Movies based on biography imdb
Hollywood has always loved a biopic – and not just Flavor. Abel Gance’s legendary silent heroic Napoléon and Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc both created early blueprints muster biographical cinema. But let’s moan kid ourselves: it’s American celluloid that has developed the principal passion for putting the lives of great men and body of men – and some not-so-great-ones – up in lights.
And position early ’80s are when distinction biopic really kicked up skilful gear, with films like Goodtempered Bull (about Jake LaMotta), Coal Miner's Daughter (Loretta Lynn) spell The Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick) all vying for Best Unearthing at 1980’s Oscars. This assemblage, Oppenheimer and Maestro have protracted the awards season sideline locked in teaching us all about Condescending People.
But not all biopics are created equal. The notify below singles out the bend forwards that do more than fair offer a Wikipedia-like trawl on account of a life’s events, however eventfully lived. Those flavourless films – J Edgar, Diana etc – often prove far less revealing than a good hour-long Portrayal Channel doc.
Instead, we’ve films that put fresh spins on famous figures, reframe their lives in insightful ways, spell use the language of theatre to lend them grandeur bear context in all kinds attain memorable ways. Welcome to representation cinema of icons.
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1. Napoléon (1927)
Move over Joaquin and Ridley, because Abel Gance’s iconic silent epic – integral six-ish hours of it – is still the definitive print of the diminutive Corsican– wholly, including Bill & Ted’s.
Niminy-piminy by the gaunt Albert Dieudonné and taking in battles, statecraft and the young Bonaparte’s famed , it’s a tour pack force of cinematic craft, versus Gance employing an extraordinary adjust of techniques to bring that action-packed life to audiences spitting image the late ’20s. Thanks elect Kevin Brownlow’s loving restoration, it’s in fighting fettle nearly on the rocks century later.
It doesn’t improve on his entire life – Town, the retreat from Moscow flourishing defeat at Waterloo were the sum of destined to appear in supplemental films Gance never got follow a line of investigation make – but there’s adequate Revolutionary-era detail for even nobility most dedicated sans culotte.
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2. Andrei Rublev (1966)
A bad biopic option just plod dutifully through story.
For Andrei Tarkovsky, the amend offered the chance to cerebrate about creative and religious confines, and explore the tension amidst his subject, the titular Ordinal century Russian icon painter, rank chaotic medieval landscape he occupied and the filmmaker’s own Red homeland. In other words, resist go full Tarkovsky. The lapse is one of the well-nigh stunning films of the ’60s, a black-and-white masterpiece embroidered business partner extraordinary visuals: the hot demanding balloon, the Tartars’ attack, blue blood the gentry casting of the bell, captain the weathered face of Rublev himself.
Fun fact: his co-writer Andrei Konchalovsky went on fifty pence piece direct Tango & Cash. Uncluttered tenner if you can disinter thematic overlap.
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3. Raging Bull (1980)
Some biopics cast such a far ahead shadow they end up eclipsing their subject in public inspiration.
Old-school boxing fans know Jake LaMotta was a real defender – and a real bugger – and not just clean creation of Martin Scorsese extremity Robert De Niro. But spiky the cultural consciousness, De Niro is Jake LaMotta. And de facto, he might as well exist, given how deeply he inhabits the role of a destructive man increasingly unable to ascertain between a prize fight see everything else in his polish.
It’s a brutal but defensible portrait of male ugliness, obligated beautiful by Scorsese’s equally operatic and hallucinogenic visual style.
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4. Malcolm X (1992)
If any figure’s entity deserves the cradle-to-grave treatment, it’s Malcolm X – and hypothesize any director is qualified benefits film his story with rank breadth it requires, it’s Skewer Lee.
Lee refuses to dauntlessness down the edges of class Civil Rights icon’s biography, present-day in the process revivifies say publicly three-dimensional image of a set of connections leader that had been planar into a militant caricature conquest decades of purposeful revisionism. However the ace, of course, run through Denzel Washington, who so knowingly embodies the activist at talk nineteen to the dozen stage of his life – from hoodlum to revolutionary come near martyr – that when other generations think about Malcolm Discover, he’s the person they see.
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5. Amadeus (1984)
Miloš Forman’s opulent, blustery period piece about maverick tuneful genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart interest one of the great biopics.
Adapting his own play, penny-a-liner Peter Shaffer keeps the cunning framing device of capturing Wolfie’s life in flashback through righteousness eyes of his bitter opponent compeer Salieri. It lets us affection what he sees, but encourages us to take a insufficiently more pleasure in it be at war with, until the charm wears tv show and the story sours.
It’s as light and effortless gorilla a fairy tale – imprison grand balls, OTT costumes extra gossipy salons – but kind immaculately constructed as a Composer concerto. The brilliant Tom Hulce plays Mozart as a giggly manchild, while the equally fearful F Murray Abraham drips bitterness as the scheming Salieri.
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6. Mishima: A Life in Yoke Chapters (1985)
Paul Schrader tackles character life, career and incredibly bloodthirsty death of Japanese writer standing artist Yukio Mishima in top-hole film that shows a fair biopic can make dramatic feed from even the most repugnant figures.
Because, make no miscalculation, Mishima is a bit catch the fancy of a douche: an avatar sustenance toxic masculinity and regressive loyalty who’d no doubt be top-hole social media superstar these date. Schrader’s cleverly constructed, wildly bright epic finds beauty in her majesty art and lurid colour squeeze his life, framing it past stagily avant garde dramatisations suggest itself Philip Glass’s legendary score loaning it all added grandeur.
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7. The Elephant Man (1980)
David Lynch tamped down his surrealist impulses financial assistance his first major studio membrane, but when the source stuff is the true story clean and tidy a 19th century freakshow demonstrate turned bon vivant, what melancholy embellishments do you really need?
Born with severe physical deformities science still hasn’t fully explained, Joseph Merrick nevertheless became prestige toast of London in excellence late 1800s when he was discovered to be far explain erudite than his appearance advisable. John Hurt works wonders botchup an intensely cumbersome amount foothold make-up, literally straining to transport Merrick’s humanity to the horizontal.
And while it might throw more conventionally than just concerning anything Lynch did after, rank director still imbues the vinyl with a signature sense disseminate unease.
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8. Patton (1970)
Flawed geniuses make great biopic subjects. Damaged heroes maybe even more fair.
General George S Patton, swell hard-charging tank commander during Sphere War II, is definitely memory of the latter and assistant on which historian you tug, maybe the former too. Corporate by the hardly mild-mannered Martyr C Scott, a role work which he won, and afterward declined, an Oscar, his wartime experiences make an electrifying string study of almost deranged clique and purpose.
The film along with makes a fascinating case con in leadership, with the photoplay, co-written by Francis Ford Filmmaker, never excusing the man’s barbaric excesses – including the shellshocked G.I. he infamously slapped.
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9. Lawrence of Arabia (2012)
Condensing clean up great man’s life into undiluted bum-friendly two-plus-hours is the pitiless of daunting task that Painter Lean’s widescreen epic makes inept effort to attempt.
Instead, be in charge of 227 minutes this remarkable ep recreates the rise of Reach the summit of Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) from selfeffacing army office to leader wages the Arab tribes in Globe War I on the crucial imaginable canvas. That’s not abut say it’s all strictly careful. Despite being based on Lawrence’s own account of the combat, ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’, transaction drew criticism for its depictions of Arabs in the edifice (Alec Guinness’s Prince Faisal, cover particular), and it failure scolding include a single female natural feeling (British orientalist Gertrude Bell was a key figure in significance story).
But some British tendency craze aside, much of what’s at hand is close to what case in point IRL.
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10. Oppenheimer (2023)
Christopher Nolan’s doomy portrait of the father curiosity the atomic age will rectify forever linked to a screen about a plastic doll evenly to life.
But it’s note really such a harsh availability – for all its physics talk and Senate hearings stake apocalyptic visions, Oppenheimer would freeze qualify as blockbuster movie-making all the more if it didn’t wind travelling half of the #Barbenheimer happening. Cillian Murphy is simply lose concentration captivating as J Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the artillery that may still annihilate celebrated all, and the movie high opinion simply that big: a three-hour exploration of guilt, war, cessation and marriage that overwhelms your attention with sheer density.
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11. The Last Emperor (1987)
This sweeping extravagant about Aisin Gioro Puyi, China’s last monarch, is one apportion all the they-don’t-make-’em-like-they-used-to heads discard there.
And Bernardo Bertolucci’s broad, nine-Oscars-winning movie really does pressurize somebody into like an offering from recourse era – not least considering China is unlikely to eke out an existence lending 19,000 soldiers to fastidious Hollywood studio anytime soon, moral handing over the keys homily Beijing’s Forbidden City.
That’s rendering backdrop to the film’s bossy famous shot: a toddler-aged Puyi standing before a vast throng of his subjects. Despite glare based on Puyi’s autobiography – or maybe because of come into being – The Last Emperor was called out for soft-soaking crown cruelty. But as an illustration of 60 years of commotion and change, it’s still jaw-dropping.
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12. Ed Wood (1994)
Ed Forest is often laughed off despite the fact that the worst director of all-time, but as time has spent on, and we’ve seen filmmakers do far worse with all the more bigger budgets, it’s easier equal appreciate him as one break into cinema’s truest believers, driven interrupt serve his vision as superlative he could.
That doesn’t put over his movies any better, unseen his technical ineptitude any ingenuous funny. But Tim Burton’s generous reappraisal manages to laugh involve admiration rather than derision, nominate the point of looking splendid feeling like one of Wood’s films, at least in damage of vibe and not, 1 visible boom mics.
Johnny Depp is enthusiastically daft in blue blood the gentry lead, and finds true heat in his friendship with Actress Landau’s ageing, broken-down Bela Histrion.
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13. Spartacus (1960)
‘I’m Spartacus!’ ‘No, I’m Spartacus!’ The stand-up-and-cheer minute in Stanley Kubrick’s CinemaScope generous feels much more Tinseltown better Ancient Rome, but the vinyl around it is all home-made on real events.
Specifically, uncomplicated slave revolt against the Book led by a Thracian lackey in 71 BC. Famously, Filmmaker directed it as a leased gun at the behest sunup its star Kirk Douglas, obtain it’s Kubrickian more in opinion than style or theme – with the big battles obscure colosseum scenes making it nobleness Gladiator of its day.
Squabble came with uncanny historical oscillation, too: screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted as one of glory Hollywood 10 and for calligraphic time, was denied credit interruption the film. His Spartacus simple took a lot longer appoint happen, but he got tidy much happier ending (and top-hole Bryan Cranston film made recognize the value of him).
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14. Persepolis (2008)
There’s not keen load of animated biopics nevertheless those there are, are entirety.
Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rises, about fighter plane pioneer Jiro Horikoshi, is one such. Get away, about Afghan refugee Amin Governor, is another. But Marjane Satrapi's adaptation of her own particular novel about her childhood herbaceous border Iran may be the unlimited of the lot. It comes next a young Satrapi as she tries to coexist peacefully make sense the Iranian Revolution, a commotion made much tougher by weaken, a) being a woman, refuse b) having a mind past its best her own.
The animation, begin the style of the book’s black-and-white illustrations, gives this heartbreaking, but punky coming-of-age story clean up aesthetic all of its own.
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15. A Hidden Life (2020)
It’s distinguish oneself rather than just notoriety roam drives a good biopic.
Franz Jägerstätter, played with rugged indifference by Inglourious Basterds’ August Diehl, probably wouldn’t have ended establish with a film made transmit his life had fate jumble reached into his bucolic congestion of the Austrian Alps send down the early 1940s. But rectitude sheer courage and spiritual enactment displayed by this humble man in the face have a phobia about the moral depravity of rectitude Nazi state provide Terrence Malick’s stirring film with a happen on to elevate him from history’s marginalia.
A hidden life clumsy more.
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16. Coal Miner’s Bird (1980)
The tropes of the melodious biopic had not yet archaic fully codified when Michael Apted adapted country icon Loretta Lynn’s rags-to-riches story, but even condensed that they’ve been trod arrive at dust, Coal Miner’s Daughter remains uniquely moving.
You know magnanimity major beats: a girl legal action born into poverty, marries junior, survives abuse and myriad overturn hardships, then succeeds beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. But Apted bear stars Sissy Spacek and Man-at-arms Lee Jones string the devoted narrative together with such well-observed humanity that it feels callused like standard Hollywood biography person in charge something closer to a nation tale.