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Poetry
see all genres ›Though not exactly the popular medium it was in, say, the 19th century, verse has inspired plenty of celluloid art in the 20th century and onward. From adaptations of famous epic narrative poems to shorts musing upon modernist wordsmiths.
Discover Poetry Films
Genres / Adaptation / Literary / Poetry
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The Angelic Conversation
Derek Jarman's lyrical celebration of gay love set within the context of a series of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. Ethereal Super-8 images slowed to a magical, meditative pace follow the love affair between two men as Dame Judi Dench provides a soothing presence with her narration of the fourteen sonnets....Start your free trial to watch
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The Avenging Conscience
D.W. Griffith indulged his lifelong fascination with Edgar Allan Poe in this ambitious amalgam of the writer’s poetry and prose: “Annabel Lee” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” flavored with shades of “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Conqueror Worm." Poe’s tales are interwoven in one...Start your free trial to watch
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The Black Oud
"THE BLACK OUD represents a subtle new direction in documentary. I have used the term 'bio-documentary' to describe this slight, though essential, difference between my film and the majority of personal or experimental documentaries made in the last decade. The prefix 'bio,' of course, means 'life.' But what I refer to...Start your free trial to watch
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The Cry of the Children
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN is the most famous and best documented of all Thanhouser films. In its day it was recognized as one of the most important expressions of the pre-World War One reform movement, in particular child labor. Perhaps because the uncompromising content drew all the attention, the film was...Start your free trial to watch
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Enoch Arden
"Here on this beach a hundred years ago, three children of three houses: Annie Lee, the prettiest little damsel in the port, and Philip Ray the miller's only son, and Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd among the waste and lumber of the shore, hard coils of cordage, swarthy...Start your free trial to watch
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The Face on the Barroom Floor
Charles Chaplin here parodies the ballad form poem "The Face Upon the Floor" by Hugo Antoine d'Arcy. A once prosperous painter who, having lost his beloved Madeleine (Cecile Arnold) to another man, becomes destitute in despair and is reduced to drawing her "face on the barroom floor." Charlie, as the...Start your free trial to watch
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Forward March, Time!
An animated fantasia "based on the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky," this dazzling kaleidoscope of imagery pays tribute to that fabled Soviet poet, playwright and Futurist in terms as imaginatively fabulist as any Western animation of the 1970s "head" era. Beginning with a wrecking ball repeatedly smashing...Start your free trial to watch
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The Frozen North
A parody of the Western melodramas of William S. Hart, THE FROZEN NORTH was filmed partly on location near Truckee, California, and the intertitles drew from Robert Service's "The Shooting of Dan McGrew." Charles Chaplin later used Truckee for his masterpiece THE GOLD RUSH and drew upon "McGrew" for his...Start your free trial to watch
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Kathleen Mavourneen
An adaptation of Dion Boucicault's popular stage play "Kathleen Mavourneen; or St. Patrick's Eve," though with significant modifications. Much of Porter and McCutcheon's Irish melodrama was shot as if the audience could understand the absent dialogue. Likewise the collaborators used conventional theatrical...Start your free trial to watch
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Kimono
This half hour "ambient narrative" was made for the German TV series EROTIC TALES. Inspired by some of the more sensual readings in a collection of classical Japanese poetry, the film follows a young bride abandoned at a desolate roadside, and her dream-like descent into the depths of the forest. There, other aspects of...Start your free trial to watch
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King Rene's Daughter
A very romantic fiction set in renaissance France with florid, rich costuming. The story was originally a one-act verse play in Danish, “Iolanthe,” which also enjoyed great popularity in a fine English translation for the stage. Maude Fealy made her Thanhouser debut in the title role, and became a...Start your free trial to watch
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The Lone Fisherman
THE LONE FISHERMAN was a role made popular by the actor James Moffit in the theatrical version of "Evangeline," one scene from which apparently served as the model for this film. The character, which appeared at various points throughout the production but does not exist in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's...Start your free trial to watch
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A Man There Was
Based on an epic poem by Henrik Ibsen, A MAN THERE WAS is commonly cited as the film that launched Sweden's first golden age of filmmaking. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it tells the story of a fisherman so desperate to obtain food for his starving family that he tries to break through a British blockade, only to find...Start your free trial to watch
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Mister Twister
Based on a popular children’s poem by Samuel Marshak, Anatoly Karanovich’s animation is a cheerful indictment of American racism. The titular millionaire visits Leningrad from Chicago and turns several shades of mad when he discovers a black man staying at his hotel. A clever concierge conspires with his colleagues across the...Start your free trial to watch
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The Night Before Christmas
"A Visit from St. Nicholas," the memorable holiday poem by Clement Clarke Moore, is adapted for the screen by longtime Edison Manufacturing Company director Edwin S. Porter. "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." Though, in this version,...Start your free trial to watch