Posted on 11/07/2014 5:43:15 PM PST by PJ-Comix
I remember reading about an interview with journalist Lowell Thomas. He was asked what he thought about the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" since he knew T.E. Lawrence and one of the characters in the film was loosely based on him. Thomas replied that he began to take notes when the movie came on the screen but quickly put his notes aside because the Lawrence he knew personally and the one he saw on the screen bore no factual resemblance to each other.
In fact most movies supposedly based on fact in reality are quite inaccurate so it would be easy to ask for your list on factually inaccurate movies. Instead, I am asking for your list of factually accurate movies. That is movies based on real events to come closest to factual accuracy.
Okay, I'll lead off. Because I read the book before seeing the movie, I would say "The Right Stuff." Some liberties with truth were taken but in general the facts of the space program were pretty accurate. Also "Nicholas and Alexandra" for the same reason as before, I read the book and the movie was mostly truthful except perhaps it did not show what a vacuous idiot Nicholas II was.
Zulu! is one of the most accurate ever. All of he battle scenes are meticulously accurate to real life accounts. The only liberty the writers took was the portrayal of the missionary. He didn’t have a pretty young daughter, and he wasn’t a peacenik as depicted in the movie. In fact he helped bring ammo and water to the soldiers.
Khartoum is fairly accurate, except for the portrayal of the Mahdi who was not western educated and had never been outside of the Sudan. Neither did Gordon go meet with him. Other than that though it’s pretty much factual.
“A Man Called Peter” went right by the book and the book was written by his widow. It starred Richard Todd who had an interesting part in “The Longest Day”.
Richard Todd was really in the Battle of the Bulge and in the movie he portrays a guy who meets Richard Todd.
Shallow Hal
A friend said his father saw ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and said that if you’d had a camcorder there that is pretty much what it would have looked like.
Glad I never had to find out
(tried to join the army 3 times as but “too deaf to fire artillery”)
Theres a 1960 british horror movie called the flesh and the fiends (us title: mania). Its based on the true story of serial killers burke and hare who sold the bodies of their victms to medical teacher doctor knox. Not too sure, but it looks pretty accurate.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flesh_and_the_Fiends
Heres the full movie
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmt9ht_the-flesh-and-the-fiends_shortfilms
Yea, but NOWHERE near as accurate as Alien portrays Obama.
When a movie begins with the words Based on a True Story you have no way to gauge how accurate it is. Those weasel words can describe anywhere from 1 to say 99% accuracy in what you see following on the screen. But most assume it gives the movie authenticity and if it is a well done movie it often becomes the accepted history of whatever the movie is about.
The stuff about 5 shillings a month and freedom for every black who joined the Continental army is utter hogwash. The brutality perpetrated by the British is fantasy as well -- "Tavington," presumably supposed to Tarleton, (who survived the war, contrary to the film), got his reputation for brutality mostly from Waxhaws, which wasn't even as brutal as commonly thought. Burning down churches filled with women and children? No, not so much. Speaking of Waxhaws, Abraham Buford was in command of the continental forces, not General Gates. The scene where someone on a horse, shoots somebody else galloping on a horse in the distance with a pistol -- I don't know how many of you have actually shot flintlock pistols, but I can tell you, hitting a tree at 20 yards is iffy, never mind a galloping man 60 yards away! Great Danes, were not known by that name until much later than the movie is set. The guy talking about "killing a thousand redcoats" at Bunker Hill -- British casualties were actually about 200 killed, 800 wounded. There is when the Patriot is talking about butchering French soldiers and sending their remainders up the Ashuelot River...Which is in New Hampshire. Oops. The Patriot pays for supplies with a five dollar bill bearing Abraham Lincoln's mug. I could go on and on. They got the uniforms and a lot of the other clothes wrong, the weapons wrong, they even got the spurs and the window blinds wrong! The film is a joke. An absolute joke.
Idiocracy.
bump
‘The outlaw Jose Wales’ was almost word for word accurate to the novel it was adapted from called ‘Gone to Texas’ by Forest Carter.
It’s a very good little read for anyone into historical period western novels.
LOL! My airdale friends told me about that for years.
A lot of good cultural portrayals in Nyc and Sicily
I remember seeing that at the movie theater, in sensurround!
Likewise Gettysburg is almost word for word from The Killer Angels. Of course the dialog is invented, but accurate to the memoirs of the important participants.
Oops, I should have said that Richard Todd was in the D-Day invasion not the Battle of the Bulge.
~“Blackhawk Down”~
It is probably my favorite American movie. I’m not sure if it is correct in portraying the events it is dedicated to, but it surely is correct in relaying the thrill you feel in an environment like that, being surrounded by a horde of blood-thirsty savages.
I have no knowledge of that battle, but the overall tenor of the battle scenes was spot on. The gore when someone was hit was new to me, as we were too busy trying to keep from getting hit to see/notice it until after the firefight was over.
Some of the other scenes hit me in a personal way, too.
Good movie.
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