"Where's your spirit? I don't hear no singin'. When you was slaves, you sang like birds."
Posted on 09/24/2011 4:19:32 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
I am a huge history buff so and enjoy watching movies about events in the past. However, many of these movies really irk me because they are incredibly inaccurate as to the historical facts. Here is a sampling of movies that have bugged me due to their historical inaccuracies:
1. Battle of the Bulge: So just how inaccurate was this 1965 movie? So inaccurate that former President Eisenhower who was Supreme Commander of the Allies in Europe denounced this film in a press conference. To watch this movie you would think that some Boston detective was able to predict all the German tactical moves based on such police work as shutting off the engine of a spotter plane in the middle of a fog bank in order to hear sounds of tank treads. Oh, and the German Panzers looked exactly like M47 Patton tanks which is what they were. As to the heavily forested Ardennes forest, at times it looked like a deforested western prairie.
2. Gunfight at the OK Corral: Couldn't Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp have bothered to grow a mustache or at least wear a fake one? The cleanshaven Earp in that movie is a slap at the intelligence of anybody with even a little knowledge about Wyatt Earp. Also the real life gunfight took just a few seconds, not at all like the extended gunfight in the movie which did not take place at the OK Corral but NEXT to it.
3. Huns. Why is it that every movie depicting Huns make them look like white guys? In actuality the Huns were a nomadic tribe from deep inside Asia who looked like ugly Mongolians with scarred faces. And the movie Attila the Hun looks like Jack Palance which is just wrong.
4. Confederate uniforms. This really bugs me. Civil War movies which depict Confederates late in the war wearing immaculate uniforms. Only officers had uniforms at that stage of the war that were in decent shape. The uniforms of the average foot soldiers were either one step up from rags or were stolen Federal uniforms dyed a beechnut color. And even those latter uniforms were usually in bad shape.
5. Pearl Harbor: Did anybody else cringe when Franklin D. Roosevelt rose from his wheel chair and walk a few steps to make a point? Guess what? That never happened.
6. The Alamo: Final Mexican attack took place in the dark before daybreak not in the middle of the day as depicted in the film. Also Col. Travis in the movie spoke with a clipped British accent. Oh, and the character of supposed frontiersman Smitty from Tennessee looked and sounded like he was an urban guy from South Philly.
Klink, Schultz, and General Burkhalter were all played by Jews who fled Nazi Germany.
Poland saving Europe from being overrun by the Soviets - an almost unknown history outside Poland itself.
Was unaware of a movie but historian Norman Davies 1972 book ‘ White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish Soviet War 1919-1920 ‘ covers this quite well.
Pork Chop Hill: Oldest lieutenant in the history of the U.S. Army.
Dead and Loving It.
They did take literary license(without need)But captured the true story pretty well
"Where's your spirit? I don't hear no singin'. When you was slaves, you sang like birds."
A close friend busts a gut whenever you mention John Wayne's movie ‘ Green Berets ‘.
My buddy was a Green Beret and served in Vietnam and brother, does that movie make him laugh.
In Ron Paul & his supporters collective minds!
“Little Big Man” Wild: Bill was shot and killed a few weeks after the Custer mess, not before. The rest of the movie was a farce, too. But entertaining.
***One guy is holding up a M1906 Springfield.***
In the RUSSIAN VERSION of WAR AND PEACE (1968) during the battle of Bordino, if you look closely you will see a few Russian soldiers armed with Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifles. LOOK QUICK!
“Except no Americans were involved.
I think I read that they were added so American audiences would watch the film”
Well , you couldn’t expect Steve McQueen and James Garner to speak in British Accents. The story was accurate though
Why on earth hasn't anyone made a film about the Battle of Bunker Hill. Its got everything going for it in a film, even a muti-cultural aspect ( free blacks ) for the liberal Hollywood producer, an epic story - sure hope it gets made some day.
The ending would have to be true to the story in order for it to be any damned good.
Ironic, I’m planning on watching that tonight. Who were you, TK-421?
Any WWII movie that uses Shermans to depict German tanks is simply not worth watching.
Very Accurate - Decision Before Dawn. Great flick about use of turncoat German POWs for intelligence operations in latter days of the war. Filmed on location in Germany after the war.
Wildly Inaccurate - Battle of the Bulge looks like the hands down favorite, but how about Saving Private Ryan? I don’t think George Marshall ordered any Ranger op to exfil the last Ryan out of Normandy.
I’m curious - but also not so sure I want one of my favorite movies “ruined”. But I wonder how accurate the tale of “Jeremiah Johnson” was - Robert Redford as a Mountain Man. I’m guessing they took some liberties with how the Indian’s fought and tortured. (Like the bald guy buried in sand up to his neck out in the sun).
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