OK, so, Edward the Prince of Wales (later King Edward II) did not marry Isabella of France until 1308 (and they got married in France, not in England), and William Wallace was executed in 1305, so Wallace could not have met her, etc. But, what the heck, they could have cut that whole subplot and made Braveheart substantially the same story. Fine. Hollywood directors are not historians, artistic license, etc. (I actually have more trouble with the portrayal of the jus primae noctis;The Master Speaks.)
But, now I’m watching Becket (1964) (Richard Burton as Becket, Peter O’Toole as Henry II). And one thing repeated over and over – the very key to Becket’s character in this story – is that he is a Saxon working for the Normans. Other Saxons despise him as a collaborator, Norman barons despise him as a common Saxon, and it’s all indispensable to his character development.
Only, Thomas Becket was no Saxon, he was a Norman. On both sides. What excuse can there be for getting that wrong?! When it’s so important to the story?!
Got any? (I’m not talking about Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter kinda stuff, I’m talking about films and novels that at least purport to be more or less historical.)
Haven’t read it but I hear War and Peace has Napoleon burning down Moscow when all evidence shows the Russians did it, a myth widely believed in Russia today.
Well, there are the moderately significant issues of Commodus being promoted to co-Emperor three years before his father Marcus Aurelius’ death rather than being passed over. Or the fact that he didn’t murder his father. Or the fact that he reigned for ~12 years and didn’t perish in an arena.
However he was an accomplished gladiatorial competitor, so that much of Gladiator was accurate at least.
I did. Awesome. But, I think Shakespeare always gets a pass – we know more true facts now about the times he set his plays in than he could possibly have gleaned from Holinshed.
The film’s Wiki article which you link to explains it.
He was a playwright, not a historian. In other words, artistic license. (As an aside, if you’re watching the DVD, O’Toole says at the very beginning of the commentary that Anouilh told him it was inspired by a rift in a French Marxist theater group.)
Braveheart, previously mentioned, was pretty much end to end inaccuracies. Even people who knows very little about Scottish history must’ve noticed when the words “Battle of Selkirk Bridge” appeared onscreen and the bridge was conspicuously absent.
John O’Farrell made a crack about how the movie could hardly have been less accurate if they’d added a plasticine dog and called it William Wallace and Gromit.
In the spirit of deploring historical inaccuracy, I should point out that it was the Battle of *Stirling *Bridge. (The subsequent battle was the Battle of Falkirk.)
“The Patriot” was widely savaged in the press in the UK due to the misrepresentation of, well, a lot but mostly due to a scene involving the locking of people in a church and setting fire to it.
Sometimes it feels like Gibson hates the English as much as he does the Jews.
Never mind the South Carolina plantation with free African American labor rather than slaves. It was too bad because I think there was actually a germ of an interesting story in The Patriot. Gibson’s character was a veteran of the French/Indian War and he was haunted by his own brutal actions to the point where he did not want to fight the English. It might have been a more interesting story had he wrestled with his humanity while sliding into his former brutish self while fighting for independence.
The movie U-571 has the US Navy capturing the first Enigma machine rather than the Royal Navy. Whether this is major or minor is probably up for debate, and the side you take in the debate is probably almost entirely dependant upon which side of the pond you come from.
About the only thing accurate about the 1940 biopic on George Custer “They Died With Their Boots On” was his love of onions. The film about twice-convicted for murder boxer Rubin Carter “Hurricane” ended up with he director changing his spiel from "the truth will set you free " to “who really knows what truth is” once the inaccuracies were pointed out.
Of course when it comes to accuracy, both Oliver Stone and Michael Moore avoid it the way a cat avoids swimming.
Well, except for the kilts, and the swords, and the lack of armour on Wallace and co…and his lack of a human skin belt. Basically, it’s the most inaccurate popular portrayal of historical events I know of that isn’t Shakespeare.
JFK deserves equal status with Braveheart as the poster-bearer of revisionism. Amadeus is also worth mentioning. A superb film, but I’m glad I knew before I saw it that it’s highly fictionalized, or I’d have felt cheated.
Becket himself explains this in his forward to the play. When he wrote it, it was not only what he believed, but what an awful lot of people believed as well. He was made aware of the change in attitude before the play premiered. As he pout it, a friend told him that “history, like everything else, progresses.” and that then-recent scholarship had decided that Becket was Norman.
So what was Anoiulh going to do? The play wasd already written, and on the verge of being put before the public. Rewriting it to correct the historical error would have destroyed the play, removing the conflict at the very heart of it. As Anouilh himself wrote, (I’m paraphrasing) ‘If history makes progress, it might as easily be discovered that they were wrong, and Becket really was Saxon.’
but, as i say, what other option was open? “Sorry, folks, it turns out my initial assumptioon was wrong. We’ll have to scrap the play. Pity, really.”
Houston’s Main Street Theater’s recent production of Richard III was stunning. Notes in the program explained all the inaccuracies. But the main thing was that the part of Richard was a feast for an actor–the star (& director) of the production feasted…
Historical inaccuracy is easier to forgive on stage. The audience can understand about symbolism, reflection on modern times, Tudor propaganda–whatever drives the story beyond what you’ll find in the history books. (Not that all history books agree.)
In movies, everything looks so real that it can be jarring to realize that the story you’re seeing is not The Truth. (I’ll forgive Amadeus; Prague is so beautiful & all that music really was Mozart’s.)
Almost a decade ago, Joseph Fiennes starred in a documentary about Martin Luther, which I saw on opening day because of an interest in that period of history.
Let’s just say that if Mr. Luther was as peaceful and calm as Mr. Fiennes portrayed him, we’d all be Catholics today. It also didn’t touch on his anti-semitism, and IIRC (as I said, it’s been a decade since the film was released) in the film Luther was on the peasants side in the Peasant’s Rebellion of 1524, when in fact the guy wrote a tract called Against the Murderous and Thieving Hoardes of Peasants denouncing the revolt. Luther wasn’t stupid - his Reformation and even his life depended upon his keeping the trust of the Princes who protected him, so he (in his mind) really had no choice.
But I don’t think that would have served the purposes of the film-makers, so there you go.
(As an aside, if you’re watching the DVD, O’Toole says at the very beginning of the commentary that Anouilh told him it was inspired by a rift in a French Marxist theater group.)
It also didn’t touch on his anti-semitism, and IIRC (as I said, it’s been a decade since the film was released) in the film Luther was on the peasants side in the Peasant’s Rebellion of 1524, when in fact the guy wrote a tract called Against the Murderous and Thieving Hoardes of Peasants denouncing the revolt. Luther wasn’t stupid - his Reformation and even his life depended upon his keeping the trust of the Princes who protected him, so he (in his mind) really had no choice.