Grand Folly

To mark the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s lavish self-financed epic Megalopolis, this month we pay tribute to some of the most wildly - some might say foolishly - ambitious films in cinema history.

Dedicated to risk taking and absurdly ambitious works of scale, these are some of cinema’s greatest ‘follies’, films that on paper simply should not work, but have nevertheless become cinematic landmarks, whatever reception they may have received on release.

From epic sets to natural disasters, and from studios clamouring to shut down production to near career-ending risks taken by their maverick directors, this special selection of films is a tribute to big screen ambition in all of its glorious forms.