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.
I just saw the Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. It was a fun movie and I really enjoyed hearing well-spoken Mandarin, but it took place in something like 689AD and in the market place they had big ears of dried maize hanging there.
Another Tombstone movie, YOUNG BILLY YOUNG. Awful! Main characters had name changes and Robert Michum and Angie Dickenson’s acting was definitly not up to par! It looks like they made this movie in one take!
How about The Untouchables? The movie went completely off the rails at the end where “Frank Nitti” (played by Ed from Northern Exposure) is killed by Elliot Ness in a shootout. Shame on you, David Mamet, for that screenplay.
Nitti’s portrayal in The Road to Perdition, written by Max Allan Collins and played by Stanley Tucci, was dead on accurate.
It’s not like Amadeus was a history lesson either. Drama doesn’t set out to be a history.
Inherit the Wind wasn’t based on the historical events but on a Broadway play which was an admitted fictionalization of the events.
The Untouchables was a Romanticized piece of historical fiction. No one claimed otherwise.
oliver stone’s alexander
You could say the same about every other movie mentioned in this thread. If you put real people in it, you make yourself vulnerable to charges of inaccuracy. The work of Max Allan Collins shows that you can make compelling history-based fiction without sacrificing accuracy.
You’re exactly right and that’s why the “Historical Accuracy” criterion is so silly. Drama and History are two different things and should not be judged by the same standards.
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“WE WERE SOLDIERS” = 85% accurate
...per Lt. Gen. HAL G. MOORE (Ret.) & JOE GALLOWAY
http://www.lzxray.com
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm
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See Post No. 332...
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Know some things about the Bonnie and Clyde story. The movie is something of a toss up for me as far as historical accuracy. Bonnie Parker, I was told by people who knew or at least saw them, was a beautiful woman. At least until she was burned badly in an overturned car. She was also just as fearless or crazy with a gun as the movie portrayed. Story on Clyde Barrow was that he could take a Model A Ford cross country better than a modern day Jeep Wrangler.
William Bendix playing in the “Babe Ruth Story”....probably the worst baseball movie ever made....ever!
Great line.
300 was obviously inaccurate, but it’s also one of my favorites.
As with "The Battle of the Bulge," you hire the Spanish army and you get what you get. At least the German bombers that strafe Patton at the beginning are the later Spanish version of the German He-111 design.
I heard tht Rod Serling despised the show and said so on the Tonight Show. He was a former POW.
"The Greatest Story Every Told" starring the white guy with the gorgeous feminine hair....
"The Blob" (I think the actual Blob was a different color).
"Rocky" (you could tell it was historically inaccurate because the last round was only about 49 seconds long.)
So there....
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