2005

2h 15m

6.2(88 votes)

Drama

Romance

War

Overview

In 1930s Shanghai, 'The White Countess' is both Sofia, a fallen member of the exiled Russian aristocracy, and a nightclub created by a blind American diplomat who asks Sofia to be the centerpiece of the world he wants to create.

Where to Watch

Buy

Rent

Links & Resources

IMDbView

Social & External

IMDb

Production Companies

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Ralph Fiennes

Todd Jackson

Natasha Richardson

Countess Sofia Belinskya

Hiroyuki Sanada

Matsuda

Lynn Redgrave

Olga Belinskya

Vanessa Redgrave

Princess Vera Belinskya

Madeleine Potter

Grushenka

Madeleine Daly

Katya

Allan Corduner

Samuel Feinstein

John Wood

Prince Peter Belinskya

Lee Pace

Crane

Creative team

Directed by: James Ivory
Written by: Kazuo Ishiguro
Produced by: Ismail Merchant
Andreas Grosch

Similar Movies

9.0

1963

Prague at Zero Hour

Czech friends help refugees from Nazi Germany escape in 1939.

Movie

6.5

1984

The Cotton Club

Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.

Movie

7.6

2005

Memoirs of a Geisha

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

Movie

Michael M.

In 1930s Buenos Aires, exiled writer Michael attempts to continue his work, though the overwhelming city make his hands tremble. Decades later, he reenters the life of Argentine artist Mari through a book. She engages with his fantasies and begins to follow him, until one day he hears her whistling.

Movie

7.3

2006

The Painted Veil

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

Movie

5.8

1984

The Woman of Wrath

A woman resorts to prostitution out of hunger and commits suicide shortly after, leaving her daughter to embark on an equally cruel path.

Movie

6.7

1991

Proof

Martin, a young blind photographer, is divided between his friendship with restaurant worker Andy and the exclusive love that Celia—who is terribly jealous of this new friendship—has for him.

Movie

5.7

2008

Bathory: Countess of Blood

Bathory is based on the legends surrounding the life and deeds of Countess Elizabeth Bathory known as the greatest murderess in the history of mankind. Contrary to popular belief, Elizabeth Bathory was a modern Renaissance woman who ultimately fell victim to men’s aspirations for power and wealth.

Movie

7.0

1979

The Tin Drum

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

Movie

8.0

1962

To Kill a Mockingbird

Scout Finch, 6, and her older brother Jem live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama, spending much of their time with their friend Dill and spying on their reclusive and mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangent events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.

Movie

7.3

1982

God Does Not Believe in Us Anymore

After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port.

Movie

6.2

2003

Code 46

In a dystopian future, insurance fraud investigator William Gold arrives in Shanghai to investigate a forgery ring for "papelles", futuristic passports that record people's identities and genetics. Gold falls for Maria Gonzalez, the woman in charge of the forgeries. After a passionate affair, Gold returns home, having named a coworker as the culprit. But when one of Gonzalez's customers is found dead, Gold is sent back to Shanghai to complete the investigation.

Movie

7.0

1992

Indochine

In colonial Vietnam, dashing French naval captain Jean-Baptiste, wealthy plantation owner Éliane Devries, and her adopted Vietnamese daughter Camillevare form the three points of a cross-cultural romantic triangle. As the struggle against European imperialism sweeps Indochina, Jean-Baptiste and Camille have to choose sides and Éliane faces the emotionally difficult challenge of raising the child of her daughter and ex-lover.

Movie

6.0

1951

The Trap

The course of an organized strike by workers from North Moravian steelworks in 1931 to resist mass layoffs during the economic crisis.

Movie

8.0

1973

The Sting

A novice con man teams up with an acknowledged master to avenge the murder of a mutual friend by pulling off the ultimate big con and swindling a fortune from a big-time mobster.

Movie

6.1

1989

Harlem Nights

'Sugar' Ray is the owner of an illegal casino and must contend with the pressure of vicious gangsters and corrupt police who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organised crime and police corruption in the 1920s, any dastardly trick is fair.

Movie

7.8

1992

Scent of a Woman

Charlie Simms is a student at a private preparatory school who comes from a poor family. To earn the money for his flight home to Gresham, Oregon for Christmas, Charlie takes a job over Thanksgiving looking after retired U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, a cantankerous middle-aged man who lives with his niece and her family.

Movie

7.3

2000

Suzhou River

After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.

Movie

8.5

2019

A Stranger in Shanghai

China is tumultuous in 1921 when the famed Japanese author of "Rashōmon", Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, visits Shanghai as a correspondent. Here he encounters revolutionaries, courtesans and much more…

Movie

8.0

2004

Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War

When two brothers are forced to fight in the Korean War, the elder decides to take the riskiest missions if it will help shield the younger from battle.

Movie

Recommended Movies

7.0

1932

Shanghai Express

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

Movie

7.3

2013

The Great Gatsby

An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.

Movie

6.0

1996

The Portrait of a Lady

Ms. Isabel Archer isn't afraid to challenge societal norms. Impressed by her free spirit, her kindhearted cousin writes her into his fatally ill father's will. Suddenly rich and independent, Isabelle ventures into the world, along the way befriending a cynical intellectual and romancing an art enthusiast. However, the advantage of her affluence is called into question when she realizes the extent to which her money colors her relationships.

Movie

6.1

1997

Anna Karenina

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

Movie

6.3

2015

Lady Chatterley's Lover

An early-20th-century tale of love across class boundaries which tells the legendary and romantic story of Lady Chatterley’s affair with her gamekeeper. Jed Mercurio’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s classic.

Movie

6.8

2010

Dear John

While Sergeant John Tyree is home on two weeks leave from Germany, he meets Savannah after he dives into the ocean to retrieve Savannah's purse that had fallen off a pier. John eventually falls in love with Savannah, who promises to write to him until he returns from overseas.

Movie

6.6

2003

The Sleeping Dictionary

In the 1930s, British officer John Truscott journeys to a remote village in colonial Malaysia to educate and Westernize the local Iban population. There, he's introduced to the lovely Selima. In keeping with tradition, Selima is assigned to sleep with Truscott and teach him the native language and customs. But when they fall in love, both colonists and natives object to their plans to marry.

Movie

7.4

1957

An Affair to Remember

A couple falls in love and agrees to meet in six months at the Empire State Building - but will it happen?

Movie

7.4

2017

Breathe

Based on the true story of Robin, a handsome, brilliant and adventurous man whose life takes a dramatic turn when polio leaves him paralyzed.

Movie

7.1

1942

Mrs. Miniver

Middle-class housewife Kay Miniver deals with petty problems. She and her husband Clem watch her Oxford-educated son Vin court Carol Beldon, the charming granddaughter of the local nobility as represented by Lady Beldon. Then the war comes and Vin joins the RAF.

Movie

7.5

1987

Empire of the Sun

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

Movie

7.3

1946

Great Expectations

In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.

Movie

7.5

1980

Somewhere in Time

Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to find out about her, and learns that she is a famous stage actress from the early twentieth century. Becoming more and more obsessed with her, by self-hypnosis he manages to travel back in time—where he meets her.

Movie

7.2

2015

Suite Française

France, 1940. In the first days of occupation, beautiful Lucile Angellier is trapped in a stifled existence with her controlling mother-in-law as they both await news of her husband: a prisoner of war. Parisian refugees start to pour into their small town, soon followed by a regiment of German soldiers who take up residence in the villagers' own homes. Lucile initially tries to ignore Bruno von Falk, the handsome and refined German officer staying with them. But soon, a powerful love draws them together and leads them into the tragedy of war.

Movie

6.4

2016

The History of Love

The story of a long-lost book that mysteriously reappears and connects an old man searching for his son with a girl seeking a cure for her mother's loneliness.

Movie

7.6

1965

Doctor Zhivago

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

Movie

6.3

2014

Winter's Tale

A burglar falls for an heiress as she dies in his arms. When he learns that he has the gift of reincarnation, he sets out to save her.

Movie

6.0

1955

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

Movie

6.6

2017

Their Finest

During the Blitz of World War II, a female screenwriter works on a film celebrating England's resilience as a way to buoy a weary populace's spirits. Her efforts to dramatise the true story of two sisters who undertook their own maritime mission to rescue wounded soldiers are met with mixed feelings by a dismissive all-male staff.

Movie

6.7

2012

Anna Karenina

Movie