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.
OMG! I remember that. Was played on cable not that long ago. Just wished it wasn’t in ‘musical’ form.
The Manchurian Candidate
good choices
The Manchurian Candidate
That one will become a horror classic.
Reefer Madness!
“Much more accurate than “Pearl Harbor.” I was routing for the Japanese to shoot down Ben Affleck.”
Pearl Harbor was an awful, awful movie. I never could finish watching it. And Ben Affleck was the PERFECT awful, awful actor for such an awful, awful movie.
Based on a FICTION novel so how could it be accurate?
Twelve O’Clock High
Memphis Belle
The Battle of Midway (John Ford)
In an eerily predictive sense, certainly so.
I have read the book by Alexander Solzhenitsyn more than once, and the movie, which you can now find on Youtube in 10 parts, or as a whole, is very close to the book.
Top Gun.
100. Percent. Real.
“Turns out that the movie despite saying it was true, was totally made up.”
Yeah, I thought the claim of being “true” was a stroke of genius. It made me laugh because I had a not-too-bright acquaintance that vehemently insisted the movie HAD to be true because it SAID it was true, despite the fact by that time the Cohens had admitted it was all fiction.
More seriously, Roberto Rosellini made a number of movies which strove for historical accuracy rather than box-office appeal, such as La Prise du Pouvoir par Louis XIV (The Taking of Power by Louis XIV), which showed how Louis XIV made himself the real master of the French government instead of a figurehead. He also did a movie on the Renaissance and one on the Age of St. Augustine.
I always wondered about “Sgt York” with Gary Cooper. I’ve done a bit of reading and it seems accurate. In any case, I truly enjoy the movie and Alvin York is a bit of a hero of mine.
1984 as well - but then, Orwell was off by 100 years...
Sir Walter Scot invented the historical novel where the characters and story are fictional but the setting is accurate.
I think Dr. Zhivago might quality as a historically accurate fictional movie.
Zero Dark Thirty was allegedly too accurate and some folks found themselves in hot water over that film.
no offense.....but are you being serious?
The Lord of the Rings
Did you ever see "The Man From Lox"
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