Biopics of Writers, Poets and Playwright
by ursulahemard | created - 19 Jul 2011 | updated - 5 months ago | PublicBiographical Films on Famous Writers/Authors, Playwright and Poets (research started in 2007 and work is still in progress)
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1. Friedrich Schiller - Eine Dichterjugend (1923)
111 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
Despite his wish to become a pastor, Friedrich Schiller is ordered to join a military school. There, he begins to write poetry...
Director: Curt Goetz | Stars: Theodor Loos, Hermann Vallentin, Isabel Heermann, Max Pategg
Votes: 71
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805) was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Die Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.
2. The Beloved Rogue (1927)
Not Rated | 99 min | Adventure, Drama, History
François Villon, in his lifetime the most renowned poet in France, is also a prankster, an occasional criminal, and an ardent patriot.
Director: Alan Crosland | Stars: John Barrymore, Conrad Veidt, Marceline Day, Lawson Butt
Votes: 899
François Villon in fifteenth-century French, (c. 1431 – after 5 January 1463) was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison. The question "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?", taken from the Ballade des dames du temps jadis and translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?", is one of the most famous lines of translated secular poetry in the English-speaking world.
3. Voltaire (1933)
Passed | 72 min | Drama
Writer and philosopher Voltaire, loyal to his king, Louis XV of France, nonetheless writes scathingly of the king's disdain for the rights and needs of his people. Louis admires Voltaire ... See full summary »
Director: John G. Adolfi | Stars: George Arliss, Doris Kenyon, Margaret Lindsay, Reginald Owen
Votes: 244
François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name VOLTAIRE, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade. Voltaire was a prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day. Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Émilie du Châtelet) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.
4. The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
Passed | 109 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Elizabeth Barrett's tyrannical father has forbidden any of his family to marry. Nevertheless, Elizabeth falls in love with the poet Robert Browning.
Director: Sidney Franklin | Stars: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan
Votes: 2,125
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.
5. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
Passed | 116 min | Biography, Drama
The biopic of the famous French muckraking writer and his involvement in fighting the injustice of the Dreyfus Affair.
Director: William Dieterle | Stars: Paul Muni, Gale Sondergaard, Joseph Schildkraut, Gloria Holden
Votes: 9,006
Émile François Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse.
6. Gorky 1: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938)
98 min | Biography, Drama
A drama reveals the great writer's inauspicious early years as an orphan raised by conniving relatives.
Director: Mark Donskoy | Stars: Aleksei Lyarsky, Varvara Massalitinova, Mikhail Troyanovskiy, Elizaveta Alekseeva
Votes: 778
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (28 March 1868 – 18 June 1936), also known as Maxim Gorky was a Russian, Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.
7. Gorky 2: My Apprenticeship (1939)
100 min | Biography, Drama
For the family really no money, Alexei began to make a living. Everything was limited to dirty chores, but while reading could end his depression. After hard working experience, he was ... See full summary »
Director: Mark Donskoy | Stars: Aleksei Lyarsky, Irina Zarubina, Varvara Massalitinova, Yelizaveta Lilina
Votes: 287
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (28 March 1868 – 18 June 1936), also known as Maxim Gorky was a Russian, Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.
8. Gorky 3: My Universities (1940)
90 min | Biography, Drama
The last installment of Russian director Mark Donskoy's Maxim Gorky trilogy. Having endured a painful youth in Gorky 1: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938) and a torturous sojourn as a serf... See full summary »
Director: Mark Donskoy | Stars: Nikolai Valbert, Stepan Kayukov, Nikolai Dorokhin, Nikolai Plotnikov
Votes: 239
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (28 March 1868 – 18 June 1936), also known as Maxim Gorky was a Russian, Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.
9. The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942)
Approved | 67 min | Biography, Drama
Edgar Allan Poe led an unhappy childhood, broken only by the unceasing devotion of his foster mother, Mrs. Frances Allan, whose loving ministrations gave him courage to carry out his desire... See full summary »
Director: Harry Lachman | Stars: Linda Darnell, Shepperd Strudwick, Virginia Gilmore, Jane Darwell
Votes: 229
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement.
10. Jack London (1943)
Approved | 94 min | Adventure, Biography, War
Episodes in the adventurous life of the American novelist (1876-1916).
Director: Alfred Santell | Stars: Michael O'Shea, Susan Hayward, Osa Massen, Harry Davenport
Votes: 445
John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney,[1] January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916)[2][3][4][5] was an American author, journalist, and social activist.
11. The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)
Approved | 130 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The dramatized life of immortal humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, from his days as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River until his death in 1910 shortly after Halley's Comet returned.
Director: Irving Rapper | Stars: Fredric March, Alexis Smith, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale
Votes: 1,360
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."
12. Devotion (1946)
Passed | 107 min | Biography, Drama, Mystery
Genius authors Emily and Charlotte Brontë fall in love with their curate as they seek to get their work published.
Director: Curtis Bernhardt | Stars: Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet
Votes: 1,014
The Brontës (were a 19th century literary family associated with Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (born 21 April 1816), Emily (born 30 July 1818), and Anne (born 17 January 1820), are well known as a trio of sibling poets and novelists. They originally published their poems and novels under masculine pseudonyms, following the custom of the times practised by female writers. Their stories immediately attracted attention, although not always the best, for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.
13. Hans Christian Andersen (1952)
Passed | 112 min | Biography, Family, Musical
The opening scene of the movie describes it best: "Once upon a time there lived in Denmark a great storyteller named Hans Christian Andersen. This is not the story of his life, but a fairy tale about the great spinner of fairy tales."
Director: Charles Vidor | Stars: Danny Kaye, Farley Granger, Zizi Jeanmaire, Joseph Walsh
Votes: 4,217
Hans Christian Andersen, referred to using the initials H. C. Andersen in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia; April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", and "The Ugly Duckling".
14. Beloved Infidel (1959)
Not Rated | 123 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Toward the end of his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald is writing for Hollywood studios to be able to afford the cost of an asylum for his wife. He is also struggling against alcoholism. Into his life comes the famous gossip columnist.
Director: Henry King | Stars: Gregory Peck, Deborah Kerr, Eddie Albert, Philip Ober
Votes: 1,182
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
15. The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
Approved | 180 min | Biography, Drama, Family
During World War II, a teenage Jewish girl named Anne Frank and her family are forced into hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
Director: George Stevens | Stars: Millie Perkins, Shelley Winters, Joseph Schildkraut, Richard Beymer
Votes: 13,682 | Gross: $5.01M
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (12 June 1929 – early March 1945) is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.
16. The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)
PG | 123 min | Biography, Drama, History
A chronicle of Oscar Wilde's libel suit against the Marquis of Queensberry and the tragic turn his life takes because of it.
Director: Ken Hughes | Stars: Peter Finch, Yvonne Mitchell, James Mason, Nigel Patrick
Votes: 1,116
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
17. The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
G | 135 min | Adventure, Biography, Comedy
The story of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, and three of their stories.
Directors: Henry Levin, George Pal | Stars: Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Karlheinz Böhm, Walter Slezak
Votes: 2,157 | Gross: $14.17M
The Brothers Grimm (German: Die Brüder Grimm or Die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob Grimm (January 4, 1785 – September 20, 1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (February 24, 1786 – December 16, 1859), were German academics, linguists and cultural researchers who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular.
18. The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
Not Rated | 79 min | Biography, Drama, History
The life of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova, from childhood to death, his spiritual journey, artistic endeavors and inner conflicts within the cultural and historical context of Armenia, hailed as revolutionary by Mikhail Vartanov.
Director: Sergei Parajanov | Stars: Sofiko Chiaureli, Melkon Alekyan, Vilen Galstyan, Gogi Gegechkori
Votes: 13,518
Sayat-Nova (14 June 1712, Tiflis – died 22 September 1795, Haghpat), was an Armenian poet, musician and ashik who had compositions in a number of languages. His adopted name Sayat Nova meant "Master of Songs" in Persian.
19. The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe (1974)
PG | 89 min | Drama, Horror
Poe's fiance, Lenore, falls into a coma and is taken for dead. She is rescued at the last possible moment from being buried alive, but the experience has driven her insane. On the advice of... See full summary »
Director: Mohy Quandour | Stars: Robert Walker Jr., Cesar Romero, Tom Drake, Carol Ohmart
Votes: 128
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement.
20. F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'the Last of the Belles' (1974 TV Movie)
Not Rated | 98 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
A semi-fictional account of how writer F. Scott Fitzgerald met his wife while he was in the army and stationed in Alabama in 1919.
Director: George Schaefer | Stars: Richard Chamberlain, Blythe Danner, Susan Sarandon, David Huffman
Votes: 281
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
21. F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1975 TV Movie)
100 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
The story of author F. Scott Fitzgerald's two stays in Hollywood to write for films, once in 1927 at the height of his acclaim, and again in 1937 when he arrived with little money, enormous expenses and an ill wife.
Director: Anthony Page | Stars: Jason Miller, Tuesday Weld, Julia Foster, Dolores Sutton
Votes: 39
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
22. The Belle of Amherst (1976 TV Movie)
Not Rated | 90 min | Biography, Drama
Portrait of 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson based on her poems, letters and notes. This is a taped broadcast of a live one-woman performance.
Director: Charles S. Dubin | Star: Julie Harris
Votes: 137
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
23. Julia (1977)
PG | 117 min | Drama
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
Director: Fred Zinnemann | Stars: Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Maximilian Schell
Votes: 10,407
Lillian Florence “Lily” Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes. She was romantically involved for 30 years with mystery and crime writer Dashiell Hammett (and was the inspiration for his character Nora Charles), and was also a long-time friend and literary executor of author Dorothy Parker.
24. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977)
Not Rated | 98 min | Drama
Stephen Dedalus is a young man growing up in Ireland in the early part of the twentieth century. His search for knowledge and understanding, and the decline of his family's circumstances, ... See full summary »
Director: Joseph Strick | Stars: Bosco Hogan, T.P. McKenna, John Gielgud, Rosaleen Linehan
Votes: 231
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark novel which perfected his stream of consciousness technique and combined nearly every literary device available in a modern re-telling of The Odyssey. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
25. Stevie (1978)
PG | 102 min | Biography, Drama
This biographical film has Glenda Jackson portraying a British poet with emotional problems.
Director: Robert Enders | Stars: Glenda Jackson, Mona Washbourne, Alec McCowen, Trevor Howard
Votes: 545
Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971) was an English poet and novelist.
26. Molière (1978)
260 min | Biography, Drama, History
Who was Moliere? He is known everywhere as one of the world's greatest playwrights. But who was he? Born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in 1622, the son of a prosperous tapestry maker. His mother ... See full summary »
Director: Ariane Mnouchkine | Stars: Philippe Caubère, Marie-Françoise Audollent, Frédéric Ladonne, Odile Cointepas
Votes: 889
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, (January 15, 1622 – February 17, 1673) was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature.[1] Among Molière's best-known works are Le Misanthrope (The Misanthrope), L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur, (Tartuffe or the Hypocrite), L'Avare (The Miser), Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid), and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman).
27. My Brilliant Career (1979)
G | 100 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
A proud young woman in early 20th century Australia must choose between marriage and independence.
Director: Gillian Armstrong | Stars: Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Wendy Hughes, Robert Grubb
Votes: 4,797
Miles Franklin (born "Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin"; 14 October 1879 – 19 September 1954) was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her autobiographical novel, My Brilliant Career, published in 1901. While she wrote throughout her life, her other major literary success, All That Swagger, was not published until 1936. She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and writers' organisations. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.
28. Agatha (1979)
PG | 105 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
December 1926, Agatha Christie's husband asks for a divorce. She leaves her car and goes missing 11 days. She books into a hotel as Mrs. Neele. Fiction: A US reporter looks for her and investigates.
Director: Michael Apted | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Vanessa Redgrave, Timothy Dalton, Helen Morse
Votes: 3,567 | Gross: $7.50M
Agatha Christie, DBE, (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 80 detective novels—especially those featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple—and her successful West End theatre plays.
29. The Brontë Sisters (1979)
Not Rated | 120 min | Biography, Drama, History
In a small presbytery in Yorkshire, living under the watchful eyes of their aunt and father, a strict Anglican pastor, the Bronte sisters write their first works and quickly become literary sensations.
Director: André Téchiné | Stars: Isabelle Adjani, Marie-France Pisier, Isabelle Huppert, Pascal Greggory
Votes: 1,216
The Brontës (were a 19th century literary family associated with Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (born 21 April 1816), Emily (born 30 July 1818), and Anne (born 17 January 1820), are well known as a trio of sibling poets and novelists. They originally published their poems and novels under masculine pseudonyms, following the custom of the times practised by female writers. Their stories immediately attracted attention, although not always the best, for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.
30. Céleste (1980)
107 min | Biography, Drama, History
In 1914, with men gone to war, Marcel Proust hired Céleste Albaret as his attendant. More than eight years later, she was at his side when he died. During this entire time, she only entered... See full summary »
Director: Percy Adlon | Stars: Eva Mattes, Jürgen Arndt, Norbert Wartha, Wolf Euba
Votes: 284
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental 'À la recherche du temps perdu' (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). It was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.
31. Heart Beat (1980)
R | 110 min | Drama
The life and friendship among the icons of the Beat Generation: Neal Cassady, Carolyn Cassady, and Jack Kerouac.
Director: John Byrum | Stars: Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, John Heard, Ray Sharkey
Votes: 740
Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
32. Priest of Love (1981)
R | 125 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Following the banning and burning of his novel, "The Rainbow", D.H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, move to the United States, and then to Mexico. When Lawrence contracts tuberculosis, they ... See full summary »
Director: Christopher Miles | Stars: Ian McKellen, Janet Suzman, Ava Gardner, Penelope Keith
Votes: 522
David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. Lawrence is now valued by many as a visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in English literature.
33. Hammett (1982)
PG | 97 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Fictional account of real-life mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, and his involvement in the investigation of a beautiful Chinese cabaret actress' mysterious disappearance in San Francisco.
Director: Wim Wenders | Stars: Frederic Forrest, Peter Boyle, Marilu Henner, Roy Kinnear
Votes: 3,679 | Gross: $0.04M
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse).
34. Cross Creek (1983)
PG | 127 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
In the 1930s, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editor and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and writes The Yearling, a classic of American literature.
Director: Martin Ritt | Stars: Mary Steenburgen, Rip Torn, Peter Coyote, Dana Hill
Votes: 2,029 | Gross: $0.20M
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953) was an American author who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie, also known as The Yearling. The book was written long before the concept of young-adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
35. James Joyce's Women (1985)
R | 88 min | Drama
In this tribute to James Joyce, Fionnula Flanagan gives a tour-de-force performance as a half-dozen or so women in Joyce's real and fictional worlds. When she portrays his wife Nora ... See full summary »
Director: Michael Pearce | Stars: Fionnula Flanagan, Chris O'Neill, James E. O'Grady, Tony Lyons
Votes: 178 | Gross: $0.38M
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark novel which perfected his stream of consciousness technique and combined nearly every literary device available in a modern re-telling of The Odyssey. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
36. Oscar (1985)
120 min | Biography, Drama, History
Biography of Irish writer Oscar Wilde.
Stars: Michael Gambon, Robin McCallum, Tim Hardy, Karl Howman
Votes: 45
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
37. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
R | 120 min | Biography, Drama
A fictionalized account in four chapters of the life of celebrated Japanese writer Yukio Mishima.
Director: Paul Schrader | Stars: Ken Ogata, Masayuki Shionoya, Hiroshi Mikami, Junya Fukuda
Votes: 13,730 | Gross: $0.44M
Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫 Mishima Yukio?) was the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威 Hiraoka Kimitake?, January 14, 1925–November 25, 1970), a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état. Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mishima was internationally famous and is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century, whose avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change.
38. Shadowlands (1986 TV Movie)
92 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Noted author and scholar finds love, then must endure its loss...
Director: Norman Stone | Stars: Joss Ackland, Claire Bloom, David Waller, Rupert Baderman
Votes: 608
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is well known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.
39. Meteor & Shadow (1985)
Not Rated | 101 min | Biography, Drama
The rise and fall of the Greek poet Napoleon Lapathiotis.
Director: Takis Spetsiotis | Stars: Takis Moshos, Yiorgos Kendros, Michail Marmarinos, Giannis Zavradinos
Votes: 156
Napoleon Lapathiotis (Ναπολέων Λαπαθιώτης; 31 October 1888 – 7 January 1944) was a Greek poet. A native of Athens, he began writing and publishing poetry when he was eleven. In 1907, along with others, he established the Igiso (Ἡγησώ, from the Attic Greek name Hēgēso) magazine, in which he published his works. In 1909, he graduated from the law school of the University of Athens. His first book of poems was published in 1939.
40. Dreamchild (1985)
PG | 94 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
Ian Holm is children's author Lewis Carroll in this poignant fantasy-drama set in 1930s New York and populated by the fabulous special effects creatures of Muppet master Jim Henson.
Director: Gavin Millar | Stars: Coral Browne, Ian Holm, Peter Gallagher, Caris Corfman
Votes: 1,748 | Gross: $1.22M
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.
41. Out of Africa (1985)
PG | 161 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
In 20th-century colonial Kenya, a Danish baroness/plantation owner has a passionate love affair with a free-spirited big-game hunter.
Director: Sydney Pollack | Stars: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Michael Kitchen
Votes: 86,264 | Gross: $87.10M
Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962), née Karen Christenze Dinesen, was a Danish author also known by her pen name Isak Dinesen. She also wrote under the pen names Osceola and Pierre Andrézel. Blixen wrote works in both Danish and in English. Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, her account of living in Kenya, and one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into highly acclaimed, Academy Award-winning motion pictures. Prior to the release of the first film, she was noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, for which she is also known in Denmark. Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, described as "a mistake" that Blixen was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature during the 1930s.
42. Coming Through (1988 TV Movie)
Not Rated | 80 min | Drama, Romance
Celebrated actor and actress Sir Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet) and Dame Helen Mirren (Prime Suspect) star in this movie by award-winning playwright Alan Plater about one of the great love ... See full summary »
Director: Peter Barber-Fleming | Stars: Kenneth Branagh, Helen Mirren, Alison Steadman, Philip Martin Brown
Votes: 186
David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.
43. Poslednyaya doroga (1986)
101 min | Biography, Drama, History
About the death of Aleksandr Pushkin, the leading poet and writer of Russia, who was shot on a duel and died when he was 37.
Director: Leonid Menaker | Stars: Aleksandr Kalyagin, Vadim Medvedev, Irina Kupchenko, Yelena Karadzhova
Votes: 91
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (6 June 1799 – 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1837) was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems and plays, creating a style of storytelling—mixing drama, romance, and satire—associated with Russian literature ever since and greatly influencing later Russian writers. He also wrote historical fiction.
44. Gothic (1986)
R | 87 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
The Shelleys visit Lord Byron and compete to write a horror story.
Director: Ken Russell | Stars: Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson, Myriam Cyr
Votes: 8,853 | Gross: $0.92M
Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley.
45. Barfly (1987)
R | 100 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Based on the life of successful poet Charles Bukowski and his exploits in Hollywood during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Director: Barbet Schroeder | Stars: Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige, Jack Nance
Votes: 21,950 | Gross: $3.22M
Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife".
46. Waiting for the Moon (1987)
PG | 88 min | Drama
Sundance prizewinner. Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, ... See full summary »
Director: Jill Godmilow | Stars: Linda Hunt, Linda Bassett, Jacques Boudet, Andrew McCarthy
Votes: 214 | Gross: $0.75M
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.
47. Kangaroo (1986)
R | 108 min | Drama
A mild-mannered English conscientious objector moves to what he feels will be the relative calm of Australia after World War I, but gets caught in the middle of violent battles between the rising trade unions and fascist groups.
Director: Tim Burstall | Stars: Colin Friels, Judy Davis, John Walton, Julie Nihill
Votes: 279 | Gross: $0.43M
David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.
48. Haunted Summer (1988)
R | 106 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
In 1816, authors Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley get together for some philosophical discussions, but the situation soon deteriorates into mind games, drugs and sex.
Director: Ivan Passer | Stars: Philip Anglim, Laura Dern, Alice Krige, Eric Stoltz
Votes: 586 | Gross: $0.01M
Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley.
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.
49. Rowing with the Wind (1988)
R | 105 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
Lord Byron, poet Percy Shelley, his future wife, Mary Shelley (writing Frankenstein) and others spend the summer of 1816 together.
Director: Gonzalo Suárez | Stars: Hugh Grant, Lizzy McInnerny, Valentine Pelka, Elizabeth Hurley
Votes: 1,137
Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley.
50. Old Gringo (1989)
R | 119 min | Adventure, History, Romance
When school teacher Harriet Winslow goes to Mexico to teach, she is kidnapped by Gen. Tomas Arroyo and his revolutionaries. An aging American, Ambrose "Old Gringo" Bierce also in Mexico, ... See full summary »
Director: Luis Puenzo | Stars: Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Smits, Patricio Contreras
Votes: 2,107 | Gross: $3.57M
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – after December 26, 1913) was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and his satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary. The sardonic view of human nature that informed his work – along with his vehemence as a critic, with his motto "nothing matters" – earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce."
51. My Left Foot (1989)
R | 103 min | Biography, Drama
Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy, learns to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot.
Director: Jim Sheridan | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Alison Whelan, Kirsten Sheridan
Votes: 79,711 | Gross: $14.74M
Christy Brown (5 June 1932 – 7 September 1981) was an Irish author, painter and poet who suffered from cerebral palsy.
52. Goldeneye (1989 TV Movie)
105 min | Biography
Fact-based biography of James Bond author, Ian Fleming. The film focuses on his wartime exploits and romantic adventures which ultimately led to his creation of the super-spy.
Director: Don Boyd | Stars: Charles Dance, Phyllis Logan, Patrick Ryecart, Marsha Fitzalan
Votes: 452
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer. Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, which are one of the best-selling series of related novels of all time having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and two works of non-fiction. Fleming is reputed to have been the designer of Operation Mincemeat and Operation Goldeneye, the former of which was successfully carried out during the Second World War. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming fourteenth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
53. Henry & June (1990)
NC-17 | 136 min | Biography, Drama
Anaïs Nin meets American writer Henry Miller in Paris in 1931. She keeps a diary of her sexual awakening, which includes Henry and his wife June.
Director: Philip Kaufman | Stars: Fred Ward, Uma Thurman, Maria de Medeiros, Richard E. Grant
Votes: 14,176 | Gross: $11.57M
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.
Anaïs Nin (born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature and short stories. A great deal of her work, including Delta of Venus and Little Birds, was published posthumously.
54.
American Playhouse (1980–1994)
Episode:
Zora Is My Name!
(1990)
90 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A celebration of the life of Zora Neale Hurston, who was born at the turn of the 20th Century and grew to be an important voice with her written portrayals of Black American life in the ... See full summary »
Director: Neema Barnette | Stars: Louis Gossett Jr., Oscar Brown Jr., Olu Dara, Guy Davis
Votes: 28
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891– January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
55. I, the Worst of All (1990)
R | 105 min | Biography, Drama, History
This fact-based film examines the life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Assumpta Serna), a Roman Catholic nun from Mexico City who, in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition, established herself... See full summary »
Director: María Luisa Bemberg | Stars: Assumpta Serna, Dominique Sanda, Héctor Alterio, Lautaro Murúa
Votes: 719 | Gross: $0.05M
Sor (Sister) Juana Inés de la Cruz (12 November 1648 – 17 April 1695), fully Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, was a self-taught scholar and poet of the Baroque school, and nun of New Spain. Although she lived in a colonial era when Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, she is considered today a Mexican writer, and stands at the beginning of the history of Mexican literature in the Spanish language.
56. The Dreamer of Oz (1990 TV Movie)
100 min | Biography, Drama, Family
The film is the biography of Frank Baum, the children's book author and creator of the fantasy world Oz.
Director: Jack Bender | Stars: John Ritter, Annette O'Toole, Rue McClanahan, Charles Haid
Votes: 587
Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four "lost" novels), 82 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts,[1] and many miscellaneous writings), and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen. His works predicted such century-later commonplaces as television, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (Mary Louise in the Country), and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work).
57. An Angel at My Table (1990)
R | 158 min | Biography, Drama
Janet Frame was a brilliant child who, as a teen, was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Explore Janet's discovery of the world and her life in Europe as her books are published to acclaim.
Director: Jane Campion | Stars: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Iris Churn
Votes: 8,675 | Gross: $1.05M
Janet Paterson Frame, ONZ, CBE (28 August 1924 - 29 January 2004) was a New Zealand author. She wrote eleven novels, four collections of short stories, a book of poetry, an edition of juvenile fiction, and three volumes of autobiography during her lifetime. Since her death, a twelfth novel, a second volume of poetry, and a handful of short stories have been released. Frame's celebrity is informed by her dramatic personal history as well as her literary career. Following years of psychiatric hospitalisation, Frame was scheduled for a lobotomy that was canceled when, just days before the procedure, her debut publication of short stories was unexpectedly awarded a national literary prize. These dramatic personal experiences feature prominently in Frame's autobiographical trilogy and director Jane Campion's popular film adaptation of the texts, with recognisably autobiographical elements further resurfacing in many of her fictional publications. Characterised by scholar Simone Oettli as a writer who simultaneously sought fame and anonymity, Frame eschewed the dominant New Zealand literary realism of the post-war era, combining prose, poetry, and modernist elements with a magical realist style, garnering numerous local literary prizes despite mixed critical and public reception.
58. Quiet Days in Clichy (1990)
120 min | Drama
Expatriate Henry Miller indulges in a variety of sexual escapades while struggling to establish himself as a serious writer in Paris.
Director: Claude Chabrol | Stars: Andrew McCarthy, Nigel Havers, Barbara De Rossi, Stéphanie Tchou-Cotta
Votes: 761
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.
59. The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (1990 TV Movie)
Not Rated | 100 min | Adventure, Biography, War
Ian Fleming's life (1908-64) as a journalist and a naval intelligence officer was a lot like the womanizing James Bond, about whom he would later write 12 spy novels.
Director: Ferdinand Fairfax | Stars: Jason Connery, Kristin Scott Thomas, Joss Ackland, Patricia Hodge
Votes: 649
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer. Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, which are one of the best-selling series of related novels of all time having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and two works of non-fiction. Fleming is reputed to have been the designer of Operation Mincemeat and Operation Goldeneye, the former of which was successfully carried out during the Second World War. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming fourteenth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
60. Kafka (1991)
PG-13 | 98 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Kafka works during the day at an insurance company, where events lead him to discover a mysterious underground society with strange suppressive goals.
Director: Steven Soderbergh | Stars: Jeremy Irons, Theresa Russell, Joel Grey, Ian Holm
Votes: 10,564 | Gross: $1.06M
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a culturally influential German-language novelist. Contemporary critics and academics, such as Vladimir Nabokov,[2] regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century. The term "Kafkaesque" has become part of the English language.
61. Becoming Colette (1991)
R | 97 min | Biography, Drama
The story of a girl who become the toast of Paris high-society. Through her marriage to one of France's most notorious degenerates, Colette's eyes are opened to every form of sexual depravity - shameless adventures that stir her.
Director: Danny Huston | Stars: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Mathilda May, Virginia Madsen, Paul Rhys
Votes: 281 | Gross: $0.22M
Colette (pronounced: [kɔ.lɛt]) was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954). She is best known for her novel 'Gigi', upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.
62. Impromptu (1991)
PG-13 | 107 min | Biography, Comedy, Music
In 1830s France, pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin is pursued romantically by the determined, individualistic woman who uses the name George Sand.
Director: James Lapine | Stars: Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters
Votes: 5,506 | Gross: $4.08M
Amantine (also "Amandine") Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness (French: baronne) Dudevant (Paris, 1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), best known by her pseudonym George Sand (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ sɑ̃d]), was a French novelist and memoirist.
63. O Dia do Desespero (1992)
75 min | Biography, Drama
Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.
Director: Manoel de Oliveira | Stars: Teresa Madruga, Mário Barroso, Luís Miguel Cintra, Diogo Dória
Votes: 215
Camilo Ferreira Botelho Castelo-Branco,1st Viscount de Correia Botelho (March 16, 1825 – June 1, 1890), was a prolific Portuguese writer of the 19th century, having authored over 260 books (mainly novels, plays and essays). His writing is, overall, considered original in that it combines the dramatic and sentimental spirit of Romanticism with a highly personal combination of sarcasm, bitterness and dark humour. He is also celebrated for his peculiar wit and anecdotal character, as well as for his turbulent (and ultimately tragical) life.
64. En compagnie d'Antonin Artaud (1993)
Unrated | 90 min | Biography, Drama
May, 1946, in Paris young poet Jacques Prevel meets Antonin Artaud, the actor, artist and writer just released from a mental asylum. Over ten months, we follow the mad Artaud from his cruel... See full summary »
Director: Gérard Mordillat | Stars: Sami Frey, Marc Barbé, Julie Jézéquel, Valérie Jeannet
Votes: 164
Antonin Artaud (September 4, 1896, in Marseille – March 4, 1948 in Paris) was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director. Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine "little Anthony", and was among a list of names which Artaud used throughout his writing career.
65. This Boy's Life (1993)
R | 115 min | Biography, Drama
The story about the relationship between a rebellious 1950s teenager and his abusive stepfather, based on the memoirs of writer and literature Professor Tobias Wolff.
Director: Michael Caton-Jones | Stars: Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Barkin, Jonah Blechman
Votes: 58,303 | Gross: $4.10M
Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff (born June 19, 1945) is an American author. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life (1989), and his short stories. He has also written two novels.
66. Zelda (1993 TV Movie)
Biography, Drama
Famous 1920s modernist US writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his eccentric Flapper socialite wife Zelda Sayre's relationship began quite passionately, but he slowly fell into alcoholism and she was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Director: Pat O'Connor | Stars: Natasha Richardson, Timothy Hutton, Rutanya Alda, Sylvie Boucher
Votes: 145
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
67. Shadowlands (1993)
PG | 131 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned Christian theologian, writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham from the U.S.
Director: Richard Attenborough | Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Julian Fellowes, Roddy Maude-Roxby
Votes: 20,431 | Gross: $25.84M
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is well known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.
68. The Postman (1994)
PG | 108 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
A simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet, and then uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.
Directors: Michael Radford, Massimo Troisi | Stars: Massimo Troisi, Philippe Noiret, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Renato Scarpa
Votes: 38,984 | Gross: $21.85M
Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. Neruda wrote in a variety of styles such as erotically charged love poems as in his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal color of hope.
69. Fritänkaren (1994 Video)
Not Rated | 276 min | Biography, Drama
A 274-minute documentary portrait of the life of playwright August Strindberg. The topic of the movie is inextricable from its method of production: for two years, beginning in 1992, Watkins created the film in a communal collaboration.
Director: Peter Watkins | Stars: Anders Mattsson, Lena Settervall, Roland Borgström, Ingela Berger
Votes: 107
Johan August Strindberg (22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and essayist. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques
70. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)
R | 125 min | Biography, Drama
Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.
Director: Alan Rudolph | Stars: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Campbell Scott, Matthew Broderick, Peter Gallagher
Votes: 4,883 | Gross: $2.14M
Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, short story writer, and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles.
71. Tom & Viv (1994)
PG-13 | 115 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
In 1915, Tom and Viv elope, but her gynecological and emotional problems disrupt their honeymoon. Her father is angry because Tom's poetry doesn't bring in enough to live, but her mother is happy Viv has found a tender and discreet husband.
Director: Brian Gilbert | Stars: Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson, Rosemary Harris, Tim Dutton
Votes: 1,865 | Gross: $0.54M
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a poet, playwright, and literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.
72. Postcards from America (1994)
Not Rated | 92 min | Drama
In the midst of the AIDS crisis, a young man from the suburbs moves to the big city of New York and ends up working as a hustler.
Director: Steve McLean | Stars: James Lyons, Michael Tighe, Olmo Tighe, Michael Imperioli
Votes: 259 | Gross: $0.08M
David Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was a painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and activist who was prominent in the New York City art world of the 1980s.
73. Carrington (1995)
R | 121 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
The platonic relationship between artist Dora Carrington (Dame Emma Thompson) and writer Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce) in the early twentieth century.
Director: Christopher Hampton | Stars: Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Steven Waddington, Samuel West
Votes: 5,772 | Gross: $3.24M
Giles Lytton Strachey (1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
74. Total Eclipse (1995)
R | 111 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Young, wild poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle.
Director: Agnieszka Holland | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, David Thewlis, Romane Bohringer, Dominique Blanc
Votes: 16,768 | Gross: $0.34M
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent movement, Rimbaud influenced modern literature, music and art. He was known to have been a libertine and a restless soul, traveling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer less than a month after his 37th birthday.
Paul-Marie Verlaine (30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.
75. Indecent Acts (1995 TV Movie)
51 min | Biography
Director: Will Parry | Stars: John Sessions, Corin Redgrave, Neil Titley, Jennifer Burgess
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
76. Saint-Ex (1996)
PG | 82 min | Biography, Drama, Fantasy
Poetic biography of author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Director: Anand Tucker | Stars: Bruno Ganz, Miranda Richardson, Janet McTeer, Ken Stott
Votes: 226
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944) was a French writer and aviator. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.
77. Hamsun (1996)
Not Rated | 159 min | Biography, Drama, War
Norwegian Nobel Laureate Knut Hamsun's controversial support for the Nazi regime during World War II and its consequences for the Hamsun family after the war.
Director: Jan Troell | Stars: Max von Sydow, Ghita Nørby, Anette Hoff, Gard B. Eidsvold
Votes: 1,715
Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul.
78. I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
R | 103 min | Biography, Drama
The story of Valerie Solanas, a '60s radical who preached misandry in her "Scum" manifesto. She wrote a screenplay for a film that she wanted Andy Warhol to produce, but after he repeatedly ignored her, she shot him.
Director: Mary Harron | Stars: Lili Taylor, Jared Harris, Martha Plimpton, Lothaire Bluteau
Votes: 7,112 | Gross: $1.81M
Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist writer, best known for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto which encouraged male gendercide and the creation of an all-female society.
79. The Whole Wide World (1996)
PG | 111 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
In 1933 Texas, a schoolteacher and aspiring writer meets a pulp fiction writer, and a relationship soon develops between the two, but it is doomed by his slavishly devotion to his ailing mother and insistence on his freedom.
Director: Dan Ireland | Stars: Vincent D'Onofrio, Renée Zellweger, Ann Wedgeworth, Harve Presnell
Votes: 4,020 | Gross: $0.14M
Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. This is actually a very lovely movie indeed. Everybody has heard of the pulp fiction stories of Conan the Barbarian but only hard core fans do know the story behind its writer Robert E. Howard, who created this fantasy hero in 1932. Unfortunately he died at the age of only 30. In his short very productive life he enjoyed literary success but had also, though inspiring and romantic, a not quite fulfilling love affaire with Novalyne Price Ellis. The movie is historically and biographically correct. Very prettily filmed and characterisations seem to be truthful with accents and all. I definitely learned something new and enjoyed the skilful and atmospheric moviemaking.
80. Nerolio (1996)
Unrated | 77 min | Drama
This film depicts three episodes in the life of the highly eccentric, unabashedly gay Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Director: Aurelio Grimaldi | Stars: Marco Cavicchioli, Lucia Sardo, Vincenzo Crivello, Piera Degli Esposti
Votes: 90
Pier Paolo Pasolini (March 5, 1922 – November 2, 1975) was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure. He demonstrated a unique and extraordinary cultural versatility, becoming a highly controversial figure in the process.
81. Saint-Exupéry: La dernière mission (1995 TV Movie)
104 min | Biography, Drama
Life and times of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, famous French pilot and even more famous writer who disappeared on a routine reconnaissance flight during WW2.
Director: Robert Enrico | Stars: Bernard Giraudeau, Maria de Medeiros, Frédéric van den Driessche, Jean-Paul Comart
Votes: 46
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944) was a French writer and aviator. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.
82. Death in Granada (1996)
R | 114 min | Biography, Drama, Mystery
A journalist starts an investigation into the disappearance of famed poet and political agitator, Garcia Lorca, who disappeared in the early days of the Spanish Civil War in the the 1930's.
Director: Marcos Zurinaga | Stars: Andy Garcia, Esai Morales, Naim Thomas, Gonzalo Penche
Votes: 1,013 | Gross: $0.23M
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads during the Spanish Civil War. In 2008, a Spanish judge opened an investigation into Lorca's death. The Garcia Lorca family eventually dropped objections to the excavation of a potential gravesite near Alfacar. However, no human remains were found.
83. Beaumarchais the Scoundrel (1996)
116 min | Adventure, Comedy, History
The life story of the titular Beaumarchais, playwright and adventurer, who gets himself into numerous different scrapes and romantic encounters in 18th Century France.
Director: Édouard Molinaro | Stars: Fabrice Luchini, Manuel Blanc, Sandrine Kiberlain, Michel Aumont
Votes: 1,465 | Gross: $0.63M
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (4 January 1732 – 18 May 1799) was a watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, arms dealer, and revolutionary (both French and American). He was best known, however, for his theatrical works, especially the three Figaro plays.
84. The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997)
R | 92 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
In 1946 Denver, an aspiring writer who enjoys irresponsible adventures with his friend writes a letter about his life before and after the suicide attempt by his sad, commitment-seeking girlfriend.
Director: Stephen Kay | Stars: Thomas Jane, Keanu Reeves, Adrien Brody, John Doe
Votes: 2,443 | Gross: $0.05M
Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s, perhaps best known for being characterized as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road.
85. Wilde (1997)
R | 118 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
The turmoil in poet/playwright Oscar Wilde's life after he discovers his homosexuality.
Director: Brian Gilbert | Stars: Stephen Fry, Jude Law, Vanessa Redgrave, Jennifer Ehle
Votes: 18,117 | Gross: $2.16M
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
86. The Gambler (1997)
R | 97 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Sir Michael Gambon) must write a novel in twenty-seven days in a deal to pay off his gambling debts, and feverishly dictates the novel "The Gambler".
Director: Károly Makk | Stars: Michael Gambon, Jodhi May, Polly Walker, Dominic West
Votes: 446 | Gross: $0.01M
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881) was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
87. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
R | 123 min | Comedy, Drama, History
The world's greatest ever playwright, William Shakespeare, is young, out of ideas and short of cash, but meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays.
Director: John Madden | Stars: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson
Votes: 234,220 | Gross: $100.32M
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616)[nb 1] was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
88. The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999 TV Movie)
TV-MA | 104 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
The rather eccentric (especially in her thinking) author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" becomes involved with a much younger, and married man, to the dismay of those close to her.
Director: Christopher Menaul | Stars: Helen Mirren, Eric Stoltz, Julie Delpy, Peter Fonda
Votes: 1,651
Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982), was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.
89. Marcel Proust's Time Regained (1999)
169 min | Drama, Romance, War
A lush, elegant epic taking us on a time-swirling trip down the infinitely complex labyrinth that is Marcel Proust's memory lane.
Director: Raúl Ruiz | Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Vincent Perez, John Malkovich
Votes: 2,828 | Gross: $0.46M
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). It was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.
90. Angela's Ashes (1999)
R | 145 min | Biography, Drama
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
Director: Alan Parker | Stars: Emily Watson, Robert Carlyle, Joe Breen, Ciaran Owens
Votes: 23,231 | Gross: $13.04M
Francis "Frank" McCourt (August 19, 1930 – July 19, 2009) was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.
91. Balzac: A Passionate Life (1999 TV Movie)
PG-13 | 240 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
A man who created great literature from the adventures of his own life--and the women at the heart of it. Although gruff, unsophisticated, and far from handsome, Balzac exerts an irresistible fascination on women.
Director: Josée Dayan | Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Virna Lisi
Votes: 656
Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon. Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters, who are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists.
92. Die Braut (1999)
112 min | Biography, Drama
The relationship between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German writer, and Christiane Vulpius, a village girl, is one of the instantaneous and fiery passion. They lived together for ... See full summary »
Director: Egon Günther | Stars: Veronica Ferres, Herbert Knaup, Sibylle Canonica, Franziska Herold
Votes: 170
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature.
93. Children of the Century (1999)
135 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
A story of doomed passion between two genius writers of the 19th century - novelist George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset.
Director: Diane Kurys | Stars: Juliette Binoche, Benoît Magimel, Stefano Dionisi, Robin Renucci
Votes: 2,020 | Gross: $0.05M
Amantine (also "Amandine") Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness (French: baronne) Dudevant (Paris, 1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), best known by her pseudonym George Sand as a French novelist and memoirist.
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay (11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857) was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical) from 1836.
94. Dash and Lilly (1999 TV Movie)
100 min | Drama
Biographical look at the bombastic love affair that writers Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman shared in 1940 and 50's Hollywood. Refusing to marry, but deeply in love, the two engaged in... See full summary »
Director: Kathy Bates | Stars: Sam Shepard, Judy Davis, Bebe Neuwirth, Laurence Luckinbill
Votes: 347
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse).
Lillian Florence “Lily” Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes. She was romantically involved for 30 years with mystery and crime writer Dashiell Hammett (and was the inspiration for his character Nora Charles), and was also a long-time friend and literary executor of author Dorothy Parker.
95. Isn't She Great (2000)
R | 95 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
Bette Midler and Nathan Lane star in this comedy about Jacqueline Susann, the ambitious woman of dubious talent who wrote Valley of the Dolls, a best-selling novel that became a sensation.
Director: Andrew Bergman | Stars: Bette Midler, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, David Hyde Pierce
Votes: 2,557 | Gross: $2.96M
Jacqueline Susann (August 20, 1918 – September 21, 1974) was an American author known for her best-selling novels. Her most notable work was Valley of the Dolls, a book that broke sales records and spawned an Oscar-nominated 1967 film and a short-lived TV series.
96. Nora (2000)
R | 106 min | Biography, Drama
Dublin, 1904, James Joyce chats up Nora Barnacle, a hotel maid recently come from Galway. She enchants him with her frank, uninhibited manner, and before long, he's convinced her to come with him to Trieste.
Director: Pat Murphy | Stars: Ewan McGregor, Susan Lynch, Andrew Scott, Vinnie McCabe
Votes: 1,844 | Gross: $0.01M
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark novel which perfected his stream of consciousness technique and combined nearly every literary device available in a modern re-telling of The Odyssey. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
97. Quills (2000)
R | 124 min | Biography, Drama
In a Napoleonic era insane asylum, an inmate, the irrepressible Marquis De Sade, fights a battle of wills against a tyrannically prudish doctor.
Director: Philip Kaufman | Stars: Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine
Votes: 56,705 | Gross: $7.06M
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues, and political tracts; in his lifetime some were published under his own name, while others appeared anonymously and Sade denied being their author. He is best known for his erotic works, which combined philosophical discourse with pornography, depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence, criminality, and blasphemy against the Catholic Church. He was a proponent of extreme freedom, unrestrained by morality, religion or law. Sade was incarcerated in various prisons and in an insane asylum for about 32 years of his life; eleven years in Paris (10 of which were spent in the Bastille) a month in Conciergerie, two years in a fortress, a year in Madelonnettes, three years in Bicêtre, a year in Sainte-Pélagie, and 13 years in the Charenton asylum. During the French Revolution he was an elected delegate to the National Convention. Many of his works were written in prison.
98. Beat (2000)
R | 93 min | Drama
Two murders that shaped the lives of several college students who went on to become some of the most influential writers of the Beat Generation.
Director: Gary Walkow | Stars: Courtney Love, Kiefer Sutherland, Lisa Sheridan, Patricia Llaca
Votes: 1,614
William Seward Burroughs II (also known by his pen name William Lee; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who affected popular culture as well as literature. He is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century." Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. Burroughs also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
99. The Basketball Diaries (1995)
R | 102 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
A teenager finds his dreams of becoming a basketball star threatened after he free falls into the harrowing world of drug addiction.
Director: Scott Kalvert | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco, Marilyn Sokol, James Madio
Votes: 120,937 | Gross: $2.42M
James Dennis "Jim" Carroll (August 1, 1949 – September 11, 2009) was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician.
100. Girl, Interrupted (1999)
R | 127 min | Biography, Drama
A directionless teenager, Susanna, is rushed to Claymoore, a mental institution, after a supposed suicide attempt. There, she befriends a group of troubled women who deeply influence her life.
Director: James Mangold | Stars: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy
Votes: 211,032 | Gross: $28.87M
Susanna Kaysen (born November 11, 1948) is an American author.
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