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.
Yes they did. First game of the tournament. And they scored in the last minute of the game to tie. In fact, it was probably one of their most critical games. Without the tie that they got it would have been a lot tougher for them to make the medal round. If they ever released a DVD set of the games they played in that Olympics I’d buy it. I consider it the greatest sports achievement of my lifetime.
The technology of the time (Apollo) was more forgiving.
When Winchester drive technology was introduced, I was told that smoke particles could induce head crashes. The gap between the head and the platter was that close. No more smoking in the machine room.
Which modern and entertaining film depicts the true story?
There was supposedly a line of dialog that Curtis did not say circulated at the time as a put down of him and his acting: “Yon-da lies de castle of me faddah” or similar.
In reality, Curtis uttered a similar line for real in the 1952 movie “The Son of Ali Baba” that goes: “This is the palace of my father, and yonder lies the Valley of the Sun”. Think of it as a New Yorker does the Arabian Nights.
“Last King of Scotland”, while claiming to be historically accurate, is a total fabrication relative to what actually happened, which as it turns out, wasn’t very much anyway.
Yes, I loved when the planes were revving up on the deck of the carrier. Way cool!!
It was almost as real as the two aircraft carriers (USS Oriskany and USS Ranger) that I served on five to six years earlier.
“About the only historical accuracy in The Patriot is the costuming.”
Damn, that was a REALLY bad movie! Total Hollywood garbage and not even really entertaining. Just Mel Gibson running around and single-handled destroying the entire British army with a hatchet. My favorite part, though, were the scenes in the swamps around Charleston showing mountains! That whole area probably gets maybe 30 feet above sea level. Gotta hand it to ‘em though, showing mountains around the environs of the Swamp Fox. Who woulda thunk it?
I am agree with him as well. Total hogwash and embarassment to SF.
In Gladiator’s first battle scene, the Germanic warriors are chanting Zulu chants lifted off the Zulu soundtrack
None that I know of. However, there are far too many historical errors for the film to be anything but offensive to history buffs.
The whole liason with princess Isabella? Please, she married Edward II years after Wallace had died, and was a small child in France during the time of the movie.
Where are Wallace’s brothers who played no small role in real life?
There was no prima nocta. Never happened. Longshanks might be known as the Hammer of the Scots, but even he didn’t go that far.
The Battle of Stirling Bridge was won by the smaller force exploiting a bottleneck in the same manner the Spartans held the pass of Thermopylae. They did not hold off the English heavy cavalry in an open field with big pointy sticks.
Hell, I take issue with the title. Robert the Bruce is known to the Scots as Braveheart (translation) not William Wallace.
Last but not least, historically, there was a lot of begging during Wallace’s execution, but no heroic cry of “freedom”.
After reading this thread I am watching Battle of Britian which I’ve never seen before. It seems quite accurate, although, of course, it’s got some added romance.
But I noticed a lot of technical advisors (and back in the 60’s many of them were probably actual survivors) and it looks quite good to me.
OK.
Which modern and entertaining film depicts the true story?
The “Bear Jew’s” eyes at the end shooting the fish in the barrel was awesome.
Yeah, you got me there. Never been a big WWII historian...
...but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
The original Midway has a whole bunch of Coral Sea scenes, which make the story make sense. Even the rereleased DVD is missing those. I know about the full version because I saw it a couple of times on TCM, but without them, the story gets choppy.
Yes, it runs very long (about 3 hours) but if they cut the stupid romantic parts (Charlton Hestons son falls in love with a Japanese girl, and fights with his dad over it) they would save a lot of footage and really improve the film, actually.
Here is the Amazon listing. Look at the comments underneath with all the people complaining on how the collectors edition has been wrecked by leaving out half the history (Coral sea battles).
;]
I went to http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/IBM-SAGE-computer.htm and they list the technical specs as:
Technical Description
Size: CPU (50 x 150 feet, each); consoles area (25 x 50 feet) (total system=20,000 square feet)
Weight: 250 tons (500,000 lbs)
Architecture: duplex CPU, no interrupts, 4 index registers, Real Time Clock
Word Length: 32 bits
Memory: magnetic core (4 x 64K word); Magnetic Drum (150K word); 4 IBM Model 729 Magnetic Tape Drives (~100K words ea.); all systems with parity checking
Memory Cycle Time: 6us
I/O: CRT display, keyboard, light gun, realtime serial data (teletype, 1300 bps modem, voice line)
Performance: 75KIPS (single-address)
Technology: vacuum tubes (60,000); diodes (175,000); transistors (13,000)
Power Consumption: about 3 Megawatts
Compared to the computers we have in just a laptop these days, makes the ones they had back then seem HUGE. I remember our "dumb terminals" spit out data at 300 bps then 1200 later on. It is amazing how far we've come technologically. What started out taking up 20,000 square feet now can be managed in a small closet or maybe smaller!
“Patton” like “Kelly’s Heroes” I think was filmed in Yugoslavia, for some reason they had the largest amount of W.W. II era equipment left over that still worked.
That’s them.
Yeah, I meant the medal round. You are right, they tied Sweden in the regular group play and it was critical.
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