8), 1950s - 1980s (1), 1990s (1), 21st Century (2), Classical Period (3), Middle Ages (2), World War 1/1910s (4), World War 2/1940s (11)

 

Cross Section of Times and Countries: 18th Century - Austria (1), 18th Century - United States (1), 19th Century - The Ocean (1), 19th Century - United States (4), 21st Century - United States (2), 1910s - The Ocean (1), 1910s-1920s - Russia (1), 1920s - United States (1), 1930s - Germany (1), 1930s - Korea (1), 1930s - United States (1), 1950s - Algeria (1), 1950s - United States (1), 1950s - 1980s - United States (1), 1960s - Brazil (1), 1960s - Outer Space (1), 1960s - United States (5), 1960s - Vietnam (1), 1990s - United States (1), Classical Period - Israel (2), Classical Period - Rome (1), Middle Ages - England (1), Middle Ages - Scotland (1), Sengoku Period - Japan (2), Tokugawa Shogunate - Japan (2), World War 1 - France (2), World War 1 - Ottoman Empire (1), World War 2/1940s - Belarus (1), World War 2 - Burma (1), World War 2 - France (1), World War 2/1940s - Germany (1), World War 2 - Japan (1), World War 2 - The Ocean (1), World War 2/1940s - Poland (2), World War 2/1940s - Spain (1), World War 2 - Austria (1), World War 2 - United States (1)

 

Directors Represented: James Cameron (1), Park Chan-Wook (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1), Kevin Costner (1), Andrew Dominik (1), Stanley Donen (1), David Fincher (2), John Ford (1), Milos Forman (1), Bob Fosse (1), Mel Gibson (1), Anthoney Harvey (1), Ron Howard (1), Terry Jones (1), Philip Kaufman (1), Gene Kelley (1), Elem Klimov (1), Masaki Kobayashi (1), Stanley Kramer (1), Akira Kurosawa (2), David Lean (3), Michael Mann (1), Penny Marshall (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Adam McKay (1), Steve McQueen (1), Theodore Melfi (1), Sam Mendes (1), Lewis Milestone (1), Wolfgang Peterson (1), Gillo Pontecorvo (1), Martin Scorsese (3), Ridley Scott (1), Steven Spielberg (4), Oliver Stone (2), John Sturges (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Wise (1), William Wyler (1)

 

Decades Represented: 30s (1), 40s (1), 50s (4), 60s (8), 70s (3), 80s (7), 90s (10), 00s (7), 10s (9)

 

 

[The Panda]

The full top 100 ranking which includes number of votes and placements for movies that tied in points to see how ties were broken

 

1.    Schindler’s List 
2.    Lawrence of Arabia
3.    Saving Private Ryan
4.    Grave of the Fireflies
5.    Goodfellas
6.    Apollo 13
7.    Gladiator
8.    Titanic
9.    Seven Samurai
10.    The Bridge on the River Kwai – 11 votes
11.    JFK – 9 votes
12.    Doctor Zhivago – 8 Votes
13.    All Quiet on the Western Front
14.    Das Boot – 8 Votes
15.    Braveheart – 6 Votes
16.    City of God
17.    Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
18.    The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
19.    The Great Escape
20.    Singin’ in the Rain
21.    Amadeus
22.    Dances With Wolves – 6 Votes, 1 Number 1 Vote
23.    Come and See – 6 Votes
24.    The Grapes of Wrath – 8 Votes
25.    Cabaret – 7 Votes
26.    The Right Stuff – 7 Votes, 2 Top 5 Placements
27.    Judgement at Nuremberg – 7 Votes, 1 Top 5 Placement
28.    The Wolf of Wall Street
29.    Catch Me if You Can – 7 Votes
30.    Ben-Hur – 6 Votes
31.    Silence – 6 Votes, 2 Top 3 Placements
32.    Apocalypse Now – 6 Votes, 1 Top 3 Placement
33.    12 Years a Slave – 11 Votes
34.    The Big Short – 9 Votes
35.    The Last of the Mohicans – 7 Votes
36.    Hidden Figures – 6 Votes
37.    Born on the Fourth of July – 5 Votes, 1 Number 1 Placement
38.    The Battle of Algiers – 5 Votes
39.    The Handmaiden – 4 Votes
40.    Zodiac – 7 Votes
41.    The Sound of Music – 6 Votes
42.    Life of Brian – 8 Votes
43.    Ran – 4 Votes
44.    The Social Network
45.    1917 – 8 Votes
46.    Harakiri – 4 Votes
47.    Pan’s Labyrinth – 6 Votes
48.    A League of Their Own – 4 Votes, 2 Number 1 Placements
49.    Lincoln – 7 Votes
50.    The Lion in Winter (1968) – 6 Votes
51.    Paths of Glory – 5 Votes
52.    The Godfather – 4 Votes
53.    Bridge of Spies – 8 Votes, 1 Top 5 Placement
54.    Malcolm X – 8 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement
55.    Dunkirk – 8 Votes
56.    Throne of Blood – 6 Votes
57.    Black Hawk Down – 5 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement
58.    Glory – 5 Votes, 4 Top 20 Placements
59.    A Beautiful Mind – 5 Votes 3 Top 20 Placements
60.    The Pianist – 7 Votes
61.    All the President’s Men – 5 Votes
62.    Spartacus – 9 Votes
63.    The Age of Innocence – 5 Votes
64.    Gandhi – 6 Votes, 1 Top 5 Placement
65.    Gone With the Wind – 6 Votes
66.    Chinatown – 5 Votes
67.    Kundun
68.    Kingdom of Heaven – 6 Votes
69.    There Will Be Blood – 5 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement
70.    Argo – 5 Votes
71.    Inherit the Wind – 4 Votes, 1 Top 3 Placement
72.    Fiddler on the Roof – 4 Votes
73.    The Thin Red Line – 3 Votes
74.    Little Women (2019)
75.    BlacKkKlansman – 7 Votes
76.    The Wind Rises – 5 Votes
77.    The Shawshank Redemption – 4 Votes
78.    Letters from Iwo Jima – 6 Votes, 2 Top 15 Placements
79.    Casino – 6 Votes
80.    MASH – 4 Votes, 1 Top 5 Placement
81.    Roma – 4 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement
82.    The King’s Speech – 4 Votes
83.    Unforgiven – 5 Votes
84.    The Last Samurai – 3 Votes, 1 Top 2 Placement
85.    Alexander Nevsky – 4 Votes
86.    Aguirre, The Wrath of God – 3 Votes
87.    Spotlight – 5 Votes
88.    Platoon – 4 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement
89.    (Tie for 88) L.A. Confidential – 4 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement
90.    1776  - 4 Votes
91.    The Godfather 2 – 3 Votes, 1 Top 5 Placement
92.    Persepolis – 3 Votes
93.    A Man for All Seasons – 4 Votes
94.    Blood Diamond – 3 Votes
95.    Becket – 5 Votes
96.    Barry Lyndon – 4 Votes, 1 Top 3 Placement
97.    First Man – 4 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement, 1 Top 25 Placement
98.    Ugetsu – 4 Votes, 1 Top 10 Placement
99.    The Searchers – 4 Votes
100.    Cinema Paradiso – 3 Votes, 1 Top 2 Placement
 

Edited May 15, 2020 by The Panda

[Plain Old Tele]

18 minutes ago, Fancyarcher said:

No, but you can cause a revolt because it ain't number one. 

NO PRISONERS! NO PRISONERS!

[Fancyarcher]

6 minutes ago, Plain Old Tele said:

NO PRISONERS! NO PRISONERS!

There may be honor among thieves, but there's none in politicians!

[Fancyarcher]

I really can't think of a more fitting number one for a top historical fiction film list then Schindler's List. Not only is it an excellent movie based off true events, but it's also one of the most emotionally draining and powerful films ever made.

Great list and great presentation @The Panda.

[Jake Gittes]

5 hours ago, Plain Old Tele said:

NO PRISONERS! NO PRISONERS!

Truly, for some men nothing is written unless THEY write it.

 

 

 

Lawrence of Arabia was directed by David Lean.  It received 500 points and 37 votes