6 Movies On A Grand Scale

By RICHARD CORLISS

It's said that history is written by the winners. But for millions of viewers, history is written by the filmmakers who splash on the screen their visions and revisions of wars and the men who fought them. Here are six of the most epochal epics ever, now out on DVD:

THE BIRTH OF A NATION

D.W. GRIFFITH, 1915

President Woodrow Wilson called Griffith's fable about the Civil War and its aftermath "history written in lightning." Others decried it as a libel of blacks and a whitewash of the Ku Klux Klan. Both views are correct. Griffith was a racist and a film genius who poured his love for the Old South and his pioneering cinematic ingenuity into an epic that is at once malignant and magnificent.

NAPOLEON

ABEL GANCE, 1927

No art form can duplicate the size and scope of historical film epics. They conjure the grandeur, the spectacle, the very movieness of movies. For the French director Abel Gance, one giant screen was not enough for the story of the little Corsican corporal. Gance used a three-screen process to create mammoth murals of battles, political rallies and snowball fights, as Napoleon (Albert Dieudonne) conquers Europe.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

DAVID LEAN, 1962

The best historical epics are interior, burrowing into outsize personalities to reveal the madness that made them great, the greatness that made them mad. T.E. Lawrence, who helped the Arabs overthrow the Ottoman Empire only to see their dream betrayed by politicians in Europe, is a figure whose elusive charisma is perfectly captured in screenwriter Robert Bolt's epigrammatic dialogue, in Peter O'Toole's brilliantly bold portrayal and in Lean's images of a vast desert that one small Englishman filled with his idealism and ambition.

AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD

WERNER HERZOG, 1972

A new land can seduce the would-be conqueror, be he a general or a filmmaker. Herzog's amazing parable, about a 16th century Spanish explorer intoxicated and ultimately destroyed by the voluptuous verdancy of the Amazon, has a daft energy so intense that it seems to be a study of insanity from the inside. Klaus Kinski's splendid, spuming performance lives in there too: it is less an impersonation of imperial madness than a total occupation of it.

ULYSSES' GAZE

THEO ANGELOPOULOS, 1995

Most epics are about the men who shaped history--or warped it. Angelopoulos' severe spectacle concentrates on the rest of humanity: the victims, the mourners. It synopsizes the tumultuous history of 20th century Greece into three hours and about 60 shots--long, elaborate, beautifully orchestrated scenes of massed marchers, New Year's revelers and grieving survivors. The film is a plea to keep alive those who perished in war by remembering them. Thanks to Angelopoulos' heroic and pristine artistry, that memory is indelible.

GLADIATOR

RIDLEY SCOTT, 2000

Set in the Roman Empire, Gladiator is in some ways a conventional revenge drama: the general Maximus (Russell Crowe) has been disgraced--and his family slaughtered--and he spends the next 2 1/2 hours savoring his just deserts. Into this familiar mold Scott and his screenwriters poured so much intelligence, such vigorous picturizing of military assaults and gladiatorial entertainments that this dormant genre was reborn. The fatal "games" Maximus fights in the Colosseum might be a modern extreme sport or a Vin Diesel melodrama reimagined as art. Superb acting certainly helps. Offscreen, Crowe may seem a lout; onscreen, he radiates the maturity of a strong, scarred man--a star suitable for epics past and epics to come. --By Richard Corliss