Maybe this has been done already, but not as far as I know. Anyways, this is a thread for people who love classic cinema (let's keep this pre-Easy Rider, people), where we bullshit about movies that we wish were made during this period. Maybe actual projects that got scrapped, maybe ones that you've conjured out of your own imagination.
Personally, I wish that at the height of the Warner Brothers swashbuckler period post-Robin Hood, Michael Curtiz had gone all out on a WW2-era masterpiece right before Casablanca, a re-teaming with Errol Flynn and a young newcomer just arrived in Hollywood, Orson Welles (one of Flynn's good friends in real life!), for the last word on the genre: THE ILIAD.
As this is the big one, the penultimate epic with plenty of great roles, Warner Brothers goes all out and puts together the best contract players at their disposal (with a few additional performers on loan) for one of the all-time best ensembles put to celluloid.
For the Achaeans:
Achilles - Errol Flynn
Odysseus - Orson Welles
Agamemnon - Claude Rains
Menelaus - Lionel Atwill
Diomedes - Basil Rathbone
Ajax - Alan Hale
Teucer - John Carradine
Patroclus - One of the Mauch brothers from The Prince & The Pauper
Nestor - Henry Stevenson
Antilochus - Patric Knowles
Idomeneus - Marcel Dalio
Phoenix - HB Warner
Calchas - J. Carrol Naish
Thersites - Forrester Harvey (Honesty Nuttal from Captain Blood)
Stentor - Guy Kibbee
As the Dardanians:
Hector - Paul Muni
Paris - Tyrone Power
Aeneas - Henry Daniell
Priam - Lionel Barrymore
Helen - Vivien Leigh
Andromache - Flora Robson
Hecuba - Edna May Oliver
Briseis - Olivia De Havilland
Cassandra - Brenda Marshall
Penthesilea, Amazonian Queen - Miriam Hopkins
Memnon, Ethiopian King - Paul Robeson
Sarpedon, Lycian King - Donald Crisp
Glaucus - Eugene Pallette
Deiphobus - Robert Barrat
Polydorus - A young Anthony Quinn
Laocoon - Arthur Shields
Dolon, Trojan spy - Peter Lorre
Throw in Erich Korngold for a blowout score and you've got yourself a goddamn picture to end all pictures.
The other major wish for me, something that from my perspective now seems like a no-brainer, is for Val Lewton to have used his clout from Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie to produce.... drumroll please..... an HP Lovecraft adaptation! Almost all his stuff was done on a shoestring budget, but even if he chose one of the less ambitious, FX-heavy stories he could have found no better source material for his mature, creeping dread style. Better Nyarlathotep or The Colour Out Of Space, or, holy shit, Dagon than that boring and unambitious Long Voyage Home ripoff The Ghost Ship.
Personally, I wish that at the height of the Warner Brothers swashbuckler period post-Robin Hood, Michael Curtiz had gone all out on a WW2-era masterpiece right before Casablanca, a re-teaming with Errol Flynn and a young newcomer just arrived in Hollywood, Orson Welles (one of Flynn's good friends in real life!), for the last word on the genre: THE ILIAD.
As this is the big one, the penultimate epic with plenty of great roles, Warner Brothers goes all out and puts together the best contract players at their disposal (with a few additional performers on loan) for one of the all-time best ensembles put to celluloid.
For the Achaeans:
Achilles - Errol Flynn
Odysseus - Orson Welles
Agamemnon - Claude Rains
Menelaus - Lionel Atwill
Diomedes - Basil Rathbone
Ajax - Alan Hale
Teucer - John Carradine
Patroclus - One of the Mauch brothers from The Prince & The Pauper
Nestor - Henry Stevenson
Antilochus - Patric Knowles
Idomeneus - Marcel Dalio
Phoenix - HB Warner
Calchas - J. Carrol Naish
Thersites - Forrester Harvey (Honesty Nuttal from Captain Blood)
Stentor - Guy Kibbee
As the Dardanians:
Hector - Paul Muni
Paris - Tyrone Power
Aeneas - Henry Daniell
Priam - Lionel Barrymore
Helen - Vivien Leigh
Andromache - Flora Robson
Hecuba - Edna May Oliver
Briseis - Olivia De Havilland
Cassandra - Brenda Marshall
Penthesilea, Amazonian Queen - Miriam Hopkins
Memnon, Ethiopian King - Paul Robeson
Sarpedon, Lycian King - Donald Crisp
Glaucus - Eugene Pallette
Deiphobus - Robert Barrat
Polydorus - A young Anthony Quinn
Laocoon - Arthur Shields
Dolon, Trojan spy - Peter Lorre
Throw in Erich Korngold for a blowout score and you've got yourself a goddamn picture to end all pictures.
The other major wish for me, something that from my perspective now seems like a no-brainer, is for Val Lewton to have used his clout from Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie to produce.... drumroll please..... an HP Lovecraft adaptation! Almost all his stuff was done on a shoestring budget, but even if he chose one of the less ambitious, FX-heavy stories he could have found no better source material for his mature, creeping dread style. Better Nyarlathotep or The Colour Out Of Space, or, holy shit, Dagon than that boring and unambitious Long Voyage Home ripoff The Ghost Ship.
