One of the most beautifully photographed films ever, this 1985 adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic novel has an equally beautiful story to match. Two elderly siblings living together on bucolic Prince Edward Island, Marilla Cuthbert (Colleen Dewhurst) and her brother Matthew (Richard Farnsworth), send away for an orphan boy to help them on their farm, but mistakenly get a hyper-imaginative, garrulous, twelve-year-old girl named Anne (remember, that’s Anne with an “e”) Shirley. Though Marilla initially intends to send the headstrong Anne back to the orphanage, she comes to realize that she wouldn’t trade her “for a dozen boys.” Both generations find they have much to teach each other about honesty, passion, hope, love, and faith. In one particularly memorable scene, Anne declares she is in the “depths of despair” and asks Marilla whether she has ever experienced the same. Marilla says she has not, that “to despair is to turn your back on God.” The film also displays powerful examples of loyalty and friendship through the development of Anne’s relationships with her “bosom friend” Diana and an initially annoying schoolmate named Gilbert Blythe. Sullivan Productions released an equally impressive follow-up, Anne of Avonlea (now called Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel), two years later, which follows Anne through her developing career as a teacher and her romantic dances with the wealthy father of a student and her old pal Gilbert. An almost entirely forgettable third film, Anne of Green Gables—The Continuing Story, appeared in 2000.