Classic Drama
see all genres ›It’s the rare contemporary film that has depth, credibility and is satisfying in the most basic storytelling terms, but Hollywood and other national film industries used to crank out such rewards in bulk. Settle back and enjoy narratives as juicy as they are crafty.
Discover Classic Drama Films
Genres / Classic / Classic Drama
-
Abraham Lincoln
Returning to the historic era of his greatest success, D.W. Griffith paid homage to the sixteenth President in this moving drama (his first talking picture) starring Walter Huston. Focusing on Abraham Lincoln’s personal tragedies as well as his great accomplishments, Griffith’s film depicts the American icon with a...Start your free trial to watch -
Actors and Sin
Some of legendary writer Ben Hecht's best work comes to the screen in a two-in-one show business-themed comedy-drama that reveals what goes on when the greasepaint comes off. In ACTOR'S BLOOD, washed-up stage star Edward G. Robinson assembles all the suspects in the murder of his actress-daughter (Marsha Hunt). In WOMAN OF...Start your free trial to watch -
L'age d'or
In 1930, following their short film triumph UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí created an hour-long avant-garde tour de force that's both an aesthetic avalanche of boldness and a withering attack on a society that elevates pious morality over sexual freedom. As scorpions battle, partisans (led by famed surrealist...Start your free trial to watch
-
Black Like Me
Based on the landmark memoir by John Howard Griffin, BLACK LIKE ME stars James Whitmore as Griffin, who medically altered his pigment and, with the help of a sunlamp, reinvented himself as an itinerant black writer navigating his way through Mississippi and Alabama. Along the way he experienced firsthand both crushing racism...Start your free trial to watch -
The Blue Angel
Emil Jannings, the quintessential German expressionist actor, stars as Professor Rath, the sexually-repressed instructor of a boys' prep school. After learning of the pupils' infatuation with French postcards depicting a local nightclub songstress, he decides to personally investigate the source of such indecency. But as soon...Start your free trial to watch -
The Brave One
A film full of warmth and sensitivity, THE BRAVE ONE is the story about the friendship of a boy and a bull. Gitano, or Gypsy, is the name the boy gives the bull whose life he saves during a storm. The animal follows him around like a puppy until the legal owners spirit the mature Gitano away to do battle with top matador...Start your free trial to watch
-
Cairo Station
In this beautiful classic film from legendary director Youssef Chahine, Cairo’s main railroad station is used to represent all of Egyptian society. We see a community comprised of luggage carriers and soft-drink vendors living in abandoned train cars. A crippled newspaper dealer, Kinawi (played by Chahine himself), falls in...Start your free trial to watch -
Candlelight in Algeria
James Mason stars as fugitive British agent Alan Thurston on a mission to find secret photographs of the location of the Allied invasion of North Africa before the Nazis. Susan Foster (Carla Lehmann) is drawn into the intrigue of the event when she decides to help Thurston by hiding him from Dr. Muller...Start your free trial to watch -
Cesar
The story begins with the death of Cesar's (Raimu) best friend, old Panisse (Charpin), the town merchant who has devoted his wealth and love to the happiness of his young wife, Fanny (Orane Demazis), and their son. After the death of Panisse, the son is told by his mother that his real father is the legendary Marius (Pierre...Start your free trial to watch
-
A double tour
Vintner Henri Marcoux (Jacques Dacqmine) brazenly carries on an affair with a beautiful young neighbor (Antonella Lualdi) right under the nose of his bitter wife Thérèse (Madeleine Robinson). Henri's gorgeous daughter has herself caught the eye of a Hungarian ne'er do well (Jean-Paul Belmondo), while Henri's voyeur son begins...Start your free trial to watch -
Dreaming Lips
Peter is about to perform a Ludwig Von Beethoven concert for the first time and he needs his wife Elisabeth "Liss" (Maria Schell) there for emotional support. He claims he always plays his best when she is there. To his surprise, his old friend Michael Sekretar is the solo violinist. Elisabeth is late for the performance, as...Start your free trial to watch -
Edvard Munch
Famously described by Ingmar Bergman as a "work of genius," Peter Watkins' multi-faceted masterpiece is more than just a bio-pic of the iconic Norwegian Expressionist painter. Focusing initially on Munch's formative years in late 19th Century Kristiania (now Oslo), Watkins uses his trademark style to create a vivid picture of...Start your free trial to watch
-
Escape to Burma
When a local British Burma prince is found murdered, his grieving father seeks vengeance and Jim Brecan (Robert Ryan) becomes the prime suspect. Fleeing for his life, he finds temporary sanctuary in a teak plantation managed by a wealthy colonial woman (Barbara Stanwyck). She believes in his innocence and the two fall in love...Start your free trial to watch -
Fanny
Set in Marseilles, the young and beautiful Fanny discovers that she is pregnant after her lover, Marius, has deserted her to follow the adventurous life of the sea. After finding succor in the kindness of the equally bereaved Cesar, Fanny reluctantly accepts the marriage offer of an older wealthy suitor Panisse (Charpin), in...Start your free trial to watch -
Il ferroviere
Later famed internationally for such exportable comedies as DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE and THE BIRDS, THE BEES AND THE ITALIANS, Pietro Germi was still strongly identified with postwar Italy's neo-realist vogue when he wrote, directed and starred in this potent seriocomedy. He plays a railroad engineer perpetually raging over the...Start your free trial to watch
-
Giorni d'amore
Impossibly glamorous farm laborers were a staple of Italian cinema in the 1950s thanks to the 1949 melodrama BITTER RICE, an enormous hit which raised the heart rate of men worldwide as soon as they laid eyes on statuesque Silvana Mangano as an Amazonian field worker straddling rows of soil with her skirt hiked up, revealing...Start your free trial to watch -
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
The birth, life, teachings and death on the cross of Jesus Christ presented almost as a cinéma-vérité documentary. Pasolini's second feature seemed a strange choice for such a revolutionary director, but it is an attempt to take Christ out of the opulent church and present him as an outcast Italian...Start your free trial to watch -
The Great Gabbo
One of Hollywood's earliest (and most peculiar) musicals, THE GREAT GABBO stars Erich von Stroheim as an egotistical ventriloquist who casts a Svengali-like spell upon an ingenue (Betty Compson), against a backdrop of singularly strange numbers (including "Icky" and the spider-and-fly-themed "Caught in a Web"). Director James...Start your free trial to watch




