A Touch of Zen, Ode to Billy Joe, The Outlaw and His Wife.

Generally I consider myself a splitter but I am also a lumper when it comes to films such as these three, all recently shown on Turner Classic Movies (perhaps the only reason one has cable TV).
All three are period films about star-crossed lovers and their relationship to nature

I missed King Hu's A Touch of Zen when it showed at the New York Film Festival in 1976, missed it again when it showed at the Bleecker Street Cinema in the 80's (it was sold out and there were lines around the block) and finally saw it at the Walter Reade in the 90's.  It is a superb example of the wuxia (martial arts heroes) genre, rather similar to the Western in this country, though somewhat more political.  King Hu's film takes place in 14th Century China and concerns a quiet artist who gets involved with a woman pursued by political assassins.  The woman, Yang Hui-zhen (played by Hsu Feng) turns out to be adept with a sword, while the artist Gu Sheng-zai (played by Shih Chun) helps her with strategy.  They have a child together, after a prolonged battle in a bamboo forest and an escape to nature, and ward off additional attempts on their lives with the help of powerful Buddhist monks.  The film is slow and subtle, combining swordplay (using hidden trampolines and fast cutting in the days before computer generated images)with philosophy and a reverence for nature.

Ode to Billy Joe (1976, directed by Max Baer, Jr.) is based on Bobbi Gentry's 1967 song, which tells us that Billy Joe threw something off Tallahatchie Bridge on the third of June, though it doesn't tell us what it was or why Billy Joe committed suicide; this question was hotly debated at the time.  In the film writer Herman Raucher and Baer explain it all, for better or worse (though it does make sense to one who grew up in the fifties). The film effectively captures life in the dusty Mississippi Delta circa 1953 when young love was discouraged and most farms did not have electricity or indoor plumbing.  Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor sensitively play the star-crossed lovers whose frustrations lead to disaster.

Victor Sjostrom's The Outlaw and His Wife (1918) takes place in Iceland in the 19th C. and captures the bigotry and intolerance of that particular time and place, where a parson turns down a man's plea for help and then turns him in to the authorities when one of his sheep is stolen. The film has the rigor and intelligence of a director familiar with D.W. Griffith, as the outlaw marries a wealthy farmer (they perform the marriage ceremony themselves) and are turned in by an jealous neighbor.  They flee to the mountains and have a child, flourishing during the summer but then freezing to death together in the winter after they are pursued by the authorities. Seastrom later went to Hollywood (changing his name slightly) where he made several excellent films, including The Wind (1928), again depicting man's struggle with nature.  Seastrom's Swedish films were a significant influence on Ingmar Bergman and in 1958 Seastrom had a major role in Bergman's Wild Strawberries.