The Best Historical Movies for History Buffs

Kirk Douglas in “Spartacus,” 1960

Just as we’ll never run out of history to study, nor will we run out of historical movies to watch anytime soon. Filmmakers have always looked to the past for inspiration, with period pieces and historical dramas enduring as one of the medium’s most popular genres. Read on to discover some of the best historical movies ever made.

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If You’re in a Countercultural Mood

Though it began in the late 1960s with movies such as The Graduate and Drugstore Cowboy, the New Hollywood movement was at its peak in the 1970s. That’s when filmmakers including Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, Martin Scorsese, and John Cassavetes came into their own and studios allowed directors unprecedented control over their productions. The result was a slew of all-timers: The Godfather, Days of Heaven, A Woman Under the Influence, The Deer Hunter, Alien, Taxi Driver, Jaws, 3 Women, Star Wars, Eraserhead, and Killer of Sheep, just to name a few.

Read more: 7 Essential Films From the 1970s

If You Want To Watch Something New

If you’ve already seen the classics and are ready to find out what the auteurs of today are up to, there are a number of instant classics from the last few years. At the top of that list would have to be Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which was about as successful as any movie could hope to be: In addition to winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Director, it also grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide. But it’s far from the only worthy historical title, as anyone who’s seen the likes of The Brutalist and Killers of the Flower Moon can attest.

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If You’re a Netflix Subscriber

Considering more than 300 million people subscribe to the service, there’s a good chance you are. Netflix’s catalogue has received valid criticism for skewing almost entirely toward newer movies, especially following the reveal that, as of a month ago, 1973’s The Sting was its oldest offering. (That dubious honor now belongs to 1957’s An Affair to Remember, but the larger point stands.) But while not all of the streaming service’s best historical movies are exactly historical themselves, there are still a number of films worth seeking out.

If You Think Film Criticism Doesn’t Matter

Long before aggregators such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic forever changed the way moviegoers read reviews, individual critics held massive sway. One of them was Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, who so loathed the film Bonnie and Clyde that he wrote more than one diatribe against Arthur Penn’s landmark crime drama starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. This was ultimately to his detriment, as Pauline Kael’s now-legendary defense of the film helped turn the tide in its favor — and against Crowther, who lost his job by the end of the year. Kael, meanwhile, is now considered one of the most influential film critics of all time, just as Bonnie and Clyde is hailed as a cinematic revolution that helped launch the New Hollywood era.

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If You Want a Little of Everything

Despite claims to the contrary, there’s only one Spartacus. There’s also only one Spartacus, and it’s one of Stanley Kubrick’s greatest films — as well as one of my favorite historical dramas. That list also includes Lawrence of Arabia and Dersu Uzala, one of which is obviously much more famous than the other. And yet the latter stands out among filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s august filmography as his only non-Japanese-language movie as well as one of his most sensitive. Alongside Rashomon, it’s somehow also the only of Kurosawa’s films to win the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.

If You Think All’s Fair in War and Movies

War never changes, as the famous line goes, but the movies about it do. Filmmakers have been making them since at least 1898, when Tearing Down the Spanish Flag caused controversy despite barely being a minute long, and they show no signs of slowing. World War II and Vietnam in particular have captured filmmakers’ imaginations, with classics such as Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now regularly appearing on lists of not only the greatest war movies ever made but the greatest movies, period. Those two are just scratching the surface, however: The Thin Red Line, released the same year as Saving Private Ryan, takes a considerably more philosophical approach to its portrayal of soldiers at war, and To Be or Not to Be shows that there’s comedy to be found even in the darkest of times.

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