Movies

I’ve been asked numerous times to recommend good book and movie titles related to AP Euro content. If you really want to be ready to dive into European History this fall, you may want to delve into some fun Renaissance-era reading, viewing,and playing. This is completely optional. Several of these titles are R-rated or TV-MA so, kids, be sure to get your parents’ permission if you’re under 18.

Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. In this video game trilogy, you play Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a Florentine assassin running around Renaissance Italy and the Ottoman Empire murdering people. I am not advocating violence and I’m not condoning any of the morally questionable aspects of these games. I’m suggesting them because you are thrust into the amazing environments of 15 th century Florence, Venice, Rome, and Constantinople. You can tour Il Duomo, Castel Sant’Angelo, and the Topkapi Palace; hang out with Ezio’s BFFs, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli; and collect fine Renaissance paintings by Raphael and Michelangelo. These games are nerdtastic!

A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester. Provides a saucy, shocking, and scandalous portrait of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance. Many AP Euro teachers make this one a mandatory summer reading assignment. I am not but I do highly recommend it.

Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe, 1520-1536 by James Reston Jr. It is EPIC in the true meaning of the word. The Catholic Hapsburg Empire - already at war with France, coping with the political intrigues of Henry VIII, and trying to stamp out Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation – clashes with the Muslim Turks as they encroach on Central Europe during the peak of the Ottoman Empire. It reads like Lord of the Rings, only more awesome because it’s real (though orc and hobbit-free)!

The Tudors. Showtime TV-series about Henry VIII and his six wives (divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived). This one is made for mature audiences. Check with your parents before watching.

The Borgias. Showtime TV-series about Rodrigo Borgia, the terribly corrupt and controversial Pope Alexander VI, and his murderous and incestuous children, Cesare and Lucrezia. Again, this one is made for mature audiences. Check with your parents before watching.

This is a very incomplete list of films related to European history. There are many other great films out there. These are just ones I’ve seen and can recommend. Many of them are Academy Award winners, several for Best Picture. Also, Liam Neeson seems to be in quite a few of them.

+ denotes Academy Award winner for Best Picture
++ denotes Academy Award nominee for Best Picture

• Amadeus+ (1984) PG – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s musical career
• Amazing Grace (2006) PG – William Wilberforce fights to end the British slave trade
• Around the World in 80 Days+ (1956) NR – Phileas Fogg races around the globe in the late 1800s
• Barry Lyndon++ (1975) PG – 18 th c. Irish rouge goes from country bumpkin to English lord
• Braveheart* (1995) R – 13 th c. Scotsman William Wallace (Mel Gibson) leads a rebellion against the English
• Breaker Morant (1980) – Australians on trial for war crimes during the Boer War
• Casablanca+ (1942) – Jaded American expat (Humphrey Bogart) protects a freedom fighter hunted by the Nazis
• Casanova (2004) R – Italian playboy (Heath Ledger) woos the ladies
• Chariots of Fire+ (1981) – British track runners in the 1924 Olympics
• Conspiracy (2001) R – The Nazis (Kenneth Branaugh, Stanley Tucci) plan the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference
• Copying Beethoven (2006) PG-13 – Beethoven’s final year of life
• Das Boot (1981)- Life onboard a German submarine during WWII
• Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004) – the Nazi regime collapses as the Soviets capture Berlin in 1945
• Downton Abbey (TV Series, 2010-present) – love and intrigue at a British estate in the early 20 th c.
• Dr. Zhivago++ (1965) – Love during Russian Revolution
• El Cid (1961) NR – Spanish knight (Charleton Heston) battles Muslims in medieval Spain
• Elizabeth++ (1998) R – Teenage queen of England (Cate Blanchett) secures her throne
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) PG13 – Sir Walter Raleigh romances the queen and fights the Spanish Armada
• Enemy at the Gates (2001) R + – Russian sniper vs. German sniper during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942
• Flyboys (2006) – American volunteer (James Franco) flies for France during World War One
• Gallipoli (1981) – Australian solider (Mel Gibson) fights the Turks during World War One
• Gandhi+ (1982) – Indian leader struggles for his country’s independence from Britain
• Germinal (1993) R – 19 th c. French coal miners go on strike
• Girl With A Pearl Earring (2003) PG13 – Dutch painter captures a young beauty (Scarlett Johansen) on canvas
• Good (2010) R – German literature professor becomes a Nazi officer
• Goodbye Lenin! (2003) R – Son tries to convince his sick, socialist mother that the Berlin Wall never fell
• Goya’s Ghost (2006) R – Spanish painter’s romance with his muse (Natalie Portman)
• Gunga Din (1936) – British imperialism in India
• Henry V (1989) PG13 – English king (Kenneth Branaugh) fights the French during the Hundred Years’ War
• Horatio Hornblower (A&E TV Series) NR – British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars
• Hugo (2011) PG – Homeless French boy meets a pioneer of early cinema
• Immortal Beloved (1994) R – Beethoven in love
• Impromptu (1990) PG13 – Frederic Chopin (Hugh Grant) pursues feminist author George Sand
• Joyeux Noel (2006) PG-13 – Germans, French, and British soldiers stop killing each other and celebrate Christmas Eve, 1914
• Lady Jane (1985) PG13 – Eponymous young lady (Helena Bonham Carter) becomes Queen of England … for six days.
• Last of the Mohicans (1992) R – American frontiersman fights through the Seven Years’ (aka French and Indian War) in NY.
• Lawrence of Arabia+ (1962) – British officer forges an alliance with Arabs to fight the Turks during World War One
• Les Miserables (1998) PG13 – French convict (Liam Neeson) hunted by a lawman in 19 th c. France
• Life is Beautiful++ (1997) PG-13 – Italian Jew tries to shield his son with humor during the Holocaust
• Marie Antoinette (2007) PG-13 – French queen rocks the Palace of Versailles
• Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World++ (2004) PG-13 – British captain (Russell Crowe) chases a French ship into the Pacific during the Napoleonic Wars
• Metropolis (1929) NR – German sci-fi masterpiece of a dystopian future.
• Michael Collins (1996) – Irish nationalist (Liam Neeson) fights the British for his country’s independence
• Moliere (2007) PG-13 – Funnyman keeps the laughs going in 17 th c. France
• Moulin Rouge++ (2001) R – Love, drinking, and dancing at a scandalous French nightclub in the Belle Epoque
• Gosford Park++ (2001) R – Murder and intrigue and a British estate
• Chocolat++ (2000) PG-13 – Opening up a chocolate shop upsets a French village in the 1950s
• The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995) PG – Welsh villagers don’t like it went an English cartographer decides the local landmark isn’t tall enough to be classified as a mountain. Solution: make it bigger.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) – Life is horrible in a dystopian future where Big Brother watches everyone’s every move.
• Oliver Twist (2005) PG13 – An orphan struggles to survive in Victorian England.
• Orlando (1992) – An immortal (Tilda Swinton) passes through several centuries of English history occasionally changing from a man into a woman and back again
• Paris 36 (2008) PG-13 – Communists vs. Fascists at a community theater between the wars
• Paths of Glory (1957) – French soldiers are wrongfully executed as cowards during World War One
• Patton+ (1970) – American general rampages through North Africa and Europe during World War Two
• Pride and Prejudice (2005 PG) – Jane Austen English romance
• Prisoner of Honor (1991) PG – a Jewish officer is falsely accused of selling secrets to the Germans in the 1890s and his trial tears French society apart
• Reds++ (1981) – An American journalist reports on the Russian Revolution
• Restoration (1994) R – English doctor (Robert Downey Jr.) in Charles II’s court
• Return of Martin Guerre (1982) R – A French solider returns home after many years but the villagers doubt his identity
• Rob Roy (1995) R – Scottish swashbuckler (Liam Neeson) tries to get his money back in the 1700s. BEST. SWORDFIGHT. EVER.
• Saving Private Ryan++ (1998) – American soldiers fight their way onto the beaches of Normandy, France in 1944.
• Schindler’s List+ (1993) – German businessman (Liam Neeson) works to save as many Jews as he can during the Holocaust
• Sense and Sensibility++ (1995) – Jane Austen romance in England
• Shakespeare in Love* (1998) R – the “real” story of Romeo and Juliet.
• Swing Kids (1993) – German teenagers (Christian Bale, Robert Sean Leonard of House) dance to banned music in Nazi Germany
• Tea With Mussolini (1999) – English ladies in Fascist Italy
• The African Queen (1951) – A rouge (Humphrey Bogart) and a missionary (Katherine Hepburn) sail up the Nile and battle Germans during World War One
• The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) NR – Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel
• The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008) R – young German terrorists fight the West during the Cold War (very violent).
• The Battle of Britain (1969) G – British RAF pilots versus the German Luftwaffe in the skies over London in 1940
• The Black Robe (1991) R – a Jesuit priest spreads Christianity to 17 th century Quebec
• The Charge of the Light Brigade (1969) NR – British military debacle during the Crimean War in 1853
• The English Patient+ (1996) R – Young nurse cares for a burnt British pilot during World War Two
• The Four Feathers (2002) PG-13 – A British soldier (Heath Ledger) is branded a coward by his friends and fiancée and travels to Sudan to rescue his buddies and redeem himself
• The Great Dictator (1941) – Charlie Chaplin mocks Hitler
• The King’s Speech+ (2010) R – King George VI beats his stutter during the 1930s
• The Last Emperor+ (1989) – the final emperor of China is often a puppet of European imperialist intrigue
• The Lion in Winter (2003) NR – King Henry II (Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: TNG, X-Men) locks up his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, when she tries to overthrow him
• The Madness of King George (1994) PG – King George III goes crazy.
• The Man Who Would Be King (1975) – British soldiers (Sean Connery and Michael Caine) seek their fortune in Afghanistan in the late 1800s
• The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) R – Joan of Arc battles the English during the Hundred Years’ War
• The Mission++ (1986) PG – Jesuit priest (Robert de Niro) protects American Indians in 18 th c Brazil
• The Name of the Rose (1986) R – Medieval murder mystery solved by an unconventional, brilliant monk (Sean Connery)
• The Pianist++ (2001) R – Polish concert pianist struggles to survive in Warsaw during the Second World War
• The Spanish Apartment (L’Auberge Espagnole) (2002) R – Antics of young students from across Europe sharing an apartment in Madrid
• The Three Musketeers (1993) R – Disney-fied adaptation of the French adventure novel set in the 17 th century
• Titanic+ (1997) PG-13 – Beautiful young star-crossed lovers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett) try not to drown.
• Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1976) (Brit TV Series) – The 1970s version of Downton Abbey
• Waterloo (1970) NR – Napoleon loses his empire.
• War and Remembrance (TV miniseries, 1989) – Sequel to Winds of War follows a family through World War Two
• Winds of War (TV miniseries, 1983) – Prelude to World War Two
• Young Indiana Jones (TV Series, 1992-1993) NR – American teenage runaway fights in World War One, meets dozens of famous people, returns home to study archeology.
• Zulu (1964) – British army is overwhelmed by a large, native army in 19th century southern Africa.