King Lear (2018), The Red Badge of Courage (1951), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Lolita (1962), The Secret Garden (1949), Macbeth (1971), David Copperfield (1935), The Red and the Black (1954) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Literary Classic movies.
Storyline: King Lear divides his kingdom among his three daughters -- Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. The kingdom and family soon collapse into chaos and warfare as Lear goes mad and tragedy strikes.
Plot Keywords: tragedy, shakespeare, play adaptation, family conflict, power struggle, betrayal, madness ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Based on Stephen Crane's novel of a young Union soldier panicked upon exposure to his first Civil War battle.
Plot Keywords: war, american civil war, courage, coming of age, psychological conflict, fear, honor ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When Mr. Dashwood dies, he must leave the bulk of his estate to the son by his first marriage, which leaves his second wife and their three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) in straitened circumstances. They are taken in by a kindly cousin, but their lack of fortune affects the marriageability of both practical Elinor and romantic Marianne. When Elinor forms an attachment for the wealthy Edward Ferrars, his family disapproves and separates them. And though Mrs. Jennings tries to match the worthy (and rich) Colonel Brandon to her, Marianne finds the dashing and fiery John Willoughby more to her taste. Both relationships are sorely tried.
Plot Keywords: romance, drama, british literature adaptation, jane austen, classic, romantic, family ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Humbert Humbert forces a confrontation with a man, whose name he has just recently learned, in this man's home. The events that led to this standoff began four years earlier. Middle aged Humbert, a European, arrives in the United States where he has secured at job at Beardsley College in Beardsley, Ohio as a Professor of French Literature. Before he begins his post in the fall, he decides to spend the summer in the resort town of Ramsdale, New Hampshire. He is given the name of Charlotte Haze as someone who is renting a room in her home for the summer. He finds that Charlotte, widowed now for seven years, is a woman who puts on airs. Among the demonstration of those airs is throwing around the name of Clare Quilty, a television and stage script writer, who came to speak at her women's club meeting and who she implies is now a friend. Those airs also mask being lonely, especially as she is a sexually aggressive and liberated woman. Humbert considers Charlotte a proverbial "joke" but ...
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, taboo, controversial, adaptation, novel adaptation, literary classic ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When cholera takes the parents of Mary Lennox, she is shipped from India to England to live with her Uncle Craven. Archibald Craven's house is dark and drafty, with over 100 rooms built on the edge of the moors. Mary finds that her Uncle does not wish to see her, which is fine with Mary as she herself is rude and spoiled. While walking the gardens the next day, Mary notices that there is a area in the garden surrounded with a high stone wall and no doorway. Dickon, brother of a housemaid, tells her of the garden behind the wall. By the path, the raven unearths the hidden key so that Mary and Dickon are able to enter the walled garden to find it overgrown and neglected. Inside the house, she finds that Archibald has a son named Colin, who is crippled and as spoiled as she. Together these three work to make the secret garden their own world.—Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
Plot Keywords: children, classic, family, fantasy, adventure, coming of age, british literature ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Roman Polanski's version of Shakespeare's tragedy about a Scottish lord who murders the king and ascends the throne. His wife then begins hallucinating as a result of her guilt complex and the dead king's son conspires to attack Macbeth and expose him for the murderer he is.—Jason Ihle <jrihl@conncoll.edu>
Plot Keywords: shakespeare, tragedy, medieval, scotland, power struggle, murder, ambition ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When David's father dies, his mother remarries. His new stepfather Murdstone has a mean and cruel view on how to raise a child. When David's mother dies from grief, Murdstone sends David to London to work for a living. When David escapes to his aunt Betsey his life starts to get better.—Mattias Thuresson
Plot Keywords: charles dickens, british film, black and white, drama, coming of age, victorian era, family relationships ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving a soporific soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard. The story unfolds as the monk tries to save the guest's lives without violating the holy secrecy of the confession.—Johannes Stahl <jstahl@lri.ucsf.edu>
Plot Keywords: classic film, black and white film, social class, psychological drama, historical setting, french cinema, literary adaptation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Wessex County, England during the Victorian era. Christian values dominate what are social mores. These mores and her interactions with two men play a large part in what happens in the young life of peasant girl, the shy, innocent, proper yet proud Tess Durbeyfield. The first of these men is Alec d'Urberville. After learning from a local historian that they are really descendants of the aristocratic d'Urberville family which has died out due to lack of male heirs, Tess' parents send her to a nearby mansion where they know some d'Urbervilles actually reside. This move is in order for the family to gain some benefit from their heritage. Upon her arrival at the mansion, Tess quickly learns that the family of Tess' "cousin" Alec are not true d'Urbervilles, but rather an opportunistic lot who bought the family name in order to improve their own standing in life. Tess is pulled between what she was sent to accomplish for her family against her general disdain for Alec, who will give her ...
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, tragedy, victorian era, rural life, social class, fate ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Based on Thomas Hardy's nineteenth century novel, Bathsheba Everdene is a willful, passionate girl who is never satisfied with anything less than a man's complete and helpless adoration, and she captures the lives and loves of three very different men: Gabriel Oak, a sheep farmer, who is captivated by her beauty and proposes marriage; William Boldwood, a prosperous man in his early forties, and a confirmed bachelor; and Sergeant Frank Troy, a handsome, reckless swordsman given to sudden fits of violence.—alfiehitchie
Plot Keywords: romance, drama, classic, british literature adaptation, victorian era, rural life, female protagonist ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: An over-the-hill salesman faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family.
Plot Keywords: tragedy, play adaptation, family conflict, american dream, mental breakdown, father-son relationship, social pressure ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: It's the early twentieth century. The Morel family lives in the coal mining community of Bestwood, England, just outside of Nottingham. There is little connection now between husband and wife, Walter and Gertrude, due to their differences, while each quietly or not so quietly is able to manipulate emotionally their now adult sons. While eldest son William has escaped the clutches of his parents by moving to London, each of the two remaining sons have ended up having a natural alliance or connection to one parent. Arthur, like brusque Walter, works in the mines, something that Walter believes is their duty and legacy. Artistically inclined Paul, who is self-taught in his art, instead has a lower paying office job, in Gertrude's mind it a longer path but to greater financial gain, Paul who is never to work in the mines. Paul, arguably, would live as a painter if he was able. Paul's relationship with two women is shown in light of the influence Gertrude has had in his life, he who has separated the concepts of love, sex and marriage in his mind. The first is childhood friend, farm girl Miriam Leivers, who Paul has also instilled a romantic notion of the arts and literature. Their relationship is also affected by Mrs. Leivers, who has taught Miriam to have an ugly view of physical sex, it purely a means to procreation. The second is work colleague Clara Dawes, an emancipated woman separated from her laborer husband, Baxter Dawes.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: literary adaptation, family drama, coming of age, psychological conflict, mother-son relationship, love triangle, working class ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: At 10, Fanny Price, a poor relation, goes to live at Mansfield Park, the estate of her aunt's husband, Sir Thomas. Clever, studious, and a writer with an ironic imagination and fine moral compass, she becomes especially close to Edmund, Thomas's younger son. Fanny is soon possessed of beauty as well as a keen mind and comes to the attention of a neighbor, Henry Crawford. Thomas promotes this match, but to his displeasure, Fanny has a mind of her own, asking Henry to prove himself worthy. As Edmund courts Henry's sister and as light shines on the link between Thomas's fortunes and New World slavery, Fanny must assess Henry's character and assert her heart as well as her wit.
Plot Keywords: british literature, jane austen, romance, family drama, social class, female perspective, coming of age ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Late 19th century England; Jude, an intelligent but unworldly stonemason, looks to escape rural poverty by gaining a university education. Toward this goal, when his wife Arabella leaves him, he moves to Christminster where he meets and falls recklessly in love with Sue, his beautiful and intelligent cousin. Though the two realize their destinies are intertwined, when he reveals his previous marriage, she is deeply hurt and in a perverse act of retaliation, marries another man. Broke and denied entrance to the university, he returns to his hometown. Some time later, at the funeral for their common aunt, Sue reveals to Jude that she's desperately unhappy. Soon an illicit romance begins between them until Sue's husband steps aside finally allowing Jude and Sue to be together openly. The two have children and live together as an unmarried couple. Though they must endure social and financial hardship, the two finally find happiness together, until tragedy strikes.—Wiki
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, tragedy, british literature, social class, marriage, forbidden love ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Using his own terminology, Billy Pilgrim is "unstuck in time", which means he is moving between different points in his life uncontrollably, although he is aware of it at certain of those points as witnessed by the letter to the editor he writes to the Ilium Daily News about his situation. Primarily, he is moving between three general time periods and locations. The first is his stint as a GI during WWII, when, as a pacifist, he was acting as a Chaplain's assistant for his unit. This time is largely as a POW, where he was in Dresden the day of the bombing, spending it with among others an older compassionate GI named Edgar Derby, and a brash loudmouth GI named Paul Lazzaro. The second is his life as an optometrist in Ilium in upstate New York, eventually married to the wealthy and overbearing Valencia Merble, and having two offspring, Robert, who would spend his teen-aged years as a semi-delinquent, and Barbara, who would end up much like her mother. And the third is as an abductee on...
Plot Keywords: anti-war, science fiction, time travel, black comedy, surrealism, world war ii, existentialism ...
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