Dubbed the Master of Suspense, English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock is known for his expert writing, impeccable cinematography, and storytelling proficiency. Whether you are interested in visual aesthetics, well-written stories, or simply movies in general, Hitchcock has something for you. This list serves as a resource for both seasoned Hitchcock fans and newcomers to explore his top films, what makes them special, and why they remain relevant today. Here are Alfred Hitchcock’s top 8 movies:

8. To Catch a Thief (1955): How Hitchcock Pioneered Modern Action Cinematography

To Catch a Thief follows American John Robie (Cary Grant) as a retired thief living peacefully until a handful of burglaries on the French Riviera point the police in his direction. Hoping to prove his innocence and earn the trust of the police, Robie decides to take matters into his own hands and catch the thief in the act. After meeting two different, yet equally fatal, femme fatales, Francis Stevens (Grace Kelly) and Danielle Foussard (Brigitte Auber), Robie realizes that his escapade may prove to be far more challenging than he previously predicted.

To Catch a Thief earns its place on this list not only for its realistic portrayal of an American navigating a foreign locale but also for exhibiting how Hitchcock can bring a character to life who is struggling with so many difficulties all at the same time. A police investigation, asking old friends for favors, romantic interests, and exploring multiple suspects simultaneously; what could easily be a full season of a TV series is expertly and concisely written into a one-hour and 45-minute film.

From a technical point of view, Hitchcock used this film to advance aerial photography, a concept that had been explored very little leading up to the 1950s. To Catch a Thief is one of the first films to use a helicopter to film a car chase sequence. The film crew made a makeshift camera mount for a helicopter using the materials they had on set. This use of cutting-edge technology makes the viewing experience of To Catch a Thief all the more exciting and intriguing.

7. The Lodger (1927): The Silent Masterpiece That Invented the ‘Hitchcockian’ Hero

Alfred Hitchcock’s third film and first commercial success, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, highlights how Hitchcock’s films from the silent era still hold up to the intellectual standards that Hitchcock has earned for himself today. Loosely based on the many stories of Jack the Ripper, The Lodger takes place in a London neighborhood that is home to a serial killer called “The Avenger.” The Avenger is described as having a covered face and only targets young, blonde women who are out late at night.

This news is shocking to the Bunting family, but the shock turns to dread as they realize that the strange man living in their room for rent goes out every night on mysterious errands, never forgetting to conceal his face. This intelligent thriller doesn’t forget to keep the twists and turns coming, keeping viewers engaged for its silent yet vivid runtime.

What makes The Lodger such a fascinating watch is that it shows how not-so-different the people of the past were compared to us today. Technology, fashion, and the way people speak certainly changed over the years, but this near-century-old film shows audiences that the way people think and what they deem important have remained the same. For those interested in watching the people of history seemingly return to life, The Lodger is the perfect movie.

6. Rear Window (1954): Why This One-Room Set Is Cinema’s Most Perfect Thriller

Told entirely from the perspective of a crippled L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) confined to his Manhattan apartment, Rear Window tells the deeply compelling story of a man who thinks he overheard a murder occur yet can do very little about it. Critically praised and universally regarded as one of Hitchcock’s very best, Rear Window proves that you don’t need exotic locations or nonstop thrill-a-minute action sequences to craft an effective thriller. A professionally written script (in this instance by John Michael Hayes) will suffice.

Filmed entirely in a massive Paramount Studios soundstage, Rear Window fully utilizes every detail of the intricate setting where the narrative takes place. Simple features such as a railing or garden wall, which are innocuous at first glance, may prove to be challenging obstacles for the characters later in the film. A two-hour film taking place in one location may sound like a boring or tedious affair, but in the hands of skilled filmmakers, it makes for a thriller that is not to be missed.

5. Psycho (1960): The Low-Budget Gamble That Shattered Hollywood Taboos

Known as possibly the greatest horror film of all time, Psycho roared onto the big screen in 1960 with a tremendous cultural buzz surrounding the release. As the oldest R-rated film—having been made eight years before the founding of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America)—Psycho has been frightening generations with not only its black-and-white depictions of gore but also its portrayal of a vividly realistic and diabolical serial killer. Starring Janet Leigh alongside Anthony Perkins and John Gavin, Psycho proves that even with a low budget, a talented group of filmmakers and actors can create a timeless piece of storytelling.

As exemplary as the horror sequences in Psycho are, what stands out in the film more than what people give credit for is the main character: Marion Crane. Marion, played by Janet Leigh, is a fascinating character who slowly reveals more and more of herself to the audience as the film progresses. At first, clad in all-white clothing, Marion’s wardrobe becomes darker and darker as the choices that she makes do the same. Along with a diabolically complex performance by Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh brings life to an incredible character who once again points to the brilliance of Alfred Hitchcock.

4. Notorious (1946): Why the FBI Followed Hitchcock During Production

Notorious, aptly released in 1946, is about the daughter of a German spy sent to Rio de Janeiro in order to track down and spy on a ring of Nazi scientists who fled from Germany after World War II. Alicia Huberman, portrayed by Ingrid Bergman, thinks she is up to the task, but everything changes when she is reunited with an old flame of hers who just so happens to be the leader of the ring of Nazi scientists. Coupled with a growing infatuation for a fellow US spy (Cary Grant), Alicia must choose between two lovers and navigate through her mission, all while her life hangs in the balance.

With the great efforts made by the Allied countries during the post-World War II period in order to seek out Nazis in hiding, it’s impressive for a Hollywood film to tackle this issue simultaneously, one which was such a critical element of the political zeitgeist of the time. Notorious captured this period of time so effectively, as a matter of fact, that Hitchcock claimed to have been followed by the FBI for a few months during the production of the film because the movie dealt with uranium as a key plot element.

Notorious earned its place on this list because of its compelling narrative, aesthetically pleasing black-and-white cinematography, and motivation to push the Motion Picture Production Code (MPPC) to its limit. One oft-mentioned scene from the film portrays a two-minute and thirty-second kiss between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. However, the MPPC did not permit an on-screen kiss longer than three seconds. The solution crafted by Hitchcock was a collage of short kisses between the actors intertwined with brief pieces of dialogue. A crazy solution, but effective and, more importantly, memorable.

3. North by Northwest (1959): The Blueprint for the Modern Spy Epic

Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason, North by Northwest follows a New York City businessman named Roger Thornhill who is mistaken by a group of foreign adversaries for being an American agent, forced to drive a car while severely intoxicated, then framed for murder. What follows is a thrilling cross-country pursuit that wraps up in an iconic fight sequence atop Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.

What places North by Northwest so high on this ranking is its fantastic writing and iconic setpieces. Thornhill is a great character for an audience to follow because he is so out of his element and oblivious to the forces at work around him. Right from the start of the film, the tension skyrockets as Thornhill is thrown into a dangerous and exciting world of spies and murderers. Actor Cary Grant even remarked on set that he “can’t make head nor tail of [the script]!” With all the workings of a great thriller—and a femme fatale thrown in for good measure—North by Northwest is a film better experienced than read about.

2. The Birds (1963): Turning Ordinary Nature Into an Avian Nightmare

Departing from the usual human-versus-human drama, Alfred Hitchcock pits city girl Melanie Daniels (played by Tippi Hedren) against a flock of bloodthirsty seagulls in a small Northern California town. Known as one of the best horror films of the 1960s, The Birds achieves “must-watch” status because of its effectiveness at building suspense and uncertainty around its avian antagonists. The movie first portrays its mysterious birds as simply unusual, but by the end of the film, the terror experienced by the characters is so intense that a sense of dread is found just by watching a bird sit still.

A common trend among films with absurd premises (particularly horror movies) is that the movie abandons character and plot in pursuit of scares and spectacle. The Birds is able to avoid this pitfall by first spending lots of time with the main characters in order for the audience to build up empathy for the protagonists and also by creating a very compelling drama among the principal characters that underlies the “killer seagull” aspect of the film. By taking the ordinary and turning it into the villain, The Birds stands as one of the great Hitchcockian thrillers that’s still effective well into the 2020s.

1. Vertigo (1958): Why This Tale of Obsession Is Potentially the Greatest Film Ever Made

John Ferguson is a retired police detective of the San Francisco Police Department who’s been hired to follow a woman who’s convinced that she’s being stalked by the spirit of Carlotta Valdes, a woman who’s been dead for years. Ferguson is carefree about the matter, believing this to be an open-and-shut case of hysteria. However, his carelessness turns to obsession as he’s walking down the street one day and sees Carlotta Valdes.

Jimmy Stewart, who plays Ferguson, is known by many as a “family man” who’s acted in such films as It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and How the West was Won. This reputation is cast aside as Stewart takes on a character of such unsatiated obsession towards a woman that Vertigo is genuinely an uncomfortable movie to watch. Flanked by talented actresses Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes, Jimmy Stewart is the primary reason this movie should be watched by all interested in film, and a perfect script by Hitchcock only makes the experience all the more riveting. To experience what the epitome of the “thriller” is and to simply see what the medium of film as a whole is capable of, Vertigo is that top Hitchcock movie.

The Tudors is an English historical drama that ran between 2007 and 2010. Since its release, it has become known for its popularity amongst history enthusiasts, but it is also notorious for its many historical inaccuracies. Were these inaccuracies accidental as a result of poor research? Or were they intentional changes made by the writers and producers to enhance the viewing experience of their audience?

In this article, we will count down the five most obvious historical inaccuracies in The Tudors, review the most shockingly contrived scenes, and question why they were included in the series at all.

The Tudors: Artistic License or Accidental Blunder?

There is nothing that divides history enthusiasts like the discussion of period dramas.

Some people credit period dramas as being the origin of their interest in history. Some people enjoy them for what they are, not a factual documentary, but a little light-hearted entertainment based on events of the past. On the other hand, some people simply cannot stand to watch anything that is not 100 percent accurate.

There are many period dramas to choose from. The White Queen, The White Princess, The Spanish Princess, Reign, Becoming Elizabeth, Gunpowder, and The Power and the Passion are just a few of the television series based on 15th to 17th-century figures and events. The Tudors, another such series, was created and written by Michael Hirst for the American television channel, Showtime. 

The series ran for 38 episodes and followed the reign of King Henry VIII. Although the timings are jumbled pretty much all the way through, we can derive that the series begins around 1520 and ends with King Henry’s death in 1547. The star of the show is Johnathan Rhys Meyers, who gives an outstanding and often sympathetic portrayal of King Henry and artfully brings to life the most iconic moments of his reign.

Michael Hirst himself acknowledged the fact that his work was not one of unquestionable accuracy. However, he has also claimed that he hoped and expected people to draw inspiration from the series and carry out their own research as a result of their enjoyment. Of The Tudors, he said the following. “One of the effects of The Tudors has been to drive people back to the history books with renewed interest, and we’re drawing in those who had initially no interest in the subject. From the feedback I’ve been getting, the show has galvanised interest even in academic history.” 

Let us now delve into The Tudors and review five of its craziest inaccuracies. These are not just slight errors with costumes, multiple uses of words and phrases that did not exist during the era, or notable moments where modern-day items are left in shots on screen. These are incomprehensible errors that must surely have been made consciously, occasionally for reasons that are not completely clear to the viewer.

Inaccuracy Number 1: The Absent Tudor Sister

Of all the mistakes, inaccuracies, and anomalies included in the television series The Tudors, the absence of King Henry VIII’s sister is the most obvious. Furthermore, it may actually be the most historically problematic.

King Henry had two sisters. They were named Margaret and Mary Tudor, and both were equally important. Margaret was the elder; she first married King James IV of Scotland, and later married twice more. Mary was the younger; her first husband was King Louis XII of France, and her second was Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk.

In The Tudors, however, King Henry is provided with only one sister. Interestingly, it is almost impossible to determine which has been kept and which has been omitted. The character is given the name Margaret. In contrast, although her story is almost entirely fictional, it seems to align a little more with the life of Mary Tudor.

So, for what reason was the second sister excluded from the drama altogether? The answer given was that there were already too many characters named Mary. Mary Boleyn and Princess Mary already featured as somewhat minor characters. Obviously, the production team concluded that Mary Tudor was just one Mary too many for their audiences to cope with. This is somewhat patronizing to viewers, who are more than likely to be able to distinguish between three entirely different characters and storylines, even if they do have the same name.

Apparently, the same problem does not apply when it comes to the name Thomas, for we have Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas More, Thomas Howard, Thomas Wyatt, Thomas Boleyn, Thomas Tallis, and Thomas Seymour, none of whom were selected for removal.

It is a particular shame that neither sister married the king of Scotland, for it is only through King James IV and Margaret Tudor that we can get to the bottom of the royal family tree. King Charles III of England is descended not from King Henry VIII or any of his children, but through King Henry’s elder sister Margaret and her offspring. Without Margaret and James, Britain’s current royal family, as we know it in 2025, would simply not exist.

Inaccuracy Number 2: Portugal, Marriage, and Murder

Inaccuracy number two follows directly from inaccuracy number one. Margaret Tudor, the only sister King Henry VIII has been left with, is appointed for marriage not to the king of Scotland or the king of France, but instead to the king of another European nation. For an unknown reason, it was the king of Portugal that Margaret was to wed. This would have come as something of a surprise to Maria of Aragon and Eleanor of Austria, the real wives of the actual King of Portugal, Manuel I.

Perhaps the writers assumed that their audiences would know very little about the history of Portugal, and therefore be less likely to complain about the obvious error?

Marriage to either the king of Scotland or the king of France would have been more appropriate, since those were the monarchs whom Margaret and Mary actually married. However, by the time of Margaret’s marriage, the new king of France (Francis I) had already inherited the throne and was already married to Queen Claude. Scotland was not an option, for it was mentioned so little in the series that it hardly seems as if it exists at all.

So, in episode four of series one, Margaret is accompanied all the way to Portugal by the Duke of Suffolk. The two are clearly attracted to each other (as Mary and the duke were in real life). During a violent storm at sea, and after a game of cards, they dismiss their servants and sleep together before even arriving in Portugal.

One thing the series does get right is the reluctance with which Margaret sets sail in the first place. She was horrified by the idea of marriage to the king of Portugal, just as the real Princess Mary was by the idea of marriage to the king of France. Upon meeting her future husband, the fictional Margaret is disgusted, and makes an excellent first impression by publicly fainting at the mention of bearing his children.

By the end of the episode, the fictional Princess Margaret has boarded a ship, had sex with the Duke of Suffolk, married the mysteriously unnamed king of Portugal, and then, as a final flourish, murdered her weakening husband by smothering him with a pillow the morning after the wedding.

In reality, it was Mary who married the Duke of Suffolk in this hectic manner. Her husband, King Louis XII of France, died on the first day of January in 1515. Following this death, Mary was kept in isolation at the Hotel De Cluny for a period of six weeks, the intention being to confirm that she was not carrying an heir to the throne. Of course, this was not the case.

When King Henry VIII heard this news back in England, he sent none other than his best friend, the Duke of Suffolk, to France to collect his sister. The duke was given strict instructions to negotiate with the French Council, to put Mary’s affairs in order, and to transport her safely back to England.

Predictably, the Duke of Suffolk and Princess Mary were married within a few weeks of his arrival. Although the exact date of their secret wedding is unknown, it has been suggested that they married sometime between the 15th and 20th of February that same year.

By the time the newlyweds returned to the English court, King Henry had learned of what had taken place. He was so angry over the betrayal of trust that he decided to have Mary sent into exile and the duke executed. It was Cardinal Wolsey who stepped in and suggested an alternative, financial punishment. Predictably, both Mary and Charles were restored to favor within a month or two.

Inaccuracy Number 3: A Fling With Mary Boleyn

In The Tudors, the role of Mary Boleyn was played by an actress named Perdita Weeks. She is not a major character, but appears several times for short periods throughout seasons one and two. Mary Boleyn is portrayed as a likeable, fun-loving, unambitious, and promiscuous character. She is mistress not only to King Henry VIII of England, but also to King Francis I of France. It is for this reason that she is known as “the great prostitute.” 

It is suggested in The Tudors that King Henry becomes bored with Mary very quickly. After just two or three encounters, he rejects her advances and demands that she leave his presence. The affair begins in the episode entitled Simply Henry, and is over in less than 60 minutes of screen time.

In reality, the length of the relationship between King Henry and Mary is unknown. However, historians are fairly sure that it exceeded three years. This is quite a different affair from the three days of passion represented in the series. In fact, two of her children were rumored to have been fathered by King Henry rather than her first husband, William Carey. Both Catherine Carey and Henry Carey later became favorites of Queen Elizabeth I, who at the least was their cousin, but at the most could have been their half-sister.

So, why was Mary Boleyn done away with so quickly, even though she played such a central role in the lives of both King Henry VIII and the rest of the Boleyns? Viewers can only assume that writers wanted to get her out of the way in order to move swiftly onto the love story starring Anne, the other Boleyn girl.

Inaccuracy Number 4: The Death of Cardinal Wolsey

It is in episode ten of series one that Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, one of the principal characters in the series, is finally killed off. This is not a problem in itself, for Cardinal Wolsey died around halfway through King Henry VIII’s reign. On the whole, the circumstances seem to make sense, and the timings appear to add up correctly. The only thing that is wrong—something that is glaringly obviously wrong—is the manner of the Cardinal’s death.

In reality, Cardinal Wolsey died of natural causes, possibly brought on by the anxiety, distress, and upheaval caused by his downfall and disgrace. Evidently, this death was not exciting enough for The Tudors. Instead, they had poor Cardinal Wolsey commit suicide in his prison cell.

Out of all of the episodes of The Tudors, this is perhaps the biggest injustice done to a historic figure. The series suggests that Cardinal Wolsey prematurely ends his life out of fear, whilst in reality, he bravely soldiered on to whatever end awaited him. He died not by his own hand in an empty jail room, but of weakening health, surrounded and comforted by the brothers of the Abbey of Saint Mary in the Meadow.

Cardinal Wolsey breathed his last on November 29 in 1530, having arrived at his final resting place just three days earlier. At the command of King Henry, he had been travelling back to London, but had been forced to break his journey due to the worsening of his sickness. His last words were apparently, “If I had served God as diligently as I have served the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.” 

Most historians insist that, as far as he himself would have been concerned, Cardinal Wolsey’s death was conveniently well-timed. It is thought that by dying a natural death, he escaped the fate that awaited him at the Tower of London. However, there are a few academics who argue that Cardinal Wolsey might have been forgiven by King Henry VIII, and may even have been pardoned and granted permission to live away from court as archbishop of York.

On the whole, Cardinal Wolsey’s character was given an excellent portrayal by Sam Neill. He was also granted a fair amount of screen time. In 1988, the historian John Guy stated the following regarding the relationship between King Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey: “Only in the broadest respects was the King taking independent decisions; it was Wolsey who almost invariably calculated the available options and ranked them for Royal consideration; who established the parameters of each successive debate; who controlled the flow of official information; who selected the King’s secretaries, middle-ranked officials, and who promulgated decisions himself.” It is fair to say that—if nothing else—the series adequately brings to life this manner of relationship.

Inaccuracy Number 5: The Death of Henry Fitzroy

With the correct casting and some major amendments to both timeline and script, Henry Fitzroy may have had the potential to become an engaging and memorable character. Unfortunately for King Henry’s much-loved but illegitimate boy, he played such an insignificant part in The Tudors that viewers may wonder why the writers bothered including him at all. He appears in only two episodes, numbers two and five of season one, and is killed off around twelve years too early. It seems likely that the production had no place for another Henry, or simply did not know what to do with him during the years leading up to his death.

But what are the few facts regarding this real, historic figure? Firstly, Henry Fitzroy was born out of wedlock in the year of 1519. His mother was King Henry VIII’s mistress, Elizabeth Blount. Of all his illegitimate children (of whom there were surprisingly few), Henry Fitzroy was the only one that King Henry chose to acknowledge as his own. The chosen name tells the historian everything they need to know. Firstly, the child was Henry, just like his father. Secondly, the following name of Fitzroy literally translates as “son of the King” from Norman French.

King Henry was thrilled to have been given a male child. Over the previous decade, he had seen no success in producing an heir with Catherine of Aragon. Now, Henry Fitzroy was living, breathing proof that the fault lay not with the King. The baby was described as a “goodly man child of beauty.” 

In the series, Henry Fitzroy is killed off fairly swiftly, at an unspecified age, after suffering from an unnamed childhood disease. To be fair, since infant mortality was shockingly high during this era, the idea hardly seems unreasonable or outlandish. However, in reality, this is not how events panned out. Whilst residing at Saint James Palace in London, Henry Fitzroy died on July 23, 1536. At the time of his death, he was aged 18. He had lived even to see the downfall and death of his godfather, Cardinal Wolsey, and also to see the disgrace and execution of his stepmother, Anne Boleyn.

The famous chronicler Thomas Fuller stated the following regarding the death of Henry Fitzroy. “Well was it for them that Henry Fitzroy his natural son was dead, otherwise had he survived King Edward the Sixth, we might have heard of a King Henry the ninth, so great was his father’s affection and so unlimited his power to prefer him.” 

Henry Fitzroy left behind his young wife, Mary Howard of the Norfolk family. The union had produced no children. Strangely, despite his love for his deceased son, King Henry VIII did not grant Henry Fitzroy a state funeral. Instead, he left all arrangements to the Duke of Norfolk. Consequently, Henry Fitzroy received only a simple and modest funeral service and was buried without much ceremony. He was laid to rest in the Howard family vault in Thetford Priory, with only the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey in attendance.

King Henry did not forget about Henry Fitzroy. In April of 1537, the year after Fitzroy’s death, King Henry ordered 80 masses to be said for his soul.

Is The Tudors Worth It?

In this article, we have reviewed five of the biggest mistakes in the television series The Tudors. The main question to answer is: Is it worth viewing, in spite of its shortcomings?

The long and short of it is that no production can please everyone. No matter how qualified the writers, no matter how experienced the cast, no matter how knowledgeable the designers, no matter how immaculately researched the script, there would always be a problem for a small percentage of viewers. Even if the production were written and directed by King Henry VIII himself, there would be somebody, somewhere, who would take great delight in declaring… well, that’s not right.

The viewing of period dramas such as The Tudors is an entirely personal choice. Whether you grow to love it or hate it is down to many factors and preferences.

One may argue that, what it lacks in historical accuracy, it more than makes up for in style, excellent performances, ample excitement, and overall entertainment value.

Few artists enjoy such enduring popularity and prestige as Edward Hopper. The famous American artist had a unique relationship with cinema. Hopper was a known lover of the movies. At the same time, his works have had a lasting and far-reaching impact on the world of film for decades. Let’s explore the connection between movies and Edward Hopper’s timeless paintings.

Edward Hopper’s Cinematic Inspirations: Did He Paint Movie Scenes?

The pensive movie theater usherette of New York Movie, or the ominous mundanity of Gas, are as likely to be seen hanging on museum walls as they are on dime store walls. They are also frequently referenced in movies, cartoons, TV shows, and advertisements.

Edward Hopper is considered the ultimate painter of 20th-century solitude. He was actively painting from the beginning of the 19th century until 1965. His name is often followed by words like loneliness, isolation, alienation, and timelessness.

There is an undeniable feeling of melancholy in Hopper’s paintings. In a departure from most of his realist contemporaries, Hopper depicted urban life in a subtly stylized manner, brimming with psychological layers. His artworks stand somewhere among realism, impressionism, expressionism, and surrealism.

Hopper’s art is populated by lonely figures, looming buildings, ominous skies, voyeuristic windows, and mysterious facades. The pure colors, stark lighting, and economy of background noise or detail give his paintings the effect of silence and timelessness that they are so known for. His figures are solid and austere, but the work is moving, intense, and often, dramatic. Hopper’s art is often likened to freeze frames from movies. His pictorial choices—the subtle expressionism of his composition, framing, and lighting—converse closely with movies.

Hopper’s Cinematic Worlds and Narrative Tension

In his 2020 film Two or Three Things I Know About Edward Hopper, German director Wim Wenders remarks: “In front of Edward Hopper’s paintings, I get the feeling they are scenes from movies that were never made… I start wondering what’s the story that is beginning here; What will happen to these characters in the next moment?”

Wender’s questions echo a common reading of Edward Hopper. It seems there is a constant desire to uncover what his art is about or to bring it to life, to insert movement and narrative into the paintings. This can come across as a merely illustrative reading of the artwork, but it seems to be much more emphatically a response to the cinematic tension that is a fundamental aspect of Hopper’s career.

Hopper created worlds when he painted. Worlds filled with their own rules, moods, characters, emotions, and themes. These spaces are heavy with narrative suggestions, even if they do not need any narrative conclusion; the images are powerful enough to make the audience wonder anyway.

Exploring the Cinematic Tension in Edward Hopper’s Art

There is a kinship between Edward Hopper’s production process and that of filmmaking. Hopper walked and sketched the city for long hours, just like a location scout working on a film. He planned all his paintings in dozens of ink and pencil sketches, like a storyboard. These sketches, always accompanied by the annotations of his wife and fellow artist Josephin Hopper, resemble a cinematographer’s translation of a screenplay into visual language.

Cinematographer Ed Lachman, who has worked with Wim Wenders, Sofia Coppola, and Todd Haynes, said: “Hopper created a state of spirit, atmospheres, and emotional contexts for his characters, without telling anyone story. He only gave clues. We, photography and art directors, also work like that. Our language, the strength of cinema, is the images.”

Hopper’s Mastery of Emotional Composition

Hopper was an expert at conveying emotion and conflict through images alone. His human characters, who are often the subject of much speculation, rarely have expressive manners. The drama of his scenes is a drama of composition. The four non-conversing figures in Nighthawks do not have easily readable expressions. Some viewers project their own dysfunctions onto them, while others project hope.

The ominous quality of the painting comes from the still darkness that’s pressing down on the light of the diner. In Office at Night, nothing in the expression of the characters indicates any particular emotion. It is the harsh, artificial light, the high, oblique viewpoint, and the odd shape of the room that creates the feeling of unease.

Hopper’s Cinematic Techniques: Light, Perspective, and Tension

Hopper’s point of view is sometimes voyeuristic, showing us an outside view of unsuspecting subjects. At other times, he takes us inside the rooms, restaurants, train cars, and city streets of the Hopperesque world. Even when we are brought inside, we are still dislocated, much like the experience of watching a movie or a play. We follow the characters into their worlds but remain unable to affect the scene.

As a highly regarded American Realist, Hopper uses unconventional techniques to give his paintings emotional weight. He breaks the rules of realist perspective with oblique angles, contradictory viewpoints, and unstable spaces, creating an aura of disorientation that evokes visual tension, a technique also seen in silent films.

Light is a key component in Hopper’s work. The artist reportedly once affirmed, “All I want is to paint light at the side of a house.” Light in Hopper is not just light; it is color, form, and atmosphere as well.”

The artificial illumination of Automat washes out the sitting figure, and the light shapes in the background further explain her sense of isolation. The bright midday light creates stark shadows in Second Story Sunlight and House by the Railroad, dotting these buildings with unsettling, mysterious auras. Hopper’s light shapes his spaces and figures. In his works, light is so elevated that it is just as important as it is in the world of cinema.

Edward Hopper’s Love for Cinema

Edward Hopper’s history with cinema is a mutual affair. His love of film and theater is well documented, as is the far-reaching impact his art has had on movie directors and cinematographers. Born in 1882, Hopper saw the birth, rise, and many revolutions of cinema. He was a young boy when audiences saw the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat for the first time. During his student years, Hopper traveled to Europe several times, where he acquainted himself with European pictures and the European art scene.

It was around this time, during the early 1900s, that several ground-breaking film movements were developing in Europe, including German expressionist cinema. This movement pioneered several filmmaking techniques. It helped authors express their ideas through lighting, framing, and set design. Hopper seemed to develop a conceptual affinity with these movies at a moment when he was trying to find his own style. This is better seen in his etchings from this period. The 1921 etching Night Shadows marks one of his most unrealistic configurations, very similar to expressionist film trends of the time.

Hopper’s Symbiosis with American Cinema and Film Noir

Hopper’s interest in the movies was two-fold: there were the stories told on screen and their visual language, and there were people who went to see them. Hopper observed and captured it several times throughout his career. In the 1940s, Edward Hopper and American cinema achieved true symbiosis. The transition from the Great Depression into yet another Great War ushered in a darker tone in Hollywood and the rise of film noir.

The bleak crime thrillers and violent melodramas of film noir were popular in post-war America. These seemed to be Hopper’s favorite types of movies. The noir tone had a visible influence on Hopper’s art. In turn, filmmakers found ample inspiration in Hopper’s moody, cynical, psychological, and mysterious America.

The Legacy of Nighthawks: How Hopper’s Iconic Painting Shaped Movies

Hopper’s most famous work, Nighthawks, is a movie staple, having been referenced in everything from Twin Peaks to The Peanuts. The first of many Nighthawks references in cinema happened in 1946, in the noir classic The Killers. The Killers is a screen adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s story of the same title. Nighthawks was also inspired by Hemingway’s book, and it incorporates visual elements of the crime films of the 1930s, even calling back to a street corner diner in the proto-noir Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). When Robert Siodmak adapted The Killers to film, he reproduced Nighthawks into the moving picture, and its cinematography features many Hopperesque silhouettes, lighting, and framing.

Edward Hopper’s Enduring Impact on Filmmakers and Movie Classics

Just a few years later, while developing his film Force of Evil (1948), director Abraham Polonsky took his cinematographer George Barnes to a Hopper exhibit, pointed to the paintings, and said: “This is how I want our film to look.” The influence of Hopper’s voyeuristic point of view and sublimated tension of banal scenes can be felt in films like The Naked City, Vertigo, Scarlet Street, and most evidently in Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Hitchcock was very candid about Hopper’s influence on his work. The American master also influenced Michelangelo Antonioni, David Lynch, and Roy Andersen. Famously, Hopper’s House by the Railroad was a key inspiration for Hitchcock’s famous film Psycho (1960). The painting has also inspired the foreboding houses in Giant, Days of Heaven, and even The Addams Family.

Hopper’s Lasting Legacy in Cinema and Pop Culture

Even after his death in 1967, which coincided with a cinematic revolution in Hollywood, Hopper’s works still influenced many filmmakers. He has been referenced in cult classics, thrillers, psychological dramas, comedy cartoons, teen shows, and music videos. Forty years after Abraham Polonsky, director Ridley Scott took his crew to see Nighthawks, directing his crew to base the entire look of his ground-breaking sci-fi Blade Runner on it.

Wim Wenders channeled Hopper’s America in his cult classics Paris, Texas and The End of Violence, years before his homage 2 or 3 things I know about Edward Hopper (2020). In 2013, the Austrian filmmaker Gustav Deutsch told a woman’s life story in 20th-century America through recreations of Hopper’s paintings in Shirley: Visions of Reality.

Celebrating the festive season with Christmas classics, old Hollywood favorites, and modern hits from across the decades is every cinephile’s idyllic way to mark the arrival of December.

Christmas films based on festive books are given a head-start in the public consciousness, given that the source material is often already established, popular, or even pre-existing in the canon.

Read on to discover six films, originally based on books, that we love to love every holiday season.

1. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Arguably the most beloved and enduring Christmas film of all time, It’s a Wonderful Life is actually based on Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story The Greatest Gift, published just three years before the movie’s release, in 1943. In turn, The Greatest Gift is based loosely on Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. 

Philip Van Doren Stern was an American writer and Civil War historian. He was a celebrated author of various Civil War books, which were recognized as authoritative by contemporary scholars. He worked as an editor at Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf where he compiled many anthologies of short stories.

His greatest contribution to the field of American literature came in 1943. He began writing his story, The Greatest Gift, in 1939 and finished it in 1943. However, Stern was met with a wall of disinterest—publishers were not keen on his 4,000-word story, feeling it sat in an unmarketable position between short story and novella. Undeterred, Stern self-published 200 printed copies, which he sent to friends as Christmas cards in 1943. Eventually, the story was published as a book the following Christmas.

One of Stern’s original pamphlets came across the desk of acclaimed Hollywood Director Frank Capra, who said he “had been looking for it all his life.” Capra’s adaptation starred James Stewart and, upon its release in 1946, received five Academy Award nominations. The movie leaned closely on the source material, and the pivotal scene in which Clarence saves George from suicide is taken almost verbatim from Stern’s short story:

“The water looked paralyzingly cold. George wondered how long a man could stay alive in it. The glassy blackness had a strange, hypnotic effect on him. He leaned still farther over the railing. . . 
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ a quiet voice beside him said. 
George turned resentfully to a little man he had never seen before. He was stout, well past middle age, and his round cheeks were pink in the winter air as though they had just been shaved.” 

Its lasting message of friendship, community, and courage means that It’s a Wonderful Life remains just as wonderful, nearly 80 years on from its release.

2. The Snowman (1982)

Raymond Briggs’s wordless picture book, The Snowman, was first published in the UK in 1978. Four years later, television producer John Coates created an animated version of the tale, commissioned by Channel 4. It was broadcast on Boxing Day, December 26, 1982, in the channel’s inaugural year of broadcast. It has been shown every Christmas since. In 1983, the animation was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Film. That same year, the film won a BAFTA award (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for Best Children’s Program.

By 1984, The Snowman’s popularity had soared to such an extent that global superstar David Bowie was asked to record a special introduction to the film. He did, embodying the character of the boy as an adult, and the short scene became synonymous with the animation as a whole.

In 2012, The Snowman and the Snowdog, a sequel to the original, was created by the same producer, John Coates, to mark the 30th anniversary of The Snowman. In reverse order, the book of the sequel was released in 2015.

3. The Polar Express (2004)

For Chris Van Allsburg’s 1985 fantasy picture book, the writer and illustrator won the annual Caldecott Medal for illustration of an American children’s picture book. It would be his second win, after Jumanji (another of his books, which was made into a box office hit film!).

The book opens with a boy in his bed on Christmas Eve, listening for the sounds of Santa’s sleigh. Instead, he hears a steam train outside. The book is set in Michigan, but soon escapes realism when the boy boards the steam train bound for the North Pole. The train is a magical, idyllic space where cocoa, candies, and carols are limitless.

When the train and the passengers reach the North Pole, the conductor tells them that Santa Claus will choose one of them to receive the first gift of Christmas. The boy is chosen and asks for a bell from Santa’s sleigh. A kindly elf takes a bell from the sleigh and offers it to the boy, which he takes and stores carefully in his dressing gown pocket. When it is time to return home, the boy discovers the bell has disappeared. On Christmas morning, the boy opens a box and finds the bell, delivered by Santa. When the boy rings the bell, only he and his sister can hear its gentle din.

An allegory for childhood innocence and believing in the magic of Christmas, the book ends with the boy’s adult reflection:

“At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.”

In 2004, a film based on the book was written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, using human actors (including Tom Hanks, Daryl Sabara, and Jimmy Bennett) who were animated using a live-action performance capture technique. The film remains such a festive staple that the “Polar Express Experience” was created in 2016, providing steam train journeys across the United States, Canada, and the UK to replicate the magical world of Allsburg’s original storybook.

4. The Bishop’s Wife (1947) / The Preacher’s Wife (1996)

Robert Nathan’s 1928 novel The Bishop’s Wife has inspired two festive remakes. The first, 1947’s The Bishop’s Wife, starred Hollywood favorites Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven.

The film was adapted by Leonard Bercovi and Robert E. Sherwood (a Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winner), following the novel’s plot closely. Cary Grant plays the angel Dudley, who comes to Earth on a mission to earn his wings from God. To do so, Dudley must save a human soul. His project is Bishop Henry Broughman, who prays for divine guidance to find the funds to support the building of a new cathedral for his community.

Dudley supports Henry in more spiritual endeavors, patching up strained relationships with his wife, Julia, and their daughter, Debby. In early previews, audiences disliked the film, prompting copious rewrites. When the film premiered, it was acclaimed by critics, but failed to perform at the box office. The producers carried out market research that showed people avoided the film as they thought it was religious.

In 1996, the film was remade, with the title The Preacher’s Wife, starring a new generation of Hollywood stars. The screenplay was written by new scriptwriters, though credits were given to the scriptwriters of The Bishop’s Wife and to Robert Nathan for his original text. Superstar Whitney Houston starred as Julia, alongside Denzel Washington as Dudley and Courtney B. Vance as Henry. This time, the film was an instant hit and received the Academy Award for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score. Whitney Houston’s movie soundtrack became the best-selling gospel album of all time, and the film itself propelled Houston’s career to new heights.

Denzel Washington produced the film through his company Mundy Lane Entertainment. He told Variety Magazine that the story carries a universal message of family and faith, all thanks to Robert Nathan’s novel, which, at over 100 years old, has stood the test of time.

5. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Sally Benson was an American writer of short stories and scripts. She was best known for her stories for adolescents, including the creation of Judy Graves, the heroine of the Junior Miss stories published in The New Yorker. In 1942, she wrote Meet Me in St. Louis, a set of fragments from a year in the life of a family. The story was part of Benson’s long-running New Yorker series, 5135 Kensington (the name of the family home).

In 1944, the story was turned into a Technicolor Hollywood musical featuring the now iconic Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and The Trolley Song. Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe adapted Benson’s Kensington stories, which were later published as a novel.

The movie was a critical and commercial success, becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 1944. In 1994, on its 50th anniversary, Meet Me in St. Louis was recognized by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and added to the United States National Film Registry.

6. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

The Muppet’s Christmas Carol is often considered one of the most accurate and entertaining versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Following in the footsteps of many screen adaptations came a unique concept: A Christmas Carol, told by the Muppets alongside a live actor, Michael Caine, as Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Brian Henson was the first creative hired for the project, as director. This would be his first feature film and would mark the passing of the torch from his father, Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, who had died two years earlier.

Henson’s previous work on films such as Labyrinth and The Witches armed him with a capacity for showing both the darkness and the light in a story concurrently—something he mastered in the bittersweet scenes featuring a puppet Tiny Tim and the Cratchits (Kermit and Miss Piggy).

The movie was not a huge success upon its release on December 11, 1992, though it grossed $27.2 million (making back its $12 million budget). But the movie has only grown in popularity. A 2022 survey by Radio Times revealed that 63% of respondents watch the film every year, and it consistently ranks high on seasonal streaming charts, with an 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Dickens is often called “The Man Who Invented Christmas”, and while this is an exaggeration, he certainly shaped the elements we now associate with a traditional Christmas: feasting, family, and forgiveness. Payne’s film, The Holdovers, updates these themes for a new era. Both works explore redemption during Christmas, though the source of transformation differs. The idea of the Christmas Spirit became ingrained in our culture when Dickens published his novella in 1843. In Payne’s film, characters strive to revive this spirit amid adversity, evoking nostalgia.

The Significance of Christmas Carols

The Holdovers is set at a prestigious boarding school for boys called Bartons. While most head home for the Christmas holidays, a few unfortunate students are left behind. They “holdover” at the school, supervised by the world-weary teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti). The film opens with a choir singing a Christmas carol, rooting the story in the fabled setting of Dickens’s tale. Just as Dickens structured his novella in staves, Payne punctuates his film with carols throughout.

The title A Christmas Carol guides the audience to view the story through the lens of a Yuletide fable. Unlike the sweet music in the opening of The Holdovers, Dickens’s tale begins with the macabre line: “Marley was dead, to begin with.” The shadow of death looms large over both works, emphasizing that our redemption must happen in life. In The Holdovers, despite the choir boys’ sweet voices, the carol poignantly sings of Jesus’s sacrifice, setting the stage for themes of redemption. The school setting of The Holdovers makes the motif of lesson learning more literal than in Dickens’s work, but both tales aim to impart moral lessons.

Hunham: Human and Humbug

The film introduces Paul Hunham, whose name closely resembles the word human, hinting at his concealed humanity (and, amusingly, Scrooge’s favorite curse: humbug!). He isolates himself at his desk, choosing diligent work over human connection—an immediate reference to Ebenezer Scrooge’s path. The headteacher’s plea to Mr. Hunham to “at least pretend to be a human being” further highlights this, alluding to Hunham having goodness “at his core,” akin to Ebenezer’s hidden pearl, as he is described as: “solitary as an oyster.” Hunham’s life hints at familial tragedy, with parental loss and abuse leading to an awkward young man, unanchored in the world. He once came close to marriage but does not divulge what went wrong. Like Scrooge, his layered miseries have culminated in the cynical recluse we meet.

A Christmas Ghost Story

Dickens’s tale is a classic Christmas ghost story, a genre that Payne’s film explores, too. The walls of the school are lined with memorials to Barton boys killed in action, from the Great War to Vietnam—a stark reminder of life’s fragility. This intrusion of the harsh realities of the adult world into the protective school environment underscores the gross injustice of young lives lost. However, Payne also presents a more sinister class commentary. When another “holdover” boy is rescued by his father for a skiing vacation, we hear that his father is with Pratt & Whitney, an aircraft-making defense company. This profession afforded such luxuries as helicopter rides and skiing vacations in stark contrast to the soldiers on the front line, such as Curtis Lamb. His name symbolically highlights the injustice of the poor boys’ fate (referring to a sacrificial lamb).

Curtis Lamb is the son of the school cook named Mary (Da’vine Joy Randolph), adding further biblical allusions that convey Payne’s social message. As Cratchit observes in A Christmas Carol, “life is made up of meetings and partings.” Grief and loss are central threads in The Holdovers, but so is rebirth. This is illustrated in the moving scene where the bereaved mother Mary visits her pregnant sister, passing on her dead son’s baby shoes and clothes so they can be given a new purpose.

Christmas Past and Future

The central “holdover,” Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), is framed like the young Ebenezer of Christmas past. Tully is left at school, bitter that his schoolmates are flown home to see their families. Unlike Ebenezer, Tully does not have to wait until old age to see the effect of such neglect. His own ghost of Christmas future is his curmudgeonly teacher, Paul Hunham. Initially frustrated with Tully’s insolence, Hunham recognizes a gifted, perceptive, and bruised young man whose absence of parental love has left him lashing out. Payne’s movie uses the template of ghostly omens, infusing them into the parallel lives of Tully and Hunham, highlighting their potential for redemption through connection with each other.

Christmas Present

Ms. Crane (Carrie Preston) stands as the heart of the film—the ghost of Christmas present. If Tully and Hunham show each other their potential pasts and futures, then the joyous Ms. Crane embodies the present. She arrives in a burst of color and light, contrasting with the drabber 1970s aesthetic. Her Christmas Eve party unites young and old, family and friends. A lingering shot of her sister and nephew (who is portrayed as having an undisclosed disability but is the center of the party) parallels Tiny Tim. The home is full of children, reminding us of life’s potential.

Tully shares a chaste kiss with a radiant young woman whose enthusiasm counteracts his gloom. This pivotal scene in presenting the Christmas present underscores the message of redemption through love and family. It is the moment when the trio of misfits—Hunham, Tully, and Mary—show compassion for each other’s loneliness at Christmas and behave selflessly to alleviate their sadness.

Ignorance and Want

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as a social reformer, criticizing the punitive poor laws and attacking the cruelty of Malthusian philosophy. Payne somewhat subverts this by reminding viewers that money is no substitute for love. Tully opens a card full of cash from his absent parents but soon forgets it, opting for a fun-filled day out in Boston with his new family: Hunham and Mary. In one of the darkest elements of Dickens’ novella, Ignorance and Want are personified as ghoulish waifs. In Payne’s film, these abstract threats are embodied by the holdovers themselves.

In a shocking display of social ignorance, a holdover boy, Kountze (Brady Hepner), insists the bereaved mother Mary is merely a servant who should not be treated as an equal. Hunham balks at his ignorance, blaming their closeted world at the school for creating such a narrow worldview. In addition, the film shows us that the boys have no material wants (far from it) but crave love, safety, and nurture—something Dickens’s poor Cratchit family has in abundance. Both of these two works illustrate that neither financial security nor love alone can sustain a family; both are necessary for a young person to thrive.

Father Figures

Father figures in both works are problematic. Set in a boys’ boarding school, male relationships are prominent. Hunham reveals his father beat him; Angus takes Hunham (and the viewer) to meet his father, who is in a mental hospital; his stepfather wants to send him to military school. Hunham steps into this void, reminding Angus that no one is destined to become their father.

Similarly, Scrooge’s redemption is exemplified by his becoming a “second father” to Tiny Tim. The finale signals true transformation for Hunham, who sacrifices his career and life at Barton’s so that Tully will not be sent to a military academy. The viewer has been haunted by the dead boy Curtis Lamb, foreshadowing that Tully’s enrolment in military school would almost certainly mean a tragic death in Vietnam. Like Scrooge, Hunham’s redemption saves a child from a premature death.

The Christmas Spirit in “The Holdovers” and “A Christmas Carol”

For Dickens, the Christmas spirit was rooted in a Christian message. After all, Tiny Tim’s famous cry of “God bless us, every one!” reminds the reader that companionship and love are a Christian duty. In a satisfying diversion from Dickens’s novella, Payne’s film explicitly eschews religion (despite many church scenes and religious iconography). Instead, it embodies the teachings of Hunham’s revered humanist philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. After giving Aurelius’s Meditations to both Mary and Tully, Hunham demonstrates the belief that “People exist for each other.”

The mirroring of Hunham and Tully’s final goodbye suggests their redemptions are complete. Just as the spirits in Dickens’s tale vanish once their work is done, Hunham takes to the road with his trailer and stolen cognac, a changed man. It is up to Tully to keep the lessons and the Christmas spirit alive in order to change his future.

The tales of King Arthur and his knights, not to mention the wizard Merlin, have been entertaining audiences for over a millennium and are now some of the most recognizable tales in Western storytelling. The ancient tales are full of action, drama, romance, and suspense, making them excellent source material for film and television, a medium that has breathed new life into the stories. This is a brief look at the history of King Arthur on the silver screen, from grand epics to absurdist comedies to gritty re-imaginings and everything in between.

The Source Material for King Arthur

King Arthur, or whoever inspired him, was probably a British warlord who lived shortly after the Romans left the British Isles in the early 5th century CE. Britain was swarmed by Germanic invaders, and this warlord defended the island against these incursions. Very little is known about this time, and the historical events were combined with legend in Welsh poetic and oral tradition, obscuring things even further.

The first mentions of Arthur were in the late 6th and early 7th centuries CE. His character was codified in the 12th century in Geoffrey of Monmouth‘s History of the Kings of Britain. This work of history would go on to inspire troubadours and storytellers. They embellished the tale, adding elements that would become staples of the legend, such as the knights, the Round Table, the Holy Grail, and the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. If there was a definitive version of the Arthurian legend, it would be Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, written in the late 15th century.

After the Middle Ages, Arthurian legend fell out of favor, only to be revitalized in the 19th century, being a centerpiece of the Romantic movement. Operas, novels, and stage plays all featured the drama surrounding Camelot. This revived interest carried on into the 20th century. In addition to films, the Arthurian legends inspired TV shows, video games, comic books, and virtually every other form of media. Even works that do not directly follow the legend but reference it tangentially are popular, such as the appearance of Excalibur or tales inspired by Gawain and the Green Knight.

Early Arthurian Films

Arthur and his knights were the subject of many movies during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Some of these included The Adventures of Sir Galahad in 1949, Knights of the Round Table in 1953, and Lancelot and Guinevere in 1963. These films used the Arthurian myth, but the historical accuracy is, at best, a suggestion. The real Arthur, or whoever inspired the legends, was a Romano-British chieftain in the 5th or 6th centuries, though these films show characters in 15th-century clothing, armor, and buildings, or at least what a mid-20th-century movie costume and set designers thought the 15th century looks like. This is no doubt due to the influence of Malory on the mythos. In many ways, their connection to Arthur is limited, and these films are medieval dramas with a thin Arthurian coating.

Possibly the most famous work of this early era would be the film Camelot in 1967. Based on a Broadway musical by the same name, the film features legendary actors Richard Harris as King Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere, and Franco Nero as Lancelot. The film was the tenth highest-grossing movie of the year, though it received mixed reviews from critics, who complained about the overly elaborate sets and costumes and the bloated three-hour run time. Another criticism was the location shots, or more specifically, the lack of any. Instead of the rolling green hills of England or the mountains of Wales, the film was shot in the sagebrush-covered hillside of Burbank, California. To even the most casual moviegoer, it was obvious that this was a film set rather than an authentic location, which breaks the tenuous yet vital suspension of disbelief.

An Absurdist Take

If the Golden Age of Hollywood’s attempts to depict Arthur could be described as anything, they would be colorful and sincere, telling an earnest story in a vibrant, campy, yet heartfelt manner. This changed with the irreverent countercultural movement of the 1970s. When this new attitude was combined with Arthurian tales, the result was one of the most famous and popular movies featuring King Arthur and his knights.

Released in 1975 and made on a shoestring budget, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is an absurdist comedy from the British troupe. Centered around the quest for the Holy Grail, the movie features coconuts as a substitute for horses, uppity peasants who are part of an anarcho-syndicalist commune, an annoying Frenchman, a Trojan Rabbit, an indestructible knight, foes who want a shrubbery, a perilous castle filled with young nubile women, a vicious bunny, Tim, and an appropriate anti-climax. The film not only breaks the fourth wall, but shatters it, and occurs simultaneously in the 10th century and the modern day.

The movie, of course, plays fast and loose with the legends of Arthur, choosing absurdist comedy over accuracy at every opportunity, However, there are some aspects that are faithful to the original tales. It was mostly filmed in Scotland and features real medieval castles, which automatically makes it more accurate than Camelot. Other aspects, such as the Black Knight refusing to allow Arthur to pass, resulting in single combat, are common tropes in medieval literature. Lancelot flying into a berserk rage and slaughtering innocents, only to offer up a half-hearted apology, is something that occurred in several tales about the legendary warrior. These, and other small aspects of the movie, are used for laughs but are welcome additions. They were almost certainly included by Monty Python member Terry Jones, who was also a medieval historian and lover of English literature.

Receiving mixed reviews when first released, the movie has gained in popularity over the years and is today considered one of the greatest comedies of all time. Like an inverse of the musical-turned-film Camelot, it would inspire its own musical stage production, Spamalot. The internet has given Monty Python and the Holy Grail a resurgence, with the film constantly referenced or made into memes on message boards, in comment sections, and on social media.

And Now for Something Completely Different

A few years after Monty Python made their version of Arthur’s tale, another filmmaker took the genre in a totally different direction. As early as the 1960s, director John Boorman had made plans to create an Arthurian epic for the big screen. After talks with movie studios, he was offered the chance to direct a live-action Lord of the Rings, and even had a brief correspondence with JRR Tolkien, though this fell through. Several elements of the planned fantasy movie were incorporated into his eventual epic, 1981’s Excalibur. Like the earlier films, Excalibur was anachronistic. While technically set in the early Middle Ages, it depicts Arthur, his knights, and Camelot in the late Medieval Era, with plate armor-wearing knights, stone castles, and concepts such as chivalry and courtly love. The film was intended not to be historical but mythological, and takes the bulk of its story from Le Morte D’Arthur, bringing the legend to life.

Featuring an all-star cast, including Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, and Nicol Williamson, it also featured other upcoming actors such as Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, and Ciaran Hinds. The story loosely centers around the love triangle between Arthur, Guenevere, and Lancelot, culminating in the search for the Holy Grail. The overall tone of the film is serious and earnest, with grand sweeping locations, larger-than-life characters, and a score that utilized the bombast of Richard Wagner to great effect.

Reviews were mixed, with critics praising the cinematography but also critical of the seemingly disjointed plot and overly dramatic acting. Despite its flaws, Excalibur still maintains a cult following and is considered the definitive Arthurian movie and a cornerstone of the sword and sorcery genre.

Arthur Meets Modernity

After the classical sincerity of Excalibur, there were several other adaptations of Arthurian legend that were put on the silver screen. By this point, the culture had shifted, and the 1990s and 2000s focused more on realism and deconstruction. One of the first of this era was the 1995 adventure-romance First Knight, starring Sean Connery, Julia Ormond, and Richard Gere, which rids itself of magical elements, which made it little more than any other medieval drama.

While technically a TV mini-series rather than a movie, this was also the period that gave us Merlin, starring Sam Neill as the titular character and Paul Curran as a supporting character as Arthur. There are also memorable performances from Helena Bonham Carter as Morgan le Fay, Miranda Richardson as Queen Man/The Lady of the Lake, and Martin Short as an invented character called Frik. The movie tells the legend of Merlin and how he became the wizard who helped Arthur, and it delves deep into the magical side of the story while placing the fantasy within a convincing context. It was incredibly popular, with an estimated 70 million people tuning in when it was first released in 1998 and being nominated for a swathe of awards. The follow-up mini-series, Merlin’s Apprentice, in 2006 did not win the same acclaim.

In 2004, the realism trend was pushed further with the release of King Arthur. Starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, the movie was intended to be a historical retelling of the legends, stripping away the elements that were added in later eras. Arthur is not the king of Camelot but a Roman officer at the time of the Saxon invasion of Britain. Other factors are made more realistic, such as the knights being Sarmatian auxiliaries employed by Rome and Merlin being a Celtic druid rather than a wizard. The film is gritty in tone, and though it was intended to be more historically accurate than other movies, it leaves much to be desired. The movie features fantasy leather armor, any number of vaguely medieval-esque weapons, trebuchets in open-field battles centuries before trebuchets were invented, and tactics that would make even the most casual medieval history buff cringe.

The 2010s saw the cultural zeitgeist shift yet again. By far, the most popular genre of the decade was superhero movies, and King Arthur got the comic book treatment. Released in 2017, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, starring Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law, is a larger-than-life action movie that relies on visual spectacle and fast-paced action, punctuated with rapid-fire dialogue, to make up for its thin story. It was planned as a launch for six movies, but due to its low box office returns, this plan was scrapped.

Probably the most successful reimaging of the tale of King Arthur of the modern era was not a movie but the BBC series Merlin, which ran from 2008 to 2012 and looked at the lives of a young Merlin, played by Colin Morgan and Arthur, played Bradley James, in the kingdom reigned over by Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon, plated by Anthony Stewart Head. It combined Medieval drama with teenage angst and a touch of magic, which made the show incredibly popular for its full run. Katie McGrath delivered a memorable performance as Morgana, transforming from naive girl of the court to evil enchantress, creating an empathetic villain.

These are just a few of the movies that deal directly with the King Arthur mythos. There are countless others that are interpretations of other tangentially related works like Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Tristan and Isolde, and the Sir Valiant comic strip. These diverse films all share the same source for their inspiration but are each the products of the cultural spirit in which they were made. If there are any further King Arthur films made, they will no doubt follow the same trend, tapping into the spirit of the times to tell a classic story.

The legends of King Arthur also inspired many other films, even if only tangentially. Perhaps the most well-known is the 1992 cult classic, Army of Darkness. The third of the Evil Dead series, the movie was directed by Sam Rami and starred Bruce Campbell as Ash, who was transported back to 1300 Europe. The connections between Army of Darkness and the Arthurian legend are tenuous, but can be seen if one looks carefully. The leader of the medieval humans is Lord Arthur, and his wise advisor, known simply as “the Wise Man,” is an old man adept at magic with a long grey beard, strongly implied to be Merlin. Ash, much like a knight of the Round Table, goes on a quest and fights a valiant battle to vanquish evil, but instead of a sword and shield on a noble steed, he uses a chainsaw and Remington double-barreled shotgun, while riding an ’88 Oldsmobile retrofitted with a steam engine. Though not directly based on Arthurian legend, Army of Darkness is considered by many to be spiritually adjacent to the tales of Camelot.

Spaghetti Western refers to a subgenre of Western films that emerged in the 1960s. These films, which utilized the themes of American Westerns, were Italian-made, low-budget, and filmed in Europe. Italian Westerns broke from the tradition of American Westerns, which were family-friendly, featuring battles between good and evil, with good always prevailing. Spaghetti Westerns blurred the lines between good and evil. These films depicted an American West, not as a place of heroes but as a place of violence, a portrayal more aligned with the West’s true history.

Tracing the Origins and Rise of the Spaghetti Western

In the opening scene of Sergio Leone’s 1964 post-Civil War epic, A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood, in his infamous role as the Man with No Name, rides into a sunbaked Mexican village. As Eastwood pauses to drink water from a well, he witnesses a small child run across a courtyard into a house. As he looks on, two men chase the child out of the house, shooting at the ground behind the boy as he flees. The scene is tense and disturbing, and the viewer is left wondering why Eastwood’s Man with No Name does not intervene.

A Fistful of Dollars was Rome-born director Sergio Leone’s first foray into the Western genre. Leone, son of silent-film actor and director Vincenzo Leone and actress Edvige Valcarenghi, began his film career working as assistant director on Biblical epics in the 1950s, the most popular film genre in Italy at the time. His directorial debut came in 1959 with The Last Days of Pompeii, when his mentor, director Mario Bonnard, was unable to complete the film.

Shortly thereafter, Leone turned to Westerns, eventually going on to birth the sub-genre of the Spaghetti Western, which led to his international recognition and success. Upon the sub-genre’s genesis, the term “spaghetti western” was commonly used by non-Italian film critics due to the fact these films were directed and produced by Italians.

Tracing the Origins: Who’s Who of Spaghetti Westerns

Though Leone was undoubtedly the most influential and well-known of the Spaghetti Western directors, two other directors, also named Sergio, managed to make their mark on the sub-genre. Like Leone, Sergio Corbucci began his filmmaking career creating Biblical epics. His first Spaghetti Westerns were the 1964 film Grand Canyon Massacre and the cult classic Django. Where Leone had American actor Clint Eastwood as his favored leading man, Corbucci frequently cast Italian actor Franco Nero as his. Director Sergio Sollima is perhaps most well-known for The Big Gundown, which was released in 1966 and starred Spaghetti Western-staple actor Lee Van Cleef.

Though Leone, in particular, is often regarded as the father of the European Western, its origins can be traced to Germany. Popular German author Karl May had published a variety of books in the late 1800s and early 1900s, featuring clashes between cowboys and Native Americans set against the backdrop of a romanticized American West. In the 1960s, many of May’s pulp-fiction novels were turned into films, which became highly popular among German audiences. However, Leone’s Westerns broke from both European and American Western traditions by creating something reminiscent of but tonally different from previous films of the genre.

American vs. Italian Westerns: The Good, the Bad, and the Selfish

A Fistful of Dollars’ gritty, tense atmosphere, as exemplified in the opening scene, made it stand apart from American Westerns. Leone’s characters seem to straddle the line between good and evil, and their actions are often selfishly motivated. Leone did not shy away from stark portrayals of frontier life and earned auteur status for his desolate visual recreations of the Old West.

Long-term collaborator Ennio Morricone’s haunting score featuring howling coyotes and gunshots added to Leone’s vision of a gritty, epic West. When Spaghetti Westerns first emerged, the Western film genre was already a cultural staple in the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, television Westerns such as Gunsmoke and the Lone Ranger were household names. American Western films and TV shows usually portrayed an idealized, almost mythical version of the West. Good characters donned snow-white hats and chaps, while bad characters wore black hats and leather masks. Native Americans were antagonists, obstacles to Manifest Destiny.

American film and television Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s painted pictures of nostalgia and an idealized version of the Wild West that romanticized the era of the frontier. American Westerns presented both good and evil characters as one-dimensional, rarely breaking from their assigned moral roles.

For example, in John Sturges’s 1960 film The Magnificent Seven, the film’s antagonist, outlaw Calvera, terrorizes a frontier town with his gang, preying on the helpless townsfolk. The character of Calvera, played by Eli Wallach, is a sneering villain with yellowed teeth and a thinning swath of hair, sweat-plastered to his forehead under this hat. By contrast, the Magnificent Seven, a group of men hired by the townsfolk to defeat Calvera, are all clean-shaven and sharply dressed. These binary portrayals of antagonists and protagonists were the norm in American Westerns in the 1950s and 60s.

Characters featured in Italian Westerns, on the other hand, seemed to exist in a moral gray area, their actions blurring the line between good and evil. Leone subverted the binary of good versus evil, instead making his characters more complex. For example, Leone’s male protagonists appear unshaven, sunburnt, and gruff. In his role as the Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood is unsmiling, with a cigarillo dangling from the corner of his mouth for much of the film. His counterpart and adversary, Ramon Rojo, does not differ drastically in appearance. Like the Man with No Name, he is suave and a skilled gunslinger.

Though Eastwood’s Man with No Name does perform heroic acts, such as rescuing a young woman and returning her to her family, in A Fistful of Dollars, the character is largely motivated by selfish interests. Leone portrayed the American West as a brutal place where characters often performed nefarious and selfish acts to survive, defend themselves, and avoid humiliation.

Unlike the mythical West portrayed in American Westerns, Leone’s West was bleak and often cruel. Just as the Man with No Name does not act to defend the child in the film’s opening scene because he has no stake in the situation, his coming to the aid of the young woman serves only to rectify a wrong in his past. When he first enters the town at the beginning of the film, he does not intend to bring peace or order. His only goal is to earn money for an unknown cause, which he does by playing the families in the town against each other.

In addition, The Man with No Name demonstrates his ruthlessness by nonchalantly shooting and killing three men who insult his mule upon entering town. Eastwood’s character in the Dollars Trilogy cemented the reputation of Spaghetti Western protagonists as loners with shadowy pasts and few friends or allies.

Challenging the Myth of the American West

The Italian interpretation of the Western can perhaps be attributed to differing cultural backgrounds. Italian film directors lacked the inherent cultural knowledge of the American West and its nuances, something American directors possessed. However, this lack of inherent cultural knowledge led to the creation of a different and perhaps more realistic and honest depiction of the American West.

Italian directors were under no obligation to perpetuate the myth of the West and the sentimental American nostalgia for the era. Italian Westerns did away with the code of morality present in American Westerns, instead making every character an island, independent, and chiefly interested in their own survival at any cost.

In American Westerns, Native Americans were usually portrayed as sadistic villains, the plight of frontier towns and their residents. In contrast, Spaghetti Westerns rarely featured Native Americans, and when they did, they were portrayed as neutral characters, neither good nor evil. Instead, Italian Westerns, many of which took place in the Southern United States and Mexico, focused on relations between Mexicans and “gringos,” white characters.

The Downfall of the Spaghetti Western & Its Enduring Legacy

Just as the American Western had fallen into decline following criticism of its simplistic portrayals of the West, Spaghetti Westerns, despite their popularity, soon followed suit. Popular culture began to collectively move on from the Western genre as a whole, which had saturated the film industry for decades. In addition, Spaghetti Western’s low-budget reputation, which had been an asset during the early days of the sub-genre, eventually led to quality issues such as sloppy editing and poorly written scripts.

However, the legacy of the Spaghetti Western endures. Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, which includes films A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, continues to be a cult classic. In each film, Eastwood reprises his character of the Man with No Name, whose signature squint is recognized the world over.

Though the era of the true Spaghetti Western has come and gone, contemporary filmmakers continue to be inspired by the revolutionary subgenre. American director Quentin Tarantino’s neo-Westerns Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight incorporate many themes present in spaghetti Westerns, such as morally ambiguous characters, bleak depictions of natural landscapes, and graphic violence. Tarantino’s homage to the genre with The Hateful Eight did not stop at thematic and aesthetic similarities. Tarantino enlisted Ennio Morricone to compose the film’s soundtrack, convincing the composer to return to the genre after decades. In 2016, Ennio Morricone won the Oscar for Best Original Score for his work on The Hateful Eight.

The Spaghetti Western will forever be canonized in film history. With its wide variety of influences and unique portrayal of the American West, its legacy will continue to live on and inspire future generations of film lovers and filmmakers.

In November 2023, The New Boy (2023), the latest film by Kaytej Aboriginal filmmaker Warwick Thornton, won the top prize at the Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography held annually in Torún, Poland. For over two decades, Thornton has been writing and directing features and documentaries that explore Aboriginal identity, trauma, and the place of Aboriginal people in contemporary Australian society. That very same society that for too long has deliberately ignored the perspective of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. His work addresses the complexities of the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, as seen in Sweet Country (2017). In another powerful film, Samson and Delilah (2009), he portrays young love within the context of remote and disadvantaged Aboriginal communities intoxicated by petrol-sniffing.

Who Is Warwick Thornton?

“I am an Indigenous artist,” Warwick Thornton once said. “I could get rid of the art. I could be a plumber or an electrician. But I can’t just wash away being Indigenous and I wouldn’t want to. And it’s all art to me.” A Kaytej man, Thornton was born and raised in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, on lands that have belonged to the Arrernte people since time immemorial. His ancestors used to live around Tennant Creek and Barrow Creek, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) north of Alice Springs, not far from the lytwelepenty/Davenport Ranges National Park in Australia’s Red Centre. In addition to being a filmmaker in the most literal sense—he is a writer, director, and cinematographer—Thornton is also an acclaimed photographer.

In his 2015 exhibition, The Future is Unforgiving, he photographed various Aboriginal children, the future of Aboriginal society and culture, wearing suicide vests made of beer cans, Coca-Cola cans, fast food containers, and black tape. The suicide vests are strapped to their torsos, but the only lives that are endangered are theirs, threatened by obesity, alcohol abuse, sugar, and fast foods. The burden of social and historical injustices, the damage caused by decades of colonialism, and the innocence of these young victims are central to many of Thornton’s films, from Samson and Delilah (2009) to his latest The New Boy (2023). Written and directed by an Aboriginal author deeply in touch with his Aboriginality, Thornton’s films reflect on Australia’s colonial history and offer a truthful and painful perspective on Aboriginal society, on what it means to be Aboriginal Australian in today’s world, particularly in the aftermath of the disastrous results of the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum.

Sweet Country

It is the 1920s, and Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) is an Aboriginal stockman working and living on the property of Fred Smith (Sam Neill) with his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber). He is a hard-working man, a man of principle who enjoys a friendly relationship with his boss. Then he kills his neighbor, Harry March (Ewen Leslie), in self-defense. As March, a violent, rapist, and alcoholic veteran of World War I suffering from PTSD, bleeds to death under the scorching Australian sun, amidst dust and mosquitoes, Sam and Lizzie flee into the Outback, a territory they know better than anyone else. And so their epic begins.

Sweet Country was shot primarily at Ooraminna, a cattle station west of Alice Springs, on the ancestral red and remote lands of the Aranda people, near the Tjoritha/West MacDonnell National Park. Thornton’s film is as much a Western as Penn’s Little Big Man (1970) is a Western.

Both are revisionist Westerns that exploit the traditional tropes of Westerns to discard accepted national narratives, narratives that have contributed to a stereotypical representation of Indigenous peoples and silenced and marginalized their voices for decades. Sam Kelly and his wife Lizzie are painfully aware that in the society they live in the word of an Aboriginal woman doesn’t stand a chance against that of a white man. Sweet Country’s Australia is a country divided along race lines, a hurting country unable (and unwilling?) to protect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and grant them the decency of fair treatment.

Is contemporary Australia any different from 1920s Australia when it comes to race relations, equality, and justice? Has the situation of Aboriginal people improved compared to 100 years ago? Have non-Indigenous Australians learned to regard Aboriginal Australians with the same degree of humanity they accord to themselves? These are the questions that Sweet Country, particularly the film’s stunning ending, leaves us with.

Stockmen in Australia

Sweet Country is a powerful revisionist Western film. It is also a celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ unique relationship with the country of their ancestors, a relationship that has evolved over the years and has managed to adapt to the upheaval brought about by colonialism. At a time when Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families, placed in residential schools, and not allowed to speak their parents’ language, at a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders continued to be displaced, facing racism and discrimination, there was a (relatively) safe place in Australian society where Aboriginal man and women could preserve their culture and languages. This place was the cattle station, typically a large landholding with an extensive range of grazing land where the grazier (the property owner) could rear cattle, a homestead, and some cottages for the employees.

Since the 19th century, cattle stations have been the backbone of Australian industry. They have also played an important part in preserving Aboriginal languages and traditions, as they provided, to put it with Richard Broome, author of Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788, “a breathing space for Aboriginal culture.”

Historically, the impact of British colonialism was most significant on Aboriginal groups in the southern regions of Australia, specifically in present-day New South Wales and Victoria. In the country’s northern regions, however, every year Aboriginal stockmen and stockwomen employed by landowners and cattle barons embarked on long droving trips on horseback through the Outback. It was here, in Queensland and the Northern Territory, in some of the world’s driest regions, that they cyclically renewed their connection to their ancestral lands, to the stories and languages of their ancestors.

To quote from Ann McGrath, author of Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country, “generations of Aboriginal station dwellers co-operated with white people, but they were never really colonized… They incorporated different animals, technologies, skills, and kin into their cultural landscape, but it remained their country, their world.”

Despite being coerced, low-paid, denigrated, and often physically abused, many Aboriginal workers embraced cattle work with pride, infusing it with their traditional practices, with their abilities to locate bush tucker, animal tracks, and waterholes. In his Sweet Country, Warwick Thornton shows us the pride of an Aboriginal stockman, Sam Kelly, who removes himself from a society that denies him his rights and refuses to consider him equal to men and women of European descent. Kelly tries to find peace and safety in the bush, but to no avail.

Samson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah is Thornton’s directorial debut. The film revolves around two 14-year-olds, Samson (Rowan McNamara) and Delilah (Marissa Gibson), living in a remote Aboriginal community in the Australian Red Centre. The closest town is Mparntwe—Alice Springs, as it is known among non-Indigenous Australians. In the language of the Arrernte, Mparntwe (pronounced m’barn-twa) translates to “watering place.”

When Delilah’s grandmother, Nana, suddenly dies, Delilah jumps on Samson’s stolen car and heads with him to Alice Springs. They don’t talk much, but there is a sense that they can rely on each other. In Alice Springs, their lives intersect with a constellation of different figures—Gonzo, an Aboriginal homeless man played by Scott Thornton; a group of white teenagers who abuse Delilah; and the silently racist white inhabitants of Alice Springs.

There is despair in Samson and Delilah, but there is also hope. Above all, there’s determination. Determination to survive. Determination to silently (and proudly) claim one’s place in a society that accepts Aboriginal people only—and not even always—within certain spaces, specifically, that of Aboriginal art. This is exactly how Delilah tries to survive in the city—by selling Aboriginal paintings—before returning to the bedding she shares with Samson under a bridge on the dry bed of the Todd River.

Samson and Delilah’s silent determination is, indeed, fuelled by art and human affection. Delilah’s grandmother, Nana, for instance, is a painter. The fact that her character is played by Pintupi actress Mitjili Napanangka Gibson (1932-2011), who is also one of Australia’s most revered Aboriginal painters, adds a poetic touch of realism. Samson’s brother is a musician. His band plays ska music all day in their run-down shack. And although Samson is their only spectator, their energy is contagious.

The Coming of the Grog

The society depicted in Samson and Delilah is still struggling with the consequences of the introduction of the grog—a slang term for any alcoholic beverage—in Aboriginal communities. Thornton is not the first Aboriginal artist to discuss the impact of the grog on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, particularly those living in the Outback, removed from any form of social assistance.

In her Grog War (1997), for instance, Waanyi award-winning author Alexis Wright recalls the history of a small community in remote Australia fighting against the “invasion of the grog.” In his novel Taboo (2017), Noongar author Kim Scott depicts a tight-knit community working to “come back to life,” to rebuild and strengthen its connection to its ancestors’ lands and history. A community whose survival can’t be taken for granted, as it is fragmented and torn apart by alcohol addictions, violence, and drugs.

A similar sense of tenaciousness mixed with despair can be found in Samson and Delilah. In the 1950s and 1960s, the strict Australia-wide ban rules on Aboriginals drinking alcohol were lifted. Communities already struggling with severe poverty, unemployment, and dispossession-induced depression suddenly had unlimited access to alcoholic beverages of any kind. The consequences were devastating. Alcohol abuse and binge drinking have been plaguing Aboriginal communities ever since, resulting in increased rates of premature death, domestic violence, sexual abuse, mental health issues, unemployment, and isolation.

Historically, Australian authorities have used the devastation caused by the grog among Indigenous communities to control the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders across the country. In the Northern Territory, for instance, many Aboriginal communities are designated as “dry communities,” where alcohol consumption and possession are prohibited.

In a 2019 article for The Guardian, Claire Coleman, an Aboriginal Australian author with Wirlomin and Noongar ancestry, perfectly described how Australian authorities have used alcohol as a means to curtail Aboriginal civil rights and freedom since the 2007 Intervention, also known as the Northern Territory National Emergency Response. “On my way to Kalkarindji, NT, for the festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Wavehill Walkoff in 2016,” Coleman writes, “I was pulled over by about 20 police officers in something like 10 Landcruiser Troopcarriers who were checking every car for alcohol. I have never lived in a dictatorship but after that experience, I can imagine what it would feel like.”

Commenting on his aforementioned photographic work The Future is Unforgiving, Warwick Thornton echoed Coleman’s words when he stated that “we’re all dying from bad food, not from terrorists, […] the ticking bomb is bad diet, bad stuff that we get fed every day, which is legal.”

In Samson and Delilah, while the white inhabitants of Alice Springs enjoy their drinks outside coffee shops and restaurants, Samson and Delilah are shown sniffing petrol under a bridge over the dry bed of the Todd River. Petrol sniffing is a different kind of “grog,” but its disruptive, long-lasting consequences are turning Aboriginal communities into a wasteland of despair, poverty, and hopelessness.

When Delilah is hit by a passing car, Samson is too intoxicated to notice. When he finally realizes that she’s gone and probably won’t come back, he cuts off his hair. As a form of respect, as it has been noted, or as a form of ultimate desperation. Hair is a significant connection to one’s country and community. Recent analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 111 hair samples collected across Australia over half a century (from the late 1920s to the 1970s) has revealed that Aboriginal Australians have continuously inhabited the Australian continent for approximately 50,000 years.

Delilah, however, comes back. She is a survivor, just like Samson. Her return brings us to the essence of Samson and Delilah. At its core, this is a film about people helping (or trying to help) each other out and about the determination to nurture an overarching sense of community. Delilah, for instance, is shown taking care of her grandmother. In his own way, Samson takes care of Delilah when Nana dies. Delilah rescues Samson from the streets of Alice Springs and takes him back to their remote community in the desert where he will try to overcome his addiction.

Re-Affirming Aboriginal History

In her article for The Guardian, Claire Coleman writes: “There are many places in Australia where grog has been banned through the decision of the traditional owners, I accept that. This is about a government, about successive governments, who believe they have the right to control Indigenous affairs. This is about white supremacy and a country that does not believe First Nations people deserve, have not the maturity, to manage our own affairs.”

Thornton’s films, from Samson and Delilah to Sweet Country and The New Boy, reaffirm Aboriginal rights to self-determination by openly discussing the problems that plague Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the past and the present. Therein lies the strength of Thornton’s work: he calls on both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians to face the hard fact that for far too long Aboriginal Australians have been treated as second-class citizens, unable to survive without the help of Australian authorities.

Telling honest and ruthless stories set in the present and the past, Thornton also questions what it means to be Australian today. How can we define Australian identity? What does it mean to be an Aboriginal Australian in a country that still does not believe, to quote Coleman, that “First Nations people deserve, have not the maturity, to manage our own affairs”?

What does it mean to be an Aboriginal Australian in a society that all too often chooses to ignore the despair and the depression affecting young and old alike and ultimately leads them to petrol sniffing and alcohol abuse? Ultimately, Thornton’s films reaffirm Aboriginal history and the right of Aboriginal people to tell their own story and the story and culture of their people in their own words, free from the imposed mediation of non-Aboriginal Australians and Australian cinema.

In 2009, James Cameron’s Avatar was released in theaters around the world and garnered critical acclaim as one of the most successful movies of all time. It introduced us to the world of Pandora, a mystical and sacred place, and a symbol of life itself. The visual spectacle was worthy of the many awards that it won with themes of interconnectedness, greed, and loss—themes that have been present in many films prior to and since, and ones that strike deep emotional chords with millions of viewers worldwide.

The Universal Archetype of the Sacred Planet Trope

The “Sacred Planet” theme tells of a world of ecological importance, imbued with divine spiritual energy, and which guides its inhabitants, who constitute part of its whole. It is revered as a living being, the Mother Earth archetype, who provides for all those who form part of its interconnected existence. The theme is drawn from real-world dynamics and connects to stories of native peoples struggling against colonial or corporate oppressors who want to exploit their lands. It is often told and retold through cinematic efforts, either depicting real events or, as in the case of Avatar and the moon of Pandora, relatable fiction.

The parallels between Avatar’s themes and the real world are legion. From the history of colonization and the plight of native peoples all over the world, to modern events of Amazonian tribes resisting loggers, or Native Americans protesting against oil pipelines being built through their territory. Cameron told the story of Avatar with a particular motive of being unsubtle about its message.

Bron Taylor, professor of religion and nature at the University of Florida, states that the story is one that is metaphorically true and shows how imperialistic motives destroy indigenous cultures and cause ecological damage.

In movies, the Sacred Planet is a popular theme, exemplified in many instances—such as Arrakis in Dune. In the case of Pandora, though, the planet (or moon in this case) is unmistakably alive. The popularity of these stories, both fiction and non-fiction, cannot be denied. They speak to a primal part of ourselves that wishes to feel a deep connection with nature—an unsurprising desire given our place in evolutionary history as hunter-gatherers for millions of years, living in harmony with the world around us. In this, the Na’vi represent a part of ourselves that existed many millennia ago, which the progress of civilization has suppressed.

In recent decades, the concern over the ecological impact our species has on the world has heightened awareness of environmental concerns and the need to restore balance.

Na’vi Culture and Eywa: The Deity of Pandora in Avatar

For the sentient beings who call Pandora their home, their world is more than just a place to live. It is their god, which they call Eywa. It is a part of them in mind, body, and spirit. More than just a god, Eywa exists as an embodiment of all the connected life on Pandora. Eywa is life and guides life itself. In this, the Na’vi are a part of the ecosystem and seek to live in harmony with it. There is a certain sentience also associated with Eywa, as she is able to coordinate all living things in the world, influencing them to work together to fend off dangers to the entire ecosystem.

And at the center of the story are sacred trees, which are hubs for spiritualism. The Tree of Souls is a monumental sacred site for the Na’vi, which mirrors the idea of sacred sites held dear by the Native American people.

Indigenous Representation and the White Savior Trope in Avatar

Much like the archaic portrayal of Indigenous Americans, the Na’vi fight to protect their god, the very representation of life, from the greed of resource-hungry forces.

In this, however, there are critiques that are negative as well as positive. Some charge the film with perpetuating the “Noble Savage” trope and presenting problematic representations of naivete among Indigenous peoples, along with the accusation that the film embraces the “White Messiah” trope. And while this may be true, there is the argument that these things were necessary to tell the story. Whatever the case, interpretations are open to generous debates that generate opposing views. Consensus will never be fully reached.

Avatar was an unbelievable achievement for all those involved, and skillfully promotes its message in no uncertain or unsubtle terms. As civilization, and specifically, corporations, consistently prove more and more of a threat to nature around the world, Avatar’s message is an important one that proves relevant and invaluable to modern societies.

In the earliest days of cinema, when pictures moving at all was still shocking, one visionary saw the fantastical possibilities of this exciting new technology. Artist, magician, inventor, and director Georges Méliès created worlds filled with magic and adventure that revolutionized filmmaking when it was just beginning. He remains one of the most creative minds in the history of movies.

Georges Méliès: A Magician of the Movies

On the 28th of December in 1895 in Paris, guests looked in awe as moving pictures were projected at the Salon Indien du Grand Café. Scenes of workers leaving factories, gentlemen playing cards, and trains arriving at stations stun those who’d never seen anything quite like this before. Among those marveling at the Lumière Cinématographe for the first time, was the illusionist, artist, inventor, and theater director Georges Méliès.

Georges Méliès was born in 1861 to a family of luxury shoe-makers. Since childhood, Méliès had a penchant for the arts, drawing monsters, caricatures and fantastical landscapes all over his notebooks.

Despite his father’s disapproval, Méliès went on to become a stage magician. In the theater, Méliès put his artistic skill and the mechanic knowledge from working at the family factory into developing his own tricks and illusions. By the time the Lumières invited him to their Cinématographe projection in 1895, Méliès was a successful illusionist and longtime director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin.

Méliès was immediately spellbound by motion pictures. He offered to buy the Cinématographe that same night. Once his offer was refused, he found another projector to own instead—Robert W. Paul’s Animatograph. Méliès reverse-engineered the Animatograph so that he could use it as a camera as well, and immediately began to shoot movies. By late 1896, he was showing them at the Robert-Houdin. He also established his filmmaking company Star Film and built his first film studio in Montreuil-sous-Bois.

The studio was made entirely of glass in order to utilize daylight. It was the first of its kind. There, Méliès and his employees shot films and built sets, costumes, and props. They also edited and hand-tinted every one of his hundreds of movies. Méliès would go on to produce over 500 films between 1896 and 1914. Eventually, the cutthroat business of the film industry and the Great War brought Méliès career to a grinding halt. But before that, in his own glass palace, the whole world seemed to be within reach.

Méliès’ Happy Accident

One day, according to his memoirs, Méliès was recording at the Place de L’Ópera when his camera jammed for a moment. Méliès realized that the camera had stopped recording, and by the time it was fixed, the whole street scene had changed. The effect was striking—faster than the blink of an eye, women turned into men, children turned into horses, and a carriage turned into a hearse. The illusionary nature of film was revealed.

A stop trick happens when only one key element of a scene changes from one cut to the next, creating the illusion of transformation or disappearance. The 1895 film The Execution of Saint Mary used a rudimentary effect similar to it. Méliès’ earliest reproduction of it can be seen in the 1896 Vanishing Lady. Several scholars question whether Méliès’ happy accident really happened or if he saw and reverse-engineered Saint Mary’s trick as he did with the film camera. Whatever the case, Méliès would perfect the stop trick in order to manipulate time, space, and the very fabric of reality.

The Grandmaster of Special Effects 

Méliès pioneered several motion picture editing techniques and special effects that are still used today, adapting photographic techniques to the moving pictures, experimenting, and creating his own effects and in-camera illusions. He adapted photography’s multiple exposure effects when different images are superimposed on one another, often with a phantasmagoric effect, by exposing the same film multiple times. The same happened with matting and split screening, techniques where the camera lens is partially obscured so that the images recorded in the unobstructed areas appear together in the same frame. Méliès developed time-lapses and dissolves in his films, and made ample use of matte painting, miniatures, and prosthetics to create anything from magic tricks, illusions of depth and space, editing effects, and intricate sets.

Many of his films were distributed in color, each copy was painstakingly hand-painted, adding an effect that would take around five decades to reach mainstream cinema. One of Méliès’ most famous trick films, The Four Troublesome Heads (1898) features the use of masking and prosthetic work as Méliès himself pulls off his head four times as they all argue and sing with each other. Similar head-popping tricks can be seen in The Melomaniac (1903). They reveal a superb control of various effects and edits that would seem complex even today, with a film exposed at least seven times, seamlessly blending several visual elements.

Méliès’ Voyages, Fairies and Worlds Within Reach

When we think of Georges Méliès, certain images come to mind—vedettes hanging from the sky as stars, trains being swallowed by the sun, or a moon with a bullet in its eye. Georges Méliès’ wide catalog includes comedies, dramas, trick films, historical epics, and other genres. Méliès directed the first political film in history—and the first film that was censored—The Dreyfus Affair (1899). He also directed one of the first horror movies Cleopatra’s Tomb (1899) and the ambitious 10-minute-long Joan of Arc (1900). Méliès’ career as a director was certainly diverse, but it was his fantasy films that showed the world that cinema was more than moving pictures—it was a tool to make dreams come true.

The 1899 Cinderella was the first movie in history to use storyboards and the first of many Méliès fairy tales—the most famous of them being The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903). Kingdom of the Fairies is among Méliès best films. While following the rescue of Princess Azurine, who was kidnapped by a witch, we cruise through several lavishly created magic realms and battles and some of Méliès’ most complex action sequences. Diabolical tales were another Méliès staple. This can be seen in The Infernal Palace (1896), The Devil in a Convent (1899), and the gleefully sadistic spectacle of The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906).

The scene of a moon getting hit in the eye with a projectile is one of the most iconic images in cinema history. It is a highlight from Méliès’ most famous film called A Trip to the Moon (1902). Considered the first science fiction film in history, A Trip to the Moon is a whimsical tale of scientists traveling to the moon from a cannon blast. It boasts stunning sets and effects like the snowfall in space, giant mushroom forests, the moon aliens, and the rapid cut of the capsule falling back down to the bottom of the sea.

The quasi-sequel Journey through the Impossible (1904) similarly marries fantasy and science fiction, as we follow members of the Society of Impossible Geography on a mission to get to the Sun. Here, we accompany a flying train traipsing the Alps, space, and the bottom of the sea.

Méliès’ last grand production, The Conquest of the Pole (1912) is his longest one with a 30-minute runtime. Parodying the recent expeditions to the Arctic, The Conquest of the Pole is a visually stunning artistic voyage. Highlights include an aircraft race and a giant yeti—a fitting last hurrah to Méliès formidable style.

Theatricality and Cinematography of Georges Méliès

Méliès theatrical background had an undeniable influence on his films. Méliès famously maintained his camera static in his career, more or less at a proscenium angle so that it seemed like a view from the best seat in the theater. This certainly differs from the realistic, diegetic narrative film language that became mainstream. The aesthetic appeal of his sets and vaudeville tone of acting was also cleverly uplifted by meticulous, boundary-pushing editing. Méliès owes a particular lot to the féeries, a type of play that was popular after the French Revolution which combined melodrama, comedy, ballet, acrobatics, special effects, and richly decorated stages.

Méliès, whose narratives were built around his tricks, certainly helped break ground for fictional narrative cinema alongside pioneers like Alice Guy-Blaché. Decades before film movements started flourishing, at a time when people were still marveling at footage of trains, Méliès was building medieval castles, anthropomorphic celestial bodies, aliens, monsters, fairy kingdoms, underwater realms, haunted palaces, and infernal landscapes.

Méliès’ Downturn 

As the 1910s rolled around and mainstream cinema taste grew farther from féeries and voyages, Méliès films became less and less successful. Several bad business deals, mismanagement, and the rampant theft of his films lost Star Film practically all its money. World War I spelled the end of it. Méliès’ studios at Montreuil were seized and his film prints were confiscated by the army and melted for celluloid in order to make shoes.

In a fit of despair, Méliès himself ended up burning all of his negatives, costumes, and sets. To this day, more than 300 of his movies remain lost. Méliès was forced to sell Théatre Robert-Houdin in 1923, which was demolished to make way for Boulevard Haussman. He would go on to sell candy and toys at a small store at Gare Montparnasse for the next decade, fading into obscurity.

The Rediscovery of Georges Méliès

Méliès’ life was not about to end in tragedy, however. In the late 1920s, filmmakers and researchers found out Georges Méliès was still alive and sought him out. There was a resurgence in interest in his art which found a new, younger audience. In 1929, a gala was organized in his honor, where five of his films, including A Trip to the Moon, were publicly shown for the first time in over a decade. Méliès directed a short film for this occasion, where he stepped out from the very screen to greet his audience once more. Méliès recalled the night as one of the most luminous of his life.

In 1931 he was made Chevalier de la Legion d’Houneur, the highest order of merit in France, presented to him by Louis Lumière.

He would move to the film industry’s retirement home in Orlys. Though he never directed again, he wrote about movies, gave interviews, illustrated and advised young filmmakers until his death, in 1938.

For the next century, Méliès’ life’s work and his contributions to cinema would be revisited, rediscovered, catalogued, and referenced time and again. More than 200 of his films have been recovered and made publicly available, where they’ll remain bringing magic to the screens of new generations to come.