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?

[quote Megalameg]@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.[/quote]
Absolutely this. The recent Poldark distorted the whole mood of the wonderful novels by deciding that Elizabeth had to be 'likeable' so that people would understand what Ross saw in her. Even the villain, George Warleggan had his softer side. The 70s version allowed George to be evil and Elizabeth to be a bitch.
Plus in the new version even the minor characters look like models... perfect clean clothes and make-up.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a travesty. They portrayed Roger Taylor as a thicko drummer 'who's Galileo?', when RT (Roger Meddows Taylor) is properly posh and very educated.
Also when they were rehearsing for Live Aid and Brian says 'We haven't played together for years'.
They were pretty much on tour at the time! I saw them three times at Wembley the September before.

@beguilingeyes

Yes totally agree about Poldark. Thats another really annoying thing you bring up which isn’t just about historical shows but so many things. Characters both good and bad can never simply have bad qualities which are just part of who they are and leave it at that - anything bad in a character must be explained with a sob story or resolved somehow. It’s too much.

@dayswithaY

Dalgleish on C5, it's set in the early 1970s and someone referred to "a serial killer". That phrase did not exist until at least the 1990s.

I'm fairly sure I spotted an Isaac Newton pound note in the first episode of this, and they weren't introduced until 1978. It annoyed me disproportionately!

My favorite bit of Bohemian Rhapsody was when they held Live Aid and the phones were silent, then Queen played and suddenly the phones went crazy. 😆

It's definitely a work of fiction for the most part.

Don't even start me.
Blocks of conifer planting in c1580? I think not.
Cuckoo calling in October? Not a bloody chance.
Uprooting a leylandii hedge in 1850? Nope.

I am a real pedant and not very patient. I have been known to switch things off if I'm not that engrossed when a minor inaccuracy distracts me.

Historical inaccuracy in films doesn't bother me quite so much as historical inaccuracy from professional historians who are too slapdash to check their stuff. Both joint chief curators of Historic Royal Palaces spring to mind - Lucy Worsley for writing a teenage book about Catherine Howard and calling her grandmother the Duchess of Northumberland throughout rather than Norfolk (pretty basic error) and Tracey Borman for alleging that Anne Boleyn was the first queen of England to be imprisoned in the Tower - what about Marguerite of Anjou? It worries me that the curatorship of so many important buildings is in such sloppy hands.....

@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

They also pop up out of a man hole in the middle of a well made Turkish road.

@DameAlyson

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.

There is a whole social commentary behind the fact that Guy Gibson didn't see any problem in giving his dog that name. To airbrush the name out of history also airbrushes out that fact. Which is far more offensive (to me) than the name itself.

(I'm similarly not impressed that we appear to have drifted into retrospective conscience-salving pardons ...but that's another discussion).

@londonmummy1966

Historical inaccuracy in films doesn't bother me quite so much as historical inaccuracy from professional historians who are too slapdash to check their stuff. Both joint chief curators of Historic Royal Palaces spring to mind - Lucy Worsley for writing a teenage book about Catherine Howard and calling her grandmother the Duchess of Northumberland throughout rather than Norfolk (pretty basic error) and Tracey Borman for alleging that Anne Boleyn was the first queen of England to be imprisoned in the Tower - what about Marguerite of Anjou? It worries me that the curatorship of so many important buildings is in such sloppy hands.....

I saw SIX recently and noticed the Duchess of Northumberland thing in Lucy Worsley's piece in the programme. I just assumed it was a one off error. The sort of factual error a historian might have nightmare about because you can see how the two place names are similar, and it's a theatre programme so maybe not closely checked. But you say she did it for a whole book?? thats horrific. I mean the whole point of Catherine Howard is she is related to the duke of Norfolk... And the Duchesses of Northumberland and Norfolk are not at all similar people.

It kind of backs up my feeling that once some is famous, or has a successful book series, the publishers don't proof read and edit as much as for a new author...

Titanic was inaccurate in lots of ways.
Fourth funnel in the film had smoke billowing from it when in reality it was a dummy funnel.
Also the ships officer William Murdoch is shown to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, when in reality this never happened.
The Captain is shown to be pressured by White Star Line's Bruce Ismay to go faster to break the speed record for crossing the Atlantic, but this also never actually happened. The Titanic was built for luxury and prestige, NOT speed, and the owners never tried to compete.

There are plenty more that annoy me whenever I see the film but I cannot think of them at the moment.

(My Great Great Grandfather on Mothers side helped build the Titanic in Belfast so big fan!)

I thought Ridley Road was quite good with the whole furniture thing; set in the early sixties but all the houses were full of thirties and forties style furniture, except for a hairdresser’s salon which was much more up to date.

Doesn’t Samantha Morton have some awful hoots mon Scottish accent in The Golden Age when Mary QoS had spent most of her life to date in France? And Zulu apparently has some extras wearing the wristwatches that the film crew paid them with

@LadyJaye

Don't get me started on Braveheart and the depiction of the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

With nary a bridge in sight!

@Thecatsbutler

Out of (genuine) interest, when WERE kilts worn?

Braveheart 13th century. Kilts around the 17th century. So, not too far out then🤔

I think the first mention of a kilt is in the 16th century and is in relation to the Highlands. They only become more widely associated with Scottish culture in the 19th century. Around the same time that clam tartan were invented. And William Wallace became a romantic hero.

@SydneyCarton well of course they had 40's furniture because most people couldn't afford anything else. Rationing went on until the mid 50's.
It was the 70's before most people could buy modern furniture which was more affordable.

One that always really bothered me was in the Tudors. They had Henry's sister, Margaret, marry a Portuguese king. In reality, she married the Scottish king, which was a pivotal event in British history leasing to the union of the crowns. Even thinking of it makes me angry 😅

Look up the Reel History columns by Alex von Tunzelmann- amazing and funny film reviews of historical films.

Leading*
Bloody spelling mistakes!

@SydneyCarton

I thought Ridley Road was quite good with the whole furniture thing; set in the early sixties but all the houses were full of thirties and forties style furniture, except for a hairdresser’s salon which was much more up to date.

Doesn’t Samantha Morton have some awful hoots mon Scottish accent in The Golden Age when Mary QoS had spent most of her life to date in France? And Zulu apparently has some extras wearing the wristwatches that the film crew paid them with

Quite. Mary, Queen of Scots was sent (as a very little girl) to be raised at the French court as she was betrothed to the Dauphin. Her first language was French. Even when she returned to Scotland as a grown woman, her first language would still have been French. To speak plain English would have been considered slightly uncouth at Court.

Most courtiers would have been fluently multi-lingual. So having Mary QOfS speaking English in a broad Scots accent was just ignorant nonsense.

Fascinating.

Capferret That was the point I was clumsily trying to make! I think the programme makers got it right by not filling the houses with pop art and mod furniture but having the older styles instead as that would have been more authentic for the period. Even growing up in the eighties most of our stuff was a good twenty years old . I think the hairdressers was in a more “swinging” area therefore would have been more up to date

I remember laughing at Robin Hood when the Morgan Freeman character is supposed to be Moorish Muslim and does a very weird prayer. Surely they could have asked a Muslim?

Let's not forget Kevin Costner's broad American drawl either

@Livingtothefull

'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.

But wouldn't it have been equally or more offensive to have altered the lives of real people by putting them into storylines that never happened? (With the added likelihood of their families suing?). If you cut out all made up characters there won't be any full historical dramas left.

My input is Downton Abbey. Not the occasional water bottle or yellow street sign in view but the fact the whole plot rests on the earl being unable to break an entail....when people had been breaking them for centuries, a law had been passed less than 100 years prior to make them significantly easier to break, and they were actually outlawed in 1926....yet nobody even the solicitor mentions any of this!