Historical Dramas - AD 1600 - 1700

Robert Catesby leads Guy Fawkes a group of English Catholic traitors plan to blow up the Palace Of Westminster and kill King James I in the infamous Gunpowder Plot.

The story of the English exploration of Virginia, and of the changing world and loves of Pocahontas.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) was one of the first well-known female painters. The movie tells the story of her youth, when she was guided and protected by her father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi. Her professional curiosity about the male anatomy, forbidden for her eyes, led her to the knowledge of sexual pleasure. But she was also well known because in 1612 she had to appear in a courtroom because her teacher, Agostino Tassi, was suspected of raping her. She tried to protect him, but was put in the thumb screws...

This made for television film chronicles the illustrious life of French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650)

A drama about English settlers in America in 1617.

Set on the streets of 17th-century Paris, "The Musketeers" gives a contemporary take on the classic story about a group of highly trained soldiers and bodyguards assigned to protect King and country.

In the 17th century, two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to Japan in an attempt to locate their mentor, who is rumored to have committed apostasy, and to propagate Catholicism.

On September 2nd, 1636, Porzia Maria Colonna leaves the Atri Convent. She has to reach her betrothed and she is escorted as the hazards are many. In fact, after a bandit assault, the survivors are only three: Porzia, a Captain and Bortolo, a groom. Later the captain too is killed. Porzia and Bortolo begin then an adventurous journey, a journey not only in a dangerous and unknown territory, but also a journey into their respective ways of thinking and conceiving life. A journey which will take them so close by, that at the end, Porzia will ask Bortolo to go with him. Bortolo will refuse, aware of the impossibility of the thing in the society of the time. The seeds of knowledge, however, spread during the long journey will bear fruits.

A skilled Korean archer goes up against the mighty force of Manchus with the sole purpose of rescuing his kidnapped sister.

In the Kingdom of France from 1640 is the old with his body ailing Cardinal Richelieu, powerful man under Louis XIII, faced with the machinations of his tipped designated successor, the Marquis de Cinq-Mars.

Drama charts the progress of the English Civil War through the story of a young woman, the fictional Angelica Fanshawe, and her three husbands.

Blaise Pascal struggles to understand the natural world around him, in addition to an inner quest for religious faith.

With France's prime minister Cardinal Richelieu and King Louis XIII dead, the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin and the Spanish-born Queen Anne struggle to establish a regency to rule France in the name of the five-year-old Louis XIV.

During the English Civil War, a young Roundhead seeks vengeance against a vicious witch-hunter and his henchman, who have terrorized the soldier's fiancée and wrongfully executed her uncle.

To satisfy his creditors, a witty actor reinvents himself as a satirical playwright, with uproarious, yet bittersweet, results.

The film is based upon the true and tragic events, which took place in Naples in July 1647. The historical background are the misgovernment and fiscal oppression having aroused much discontent throughout the two Sicilies, at that time viceroyalty of the Spanish Kingdom. The population of Naples, exploited by the greedy viceroy, the Duke D'Arcos, lives in deepest misery and without any hope of altering their destiny until the appearance of Masaniello, an Amalfi fisherman, young, handsome and courageous. With the help of his friends and allies, known in jail he becomes the leader of the Neapolitan citizens during a violent riot beginning in the 7th of July at the city gates between the fruit-vendors of the environs and the customs officers. But the glimpse of radical change will not last for long. Through intrigues, corruption, blackmail and personal sorrow for his beloved Bernardina Masaniello will become rapidly insane. He is murdered 10 days after the outbreak of the riot while haranguing a mob on the market-place on the 16th of July 1647.

A recounting of the relationship between General Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, as they try to cope with the consequences of deposing King Charles I.

Amid the Civil War in 17th-century England, a group of deserters flee from battle through an overgrown field. Captured by an alchemist, the men are forced to help him search to find a hidden treasure that he believes is buried in the field.

The title of this major French costume drama means "Louis, child-king", and indeed it's a fascinating fresco about the formative years of the young king Louis XIV, before he became the Sun-king at Versailles. It was a dark and violent period, when the Louvre (meaning 'wolves hunt castle', hunting was a major aristocratic pastime), then still the somewhat gloomy royal palace, was the battle field of palace intrigues while the regency was held by queen-mother Anne of Austria but the actual head of the royal government was the aging cardinal Giulio Mazirini ('Mazarin'), the less-known Italian successor of Richelieu, who also introduced to the court and the kingdom a host of his countrymen from whom Louis would learn the passion for Italian culture, especially music which would flourish under the direction of Lully (but that later story is another movie, "Le Roi danse"). The elaborate script sketches the story of French power politics, too complicate and devious to summarize in any detail, but mainly from the viewpoint of the immature king under maternal guardianship, who probably didn't comprehend half of the grave troubles focusing on the strife between the official Catholic church and those claiming freedom of religion, especially for the Huguenots, but in reality mainly driven by personal and family ambitions and the grip of nobles on the kingdom at the expense of the royal power, and climaxing in a full rebellion, known as the Fronde, which forces the royal family to flee for their lives, an experience that may have decided Louis to dedicate his reign to preventing a repeat by establishing absolutism as he did. Some narration is done by Louis's younger brother Philip, the duke of Anjou, who seems smarter but as the spare heir is condemned to life in a golden cage, overshadowed by Louis while any 'disrespect' for his crowned sibling is punishable on the spot by strap lashes administered on his bare behind by a servant.

An isolated Puritan family in 1630s New England comes unraveled by the forces of witchcraft and possession.

The rise and fall of a beauteous actress. She rises from an impoverished background to become a favorite of the Sun King, Louis XIV.

Corbiau repeats the Farinelli formula, artistic rivalry and social private drama expressed in dazzling, sometimes excessively lavish baroque scenery, music and costume, but this time in its ultimate setting: Versailles. There are two protagonists - first the title character, Louis XIV, the French sun-king who has two passions, establishing absolute rule over the realm -after decades of religious/civil wars- by divine right and artistic brilliancy as a dancer (like Nero wrote and performed musical poetry), and starts asserting himself against the entourage of his Medici mother, the regent during his minority, by building his palace complex and launching a 'fitting' new, mainly musical display of baroque show. Secondly the musical genius Gianbattista Lulli ('Jean-Baptiste') Lully, a Florentine upstart of unbridled ambition, quickly gains the king's absolute trust, despite the nationalist and aristocratic opposition to a low-born Italian, and thus turns the normally socially humble post of court composer into a 'ministerial portfolio of culture' of Cabinet rank, complete with a monopoly which kills of his artistic rivals in operatic theater. The script also weaves a complex web of court scheming for individual power and social interests, and even a sadistic but accidental murder on a young valet, producing a sensuous and sumptuous drama too complex for this format, ending in a freakish but fatal accident. Louis XIV's mother was Ana de Austria (in French, Anne d' Autriche), the daughter of one of the Hapsburgh Kings of Spain. Maria di Medici (in French, Marie de Médicis) was his grandmother, his father's mother. She was dead before Louis XIV reached the throne. Please correct the reference to "his Medici mother"

France, 1654: D'Artagnan's girl grows up in a convent. When the mother superior is murdered, Eloïse suspects a plan to murder the king and hopes to prevent this and revenge the murder by finding her father and the 3 musketeers.