It seems to me that whenever a film comes out that is set in some earlier historical era, a legion of nitpickers is chomping at the bit to find errors, flubs, inaccuracies, anachronisms, and the like. Okay, I’ll even admit that I’m one of them. But now I call on my fellow nitpickers to nominate the films that most successfully confounded their best efforts. In other words, which historical films do you find the most accurate in terms of period detail, loyalty to the facts, and dialogue? I’m especially interested in war films.
My grandfather said that ** Memphis Belle ** was quite accurate. He was a 8th AF B-17 ball-turret gunner from June 1943 through about December 1943, at which time his 25 missions were done and he came home.
His only comments on the authenticity of the movie were that the crews he served with typically had very little extraneous chit-chat over the intercom because it was distracting. He figured it was probably because mostly silent stretches in a movie would be pretty boring, even if it was authentic.
I should add that my grandfather was talking about the actual bomber scenes, sets, costuming, etc…
The story’s not very accurate at all.
Being scottish (and im sure there will be a great number of people from the US reading this), I would first like to thank hollywood for making Rob Roy and Braveheart - and boosting our tourism by many millions.
However, my limited knowledge is that Rob Roy was a rapist, theif and murderer on the run from the Scottish lords until his village was attacked and he became a “Robin Hood” stylee figure (though I conceed defeat if it is other wise).
HOWEVER, I am sure that there is 30 years and probably more between William Wallace and Robert the Bruce.
It does still make for good film, but as you all know, hollywood has to make money, its all about $$$$$$$$. After all, it wasn’t Bon Jovi and Mathew McConoghey (representing for the US) that boarded U157(1275141311101 or what ever it was). It was more Hugh Grant and Phill Collins.
the moral - HISTORYS COOL, MOVIES PERVERT
Your assumption that there is 30 years between Wallace and Bruce is false. They lived in the same period. Wallace became famous in 1298, and died in 1305. Bruce became king of Scotland in 1306. Wallace is indeed heavily glorified in the film (despite the fact that Gibson was not 7 feet tall nor did he shoot lightning bolts out of his ass) as he was not responsible for much of what it reports.
Quest for Fire is pretty much the way I remembered it.
As far as westerns go, Open Range and Tombstone get the clothing, firearms and general attitudes of the era and locales correct.
U-571: I don’t know to what degree the film claimed to represent the first (or most famous) capture of an Enigma machine, but swapping the US Navy in for the Royal Navy didn’t go down well over here.
Caligula wasn’t nearly so inaccurate as it could have been – it used many of the more sensational stories, but kept all kinds of neat details like Caligula’s terror of the dark, etc.
I realize that most film transport you to imaginary places, where things might not work the way they do in real life, but is too mucho to ask that the movie writers research what they do? I mean, I’ve seen some movies with more plotholes than swiss cheese.
I’ll jump all over a plot hole in a film, but I’m perfectly happy when a film takes liberties with “accuracy” in order to make a better movie. It’s one thing to point out variations with history as an amusement, but it’s anal rententive to the nth degree to get indignant over it. Not to mention clueless (look up the term “dramatic license”).
As a matter of fact, I got a kick out of the implication in Braveheart that Wallace was the father of Edward III. Almost certainly historically inaccurate, but a really wonderful little conceit.
There is no rule that a historical film need be 100% accurate, and it’s silly to expect any such thing.
BTW, I don’t think U-571 ever claimed it was a representation of actual events. It was merely a fiction based on the idea of capturing the Enigma, and didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the facts of the case. But it was a work of fiction (in other words, it was made up). It seems the concept of “fiction” is difficult for people to understand nowadays.
Thank you for explaining fiction and made up so clearly. I thought I’d noted that I didn’t know to what degree it claimed to represent the actual historical events. As to reaction in the British press, well, the tabloids (and some of the broadsheets) aren’t exactly known for checking facts first and posting headlines later!
Lousy movie, but i found the reaction from the RN to be quite ironic. One reaps what one sows.
In other words, tell it to the Poles.
Considering the fact that U-571 didn’t tell any part of the actual story of the capture of the enigma machine in any respect, why get upset over the fact the crew wasn’t British? For instance, no one was forced to take over the German sub and pretend to be German, it wasn’t captured by the crew of a submarine, the German captain wasn’t kept on board to betray them, etc. In addition, the British were already decyphering enigma codes when the working model was captured; IIRC, the importance of the capture was not the machine, but the code books that enabled them to decipher what enigma was saying.*
As far as the OP asked, Gettysburg worked hard to get everything right.
*While ciphers can be broken, codes are always unbreakable unless you have the code books. A coded message could only be deciphered as something like 42 and unless you have the code book that says what “42” means (the mice are working on it), you’re stuck.
Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot is very good at getting the details of life aboard a WW2 German submarine right. The extremely cramped conditions, increasingly lousy food, poor hygiene, long periods of boredom punctuated by sheer terror, etc. It’s a much better submarine movie than U-571.
Another relatively realistic war movie is the German mini-series Stalingrad. The uniforms, weapons, and incidents depicted in the movie are all relatively accurate and plausible. It’s much better than Enemy At The Gates.
Other WW2 films that were pretty accurate are A Bridge Too Far, The Battle of Britain, the British TV miniseries A Piece of Cake (also about the Battle of Britain), and Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve, about the Battle of the Atlantic.