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Biopic [feature]

Nicknamed the "biopic," this type of film features an actor (or actors) portraying a real person in entertainment, politics, and/or history. Whether epic or intimate in scope, the film usually starts with the person's childhood and details their struggle and/or rise to power, fame, and glory. The most popular subjects tend to be Presidents and leaders of a movement, such as the namesakes of the films Nixon, Gandhi, Evita, Wilson, Young Mr. Lincoln, Lawrence Of Arabia, and Malcolm X, although military men (Patton, MacArthur, PT 109), inventors (The Story Of Louis Pasteur, Young Tom Edison), sports personalities (Knute Rockne, All-American, The Pride Of The Yankees) and filmmakers (Chaplin, Ed Wood) have also seen their life stories projected onto the silver screen. There are also "auto-biopics" in which a famous person plays him/herself, such as To Hell And Back, The Greatest, and Private Parts. These movies play on the fascination an audience has on seeing an extraordinary life unspool before their very eyes, be it sensationalized or treated with a worthy reverence, as well as attempting to show the human beings behind the legends. The irony is that an actor and their biographic subject often meld in the eyes of the general public; who can think of Roosevelt, Patton, or Lincoln without seeing in the mind's eye Ralph Bellamy, George C. Scott, or Henry Fonda, respectively? Such is the significance a biopic often has on the general public's perception of that public or historic figure.

Major Works
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Rating
Year
 Title
 
 Director
  9 Stars 1994 Ed Wood   Tim Burton
  9 Stars 1993 Schindler's List   Steven Spielberg
  9 Stars 1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy   Michael Curtiz
  9 Stars 1980 Raging Bull   Martin Scorsese
  9 Stars 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc   Carl Theodor Dreyer
  9 Stars 1927 Napoléon   Abel Gance
  9 Stars 1992 Malcolm X   Spike Lee
  9 Stars 1955 Lola Montès   Max Ophüls
  9 Stars 1987 The Last Emperor   Bernardo Bertolucci
  9 Stars 1982 Gandhi   Richard Attenborough
  9 Stars 1968 Funny Girl   William Wyler
  9 Stars 1982 The Executioner's Song   Lawrence Schiller
  9 Stars 1966 Andrei Rublev   Andrei Tarkovsky
  9 Stars 1984 Amadeus   Milos Forman
  8 Stars 1999 Topsy-Turvy   Mike Leigh
  8 Stars 1939 Young Mr. Lincoln   John Ford
  8 Stars 1957 The Spirit of St. Louis   Billy Wilder
  8 Stars 1981 Reds   Warren Beatty
  8 Stars 1942 The Pride of the Yankees   Sam Wood
  8 Stars 1970 Patton   Franklin J. Schaffner
  8 Stars 1989 My Left Foot   Jim Sheridan
  8 Stars 1962 The Miracle Worker   Arthur Penn
  8 Stars 1937 The Life of Emile Zola   William Dieterle
  8 Stars 1958 I Want to Live!   Robert Wise
  8 Stars 1936 The Great Ziegfeld   Robert Z. Leonard
    8 Stars 1979 Elvis   John Carpenter
  8 Stars 1980 The Elephant Man   David Lynch
  8 Stars 1976 Bound for Glory   Hal Ashby
  8 Stars 1938 Alexander Nevsky   Sergei Eisenstein
  7 Stars 2001 Iris   Richard Eyre
  7 Stars 2001 A Beautiful Mind   Ron Howard
  7 Stars 2000 Before Night Falls   Julian Schnabel
  7 Stars 1999 Introducing Dorothy Dandridge   Martha Coolidge
  7 Stars 1998 Elizabeth   Shekhar Kapur
  7 Stars 1998 The General   John Boorman
  7 Stars 1991 All the Mornings of the World   Alain Corneau
  7 Stars 1996 The People Vs. Larry Flynt   Milos Forman
    7 Stars 1992 Daens   Stijn Coninx
  7 Stars 1996 Shine   Scott Hicks
  7 Stars 1994 Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle   Alan Rudolph
  7 Stars 1994 Queen Margot   Patrice Chéreau
  7 Stars 1990 An Angel at My Table   Jane Campion
  7 Stars 1993 Wittgenstein   Derek Jarman
  7 Stars 1993 Shadowlands   Richard Attenborough
    7 Stars 1991 Jacquot de Nantes   Agnès Varda
    7 Stars 1960 The Trials of Oscar Wilde   Ken Hughes
    7 Stars 1988 The Ryan White Story   John Herzfeld
    7 Stars 1981 The Patricia Neal Story   Anthony Harvey
  7 Stars 1981 The Marva Collins Story   Peter Levin
    7 Stars 1977 Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years   Daniel Petrie
    7 Stars 1978 First, You Cry   George Schaefer
  7 Stars 1985 Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters   Paul Schrader
  7 Stars 1916 Joan the Woman   Cecil B. DeMille
  7 Stars 1991 Van Gogh   Maurice Pialat
  7 Stars 1988 The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank   John Erman
  7 Stars 1982 A Woman Called Golda   Alan Gibson
    7 Stars 1944 Wilson   Henry King
  7 Stars 1990 Vincent and Theo   Robert Altman
    7 Stars 1960 Sunrise at Campobello   Vincent J. Donahue
  7 Stars 1975 The Story of Adele H.   François Truffaut
  7 Stars 1983 Silkwood   Mike Nichols
  7 Stars 1986 Sid and Nancy   Alex Cox
  7 Stars 1934 The Scarlet Empress   Josef von Sternberg
  7 Stars 1936 Rembrandt   Alexander Korda
  7 Stars 1933 Queen Christina   Rouben Mamoulian
  7 Stars 1939 The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex   Michael Curtiz
  7 Stars 1987 Prick Up Your Ears   Stephen Frears
  7 Stars 1985 Out of Africa   Sydney Pollack
  7 Stars 1979 My Brilliant Career   Gillian Armstrong
    7 Stars 1989 Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story   Brian Gibson
  7 Stars 1947 Monsieur Vincent   Maurice Cloche
  7 Stars 1957 Man of a Thousand Faces   Joseph Pevney
  7 Stars 1974 Mahler   Ken Russell
  7 Stars 1943 Madame Curie   Mervyn LeRoy
  7 Stars 1974 Luther   Guy Green
  7 Stars 1956 Lust for Life   Vincente Minnelli
  7 Stars 1955 Love Me or Leave Me   Charles Vidor
  7 Stars 1974 Lenny   Bob Fosse
  7 Stars 1977 Julia   Fred Zinnemann
  7 Stars 1951 Jim Thorpe - All American   Michael Curtiz
  7 Stars 1946 Ivan Grozny II   Sergei Eisenstein
  7 Stars 1944 Ivan Grozny I   Sergei Eisenstein
  7 Stars 1955 I'll Cry Tomorrow   Daniel Mann
  7 Stars 1990 Henry & June   Philip Kaufman
  7 Stars 1983 Heart Like a Wheel   Jonathan Kaplan
  7 Stars 1988 Gorillas in the Mist   Michael Apted
  7 Stars 1942 Gentleman Jim   Raoul Walsh
    7 Stars 1987 Gaby: A True Story   Luis Mandoki
  7 Stars 1950 Francesco, Giullare di Dio   Roberto Rossellini
  7 Stars 1957 Fear Strikes Out   Robert Mulligan
  7 Stars 1976 Eleanor and Franklin: The Early Years   Daniel Petrie
    7 Stars 1929 Disraeli   Alfred E. Green
  7 Stars 1945 Dillinger   Max Nosseck
  7 Stars 1959 The Diary of Anne Frank   George Stevens
  7 Stars 1982 Danton   Andrzej Wajda
  7 Stars 1985 Dance with a Stranger   Mike Newell
  7 Stars 1987 Cry Freedom   Richard Attenborough
    7 Stars 1974 Conrack   Martin Ritt
  7 Stars 1980 Coal Miner's Daughter   Michael Apted
  7 Stars 1992 Citizen Cohn   Frank Pierson
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