History Movies

The story of corrupt, power-hungry, manipulative Grigori Rasputin’s influence on members of the Russian Imperial family and others, and what resulted.

A Roman soldier becomes torn between his love for a Christian woman and his loyalty to Emperor Nero.

A newlywed couple journeys west to make their fortune, and begins a banking empire.

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

Vienna glove-sales-lady Christel falls in love with Russian Czar Alexander. Austrian Prince Metternich tries to use this and other pleasant diversions to keep him out of the negotiation conferences of…

A biopic dramatizing Abraham Lincoln’s life through a series of vignettes depicting its defining chapters: his romance with Ann Rutledge; his early years as a country lawyer; his marriage to…

King Louis XIII of France is thrilled to have born to him a son – an heir to the throne. But when the queen delivers a twin, Cardinal Richelieu sees…

In 1918 a young and simple Mongol herdsman and trapper is cheated out of a valuable fox fur by a European capitalist fur trader. Ostracized from the trading post, he…

Pan Tadeusz (film 1928) is a Polish historical film directed by Ryszard Ordynski based on the national epic of Poland, an 1834 poem by Adam Mickiewicz.

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she’d spoken to God, Jeanne d’Arc…

A former Imperial Russian general and cousin of the Czar ends up in Hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary.

The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history,…

François Villon, in his lifetime the most renowned poet in France, is also a prankster, an occasional criminal, and an ardent patriot.

A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican’s career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French…

An embellished account of the 1803 expedition by famed frigate U.S.S. Constitution–a.k.a. “Old Ironsides”–against the Barbary pirates then terrorizing American shipping, focusing on the crew and passengers of a fictional…

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre. The film had an incredible impact on the…

Brandon, a surveyor, dreams of building a railway to the west. He sets off with his son, Davy, to survey a route. They discover a new pass which will shave…

The Spanish Dancer is the story of Maritana, a Romani girl who dances in courtyards and even tells people’s fortunes. Despite her lowly position, Maritana wishes to be a Countess….

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen’s legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle…

The Ethiopian King offers his daughter to a powerful Pharaoh to secure peace between the two countries.

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents’ lives causes Louise’s blindness, they decide…

The story of the ill-fated second wife of the English king Henry VIII, whose marriage to the Henry led to momentous political and religious turmoil in England.

Suddenly appearing in Florence, an evil seductress causes Cesare, the city’s ruler, and his son to both fall madly in love with her. The son, killing his father before an…

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

Fenella, a poor Italian girl, falls in love with a Spanish nobleman, but their affair triggers a revolution and national catastrophe.

The story of the defense of the mission-turned-fortress by 185 Texans against an overwhelming Mexican army in 1836.

Set during the American Civil War, Keenan stars as a Virginia colonel and Charles Ray as his weak-willed son. The son is forced, at gunpoint, by his father to enlist…

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era…

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she’s to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman…

When the Civil War begins, young Billy runs away from home to enlist in the Northern Army as a drummer; he’s wounded in battle and taken prisoner. He manages to…

A farmer takes in a young orphan after her mother’s death and sends her off to school. After she’s grown, he encourages her to consider his younger brother as a…

Just as Galeen and Wegener’s Der Golem (1915) can be seen as a testament to early German film artistry, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) symbolizes both the birth…