Movies like The Big House (1931)
The best movies like The Big House (1931) are Sign of the Lion (1962), Chaos (2001) and L'Argent (1928). If The Big House hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Triplets of Belleville (2003)7.4/10 from 1,092 votes
- NewestAnother Day (2026)Released 2026
- In FrenchSign of the Lion (1962)Also in French
Sign of the Lion (1962)
An American in Paris lives by sponging off his working friends, and throws a party using borrowed money when his rich American aunt dies, believing firmly in his horoscope.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChaos (2001)
A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisL'Argent (1928)
Adapted from the novel L'Argent by Émile Zola, the film portrays the world of banking and the stock market in Paris in the 1920s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPromises (2022)
Clémence, the fearless mayor of a town near Paris, is completing the final term of her political career. With her faithful right-hand man Yazid, she has long fought for this town plagued by inequality, unemployment and slumlords. However, when Clémence is approached to become Minister, her ambition arises, questioning her devotion and commitment to her citizens. Will her political integrity and election promises survive her newly found ambition?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Little Princess (2011)
Young Violetta and her mother Hannah are a peculiar couple. Ten-year-old Violetta lives a quiet life with her grandmother, while her mother Hannah is an unpredictable photographer who lives off of the generosity of others. When Hannah forces her daughter to pose as a model, Violetta finds her life with her loving grandmother turned upside down.The resulting pictures quickly become a sensation for the trendy 70's Paris art scene, and Violetta finds herself caught in between her new stature as an art muse and her dull childhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTalhotBlond (2012)
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (1996)
A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison to clean up his act and devote the rest of his life to the young kids of Harlem. 1996 was the 25th anniversary of the first tournament named after him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe River (1984)
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (2004)
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Safety of Objects (2002)
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAngels in the Snow (2015)
The affluent, yet troubled Montgomery family hits the road for a special Christmas in the mountains.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDeclaration of War (2011)
Roméo and Juliette are two young actors. They fall in love at first sight, move in together and make a baby. A love story and the founding of a home like millions of others. Except that their little boy, Adam, behaves abnormally. The young parents try hard to persuade themselves that everything is okay but, with the passing of time, they cannot delude themselves anymore: their son has a problem. From now on, war is declared. A war against illness. A war against Death. A war against despair.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHardball (2001)
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCome Sunday (2018)
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAnother Day (2026)
Over an eight-year journey in Paris, a struggling young actress turns to alcohol to cope with her anxieties, spiraling into self-destruction before finding a path toward recovery through a new romance and her ailing sister.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMindwalk (1991)
On the French island of Mont Saint-Michel, Jack, a failed presidential candidate, Tom, a poet and Sonia, a physicist, engage in an intellectual conversation about politics, philosophy and life over the course of a single day.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoly Lands (2019)
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)
A union pensioner and his wife are robbed, but find that merely getting the assailants brought to justice is not enough for their consciences.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Magnificent Life (2025)
In 1955, 60-year-old Marcel Pagnol is a well-known and acclaimed playwright and filmmaker. When the editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine commissions a weekly column about Pagnol's childhood, he sees this as a great opportunity to go back to his artistic roots: writing. Realizing his memory is failing him and deeply affected by the disappointing results of his last two plays, Pagnol starts doubting his ability to pursue his work. That is until Little Marcel - the young boy he used to be - appears to him as if by magic. Together, they will explore Marcel Pagnol's incredible life and bring back to life his most cherished encounters and memories...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
In 1429, a French teenager stood before her King with a message she claimed came from God; that she would defeat the world's greatest army and liberate her country from its political and religious turmoil. As she reclaims God's diminished kingdom, this courageous young woman has various amazing victories until her violent and untimely death.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHouse of Voices (2004)
In 1958, in the French Alp, the young servant Anna Jurin arrives in Saint Ange Orphanage to work with Helena while the orphans moved to new families. Anna, who is secretly pregnant, meets the last orphan, Judith, left behind because of her mental problems, and they become closer when Anna find that Judith also hear voices and footsteps of children.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisForsaken (2026)
Everyone knows the name of Samuel Paty, but few people really know his story. On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, professor of History-Geography, was murdered at the end of his college. In the light of investigations and trials, this film looks back on his last eleven days, and the gear that led to his tragic death.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDiary of a Chambermaid (1964)
Celestine has a new job as a chambermaid for the quirky M. Monteil, his wife and her father. When the father dies, Celestine decides to quit her job and leave, but when a young girl is raped and murdered, Celestine believes that the Monteils' groundskeeper, Joseph, is guilty, and stays on in order to prove it. She uses her sexuality and the promise of marriage to get Joseph to confess -- but things do not go as planned.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Triplets of Belleville (2003)
When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters—an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire—to rescue him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLe Divorce (2003)
While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAll Quiet on the Western Front (1979)
At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJohan (1976)
Johan details the director's quest for an actor to play his titular lover, the real deal having been incarcerated just prior to shooting on charges of petty theft.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Big House?
The closest matches to The Big House are Sign of the Lion (1962), Chaos (2001) and L'Argent (1928). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Big House?
Start with Sign of the Lion (1962), the closest match to The Big House.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Big House?
The Triplets of Belleville (2003), rated 7.4/10 by 1,092 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Big House?
Another Day (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like The Big House?
Yes: Sign of the Lion (1962), Chaos (2001) and L'Argent (1928).
How are movies similar to The Big House chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Big House, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.