Historical inaccuracy in films

[Clun]

Just watching Elizabeth : The Golden Age and it cuts to a scene in the Highlands with majestic mountains (Munro’s?), locks and rivers, then the subtitle comes up Fotheringay Castle . I recall that was actually somewhere out towards Rutland way, generally flat and a bit woody.

I’m sure there are others?

@NovemberWitch - and it had Troy.

Virtually any period drama (even the ones that are Agatha Christie adaptions) that’s made today.
They sensibilities are just too modern and the world too determined to be “inoffensive” that it’s actually offensive to me - I get that has always been a little bit of the case but at least in the past you felt an effort was made to portray the story as being in a different time. Now it literally just seems like today, but in costumes.

Watch a Jane Austen or Dickens adaption from the 90’s then watch one from today and you’ll know what I mean.

@DGRossetti

That’s true to an extent, but I feel like more effort was made in the past to portray olden times as being different - even if they weren’t entirely accurate and were made with a present audience in mind. Today it just feels like modern people but in costumes - and it helped that source material was stuck to more even if it wasn’t entirely modern, whereas it isn’t now.

For example - compare the recent version of little women to virtually every other one ever made. All the others make some effort to portray a different time (and that’s part of the appeal) but the recent Emma Watson one is just to modern in its outlook - (basically purging everything from the story that wouldn’t fit with woke sensibilities, which is silly for the time period it’s set in) to work for me.

Zorro, where they blow up the mine. The pressure gauge on the boiler is in kg/cm3. It should be in pounds per square inch.

Such a small thing...

@MrsSkylerWhite

For heaven’s sake don’t ever watch Robin Hood, Prince of thieves. They walk from the white cliffs of Dover to Hadrian’s Wall in a day

Then onto Nottingham! Just a small detour...

The whole of James Cameron's Titanic was full of inaccuracies as well.

I’ve just watched Argo, about the rescue of six Americans from Teheran. The Americans had to rescue their own because the six had tried the New Zealander’s and Brits. Who wouldn’t help.

Except, in reality, they did: at risk of their own lives. And the Canadians did far, far more than was portrayed in the film.

It was a very interesting and suspenseful film. But this annoyed me.

@AlbusDumbledore2234

The whole of James Cameron's Titanic was full of inaccuracies as well.

It seems to be the more renowned producers who are the culprits here.

In what way was Titanic inaccurate? (off tangent, a relative is a character portrayed in the film).

An ancestor to be more accurate..... :)

@Werehamster

There was a film called Mary Shelley where Mary had a rant about her gender. I'm pretty sure gender is a modern word not used in the 1800s.

"Gender" is essentially a loan word and has been around for centuries, although it's meaning has shifted over time.

www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/77468 - contains examples of usage going back to way before Shelley.

@Werehamster

There was a film called Mary Shelley where Mary had a rant about her gender. I'm pretty sure gender is a modern word not used in the 1800s.

I am pretty sure she did use the word gender.

'In what way was Titanic inaccurate?'

The central characters were fictitious. There were detailed lists of all the passengers and crew including those who survived or were lost. It isn't like a film about say WW2 where millions were involved...there were just over 2229 documented people on board the Titanic of whom 713 survived.

TBH I found it quite offensive that the real victims were reduced to bit parts in their own tragedy through centralising 2 fictional characters.

The central characters in Titanic were never held out to be real people though. The central storyline was always a fiction. Otherwise the only way to storyline Titanic is to do a documentary, surely.

I love the horsey aspects-modern saddles under flowing capes etc, random background riders doing advanced dressage moves for no good reason, the same two horses being used in tens of different shots, love it!

Yes - the horses.

Django Unchained. They ride all days across snow covered prairies, only to reach a cabin in the woods and tether the horses overnight. Horses that do not need water or do not eat grass or hay. So often, the horses are betrayed.

I can forgive minor things (like zips in costumes, show-jumping vs. eventing, kg/cm^3, etc).

What pisses me off is completely changing the key events or the fundamental character of the characters. In a way that means the emotional investment I put into the characters is completely wrong. Because it turns out their life wasn't like THAT at all. Real life Mary & Anne Boleyn spent most of their teen years at French court and played up their reputations as alurring maidens, not a case of Anne suddenly banished to France as family outcast ( The Other Boleyn Girl ). Kathryn of Aragon was very pretty with flaming red hair like her daughter. Alan Turing was charming, funny, very popular not a social misfit ( Imitation Game ). His childhood best friend's family took him on holiday (after BF died) so they could support each other's grief.

Someone offered me free tickets to see King Richard the other day... I said no. I accept the Williams' sisters want RW to be seen in best light. I don't know if RW was any worse as a absent Dad to his first family & otherwise pushy over-ambitious tennis parent than so many others, tbf. I like Will Smith a lot, it's probably a very "good film". But I couldn't find the courage to go watch a film that probably totally misrepresents RW's character and the Williams' sisters real life events.

Hidden Figures is a rare "not accurate" historical film I have liked I never felt like the key events and characters were mis-represented, although event sequence & overlap was distorted, and individual interactions were fabricated. Men of Honor is also excellent accurate enough to satisfy me that my emotional investment is based on true-enough information.

I was in a cinema in Wakefield watching 'Robin Hood Prince of Thieves'. When they delivered the line about being in Nottingham by nightfall, the whole place starting laughing.

At some point on the subject of historical accuracy in films vs. the sensitivities of modern audiences somebody is going to have to raise issue of the use the the name of that dog in a very well known film depicting a WW2 event.

Oh I just did……

That is what I find offensive @Clun that the central storyline was a fiction. There are ways of having fictional characters in a real-life event which don't detract from what the real-life people went through and are focused on portraying it. Here, the real victims were just there as a backcloth to the real drama of the DiCaprio/Winslet characters' 'love story'.

When real-life characters were shown the movie often traduced them. Take First Officer Murdoch who was portrayed as having shot one of the passengers then himself. Absolutely no evidence this ever happened....IRL Murdoch actually spent his last hours loading people into the lifeboats knowing he himself would probably not survive (he didn't).

But apparently the real-life events were not ghastly & tragic enough...Hollywood needed to have a shooting to ramp up the drama, so in it went.

At some point on the subject of historical accuracy in films vs. the sensitivities of modern audiences somebody is going to have to raise issue of the use the the name of that dog in a very well known film depicting a WW2 event.

Oh I just did……

Whenever it's on tv, I watch just to see how it will be addressed. The dog's name is an important part of the story, so it can't just be blanked out.

@Cherrysoup

I love the horsey aspects-modern saddles under flowing capes etc, random background riders doing advanced dressage moves for no good reason, the same two horses being used in tens of different shots, love it!

I read once that there are very few recordings of horses neighing so the same ones get used in nearly everything. I am not a horsey person but it made me laugh to think of it.

A Glaswegian friend of mine went to see Braveheart in the cinema with her granny, who repeatedly stood up and heckled the film: 'it didnae happen like that!'

Try any version of the Wyatt Earp story.
Tombstone was a city of about 10,000pop. It had street lighting for the main street. and 4 daily newspapers.
The tennis club would not have allowed Henry Fonda in, (My Darling Clementine). That film is very good for acting though.
The trial after the shooting at OK Corral is documented and the records are saved.
Btw Doc died aged 34/35 (I think) in a Denver hotel.
All checkable on Wikipedia and links given for back up verification.

The opening battle of Gladiator uses a recycled chant for the barbarians. The Zulus in Zulu make exactly the same chant. It annoyed me at the cinema.

This long-winded video shows both.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=nG3N5E1epAI

Going on from points raised upthread: The 'Softening' of characters from book to screen. I first noticed this in Cadfael. I realise he has turned to God but I doubt a mercenary soldier of that period would have become as cuddly as portrayed by Derek Jacobi.