The Mofo Historical Film Timeline

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Standing in the Sunlight, Laughing
History in Film

The intention here is to construct a timeline of historically relevant films. The two major types of these films are defined as follows:
Documentary - A documentary is a work in a visual or auditory medium presenting political, scientific, social, or historical subjects in a factual and informative manner.
Historical Fiction - Historical fiction may center on historical or on fictional characters, but usually represents an honest attempt based on considerable research (or at least serious reading) to tell a story set in the historical past as understood by the author's contemporaries. Those historical settings may not stand up to the enhanced knowledge of later historians.


By contrast, this list is not intended to include period fiction, in which historical setting has little to nothing to do with the events of the subject. Examples of this would be A Very Long Engagement,
The Last Samurai, Gangs of New York
. The main character should probably appear somewhere in an encyclopedia, if the event is real.

As a starter, I used this thread and this one and got a few entries together.


Please add your favorite historically referential films and I’ll update the timeline until I don’t feel like it any more.

Info needed:
Title (Release Date)
Event (American Civil War, Truman Capote biopic, etc)
Country/Location of the event
Dates covered (at least a start date)
__________________
Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10



Standing in the Sunlight, Laughing
Historical Film Timeline


1193 BC Troy (2004)
Battle of Troy
Ancient Greece

480 BCE The 300 Spartans (1962)
First Battle of Thermopylae

336 BC Alexander (2004)
Biopic of Alexander the Great
Macedonia to India

73-71 BCE Spartacus (1960)
Thracian gladiator leads a slave revolt against Rome

69 BC to 30 BC Cleopatra (1963)
Biopic of Queen Cleopatra VII
Egypt

44 BC Julius Ceasar (1953)
Assassination of Ceasar
Rome

33 AD Passion of the Christ (2004)
Crucifixion of Christ
Nazareth, Rome

1183 The Lion in Winter (1968)
King Henry II refuses to name a successor
England

c 1300 – 1305 Braveheart (1995)
biopic of Sir William Wallace (note: not the most historically accurate film ever)
Scotland and England

1415 Henry V (1944)
British victory over the French at Agincourt
England

1429 – 1431 The Messenger (1999)
Joan of Arc biopic
France

1492 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Columbus' discovery of America
The Bahamas

1527-1536 Anne of a Thousand Days (1969)
The affair, marriage, trial and execution of Anne Boleyn by King Henry VIII,
England

1528 Cabeza de Vaca (1991)
Explorerer Cabeza de Vaca discovers the ancient tribe Iguase.
Across Central America (Florida to Texas)

1554 Lady Jane (1986)
The 9 day reign of Lady Jane Grey
England

1557 - 1603 Elizabeth (1998)
Rise to power of Queen Elizabeth 1 of England
England

1607 The New World (2005)
Establishment of the Jamestown Settlement, Virginia
USA

1634 Black Robe (1991)
Jesuit priest, Father Laforgue and his fellow French companion, travel through the wilderness of New France (Canada) by the Algonkian tribe members in order to find a distant Huron Jesuit mission.

1642/1648 Cromwell (1970)
English civil war
England

1757 The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
French and Indian War: Siege of Fort William Henry
USA

1776 1776 (1972)
Birth of a nation
Philadelphia, PA

1789 Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny against the tyrrannical Capt. Bligh aboard the HMS Bounty
English folks on the High Seas

1799-1802 Master and Commander (2003)
the Napoleonic Wars
Setting: off the coast of S America, concerning British and French naval forces

1836 The Alamo (2004)
Based on the standoff between a group of Texan and Tejano men, led by Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, and Mexican dictator Santa Anna's forces at the Alamo.
San Antonio, Texas

1839 Amistad (1997)
Slave revolt on the Amistad

1858 Mountains of the Moon (1990)
Captain Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke find the source of the Nile
Africa

1860 Glory (1989)
American Civil War
Massachusetts, US

1861 Mrs Brown (1997)
Friendship of Queen Victoria and John Brown
England

1863 Gettysburg (1993)
The battle at Gettysburg, The American Civil War
USA

1879 Zulu (1964)
Battle for Rorke's Drift
Over a hundred British soldiers outnumbered by 4,000 Zulu warriors
Isandhlwana, South Africa

1884-85 Khartoum (1966)
Gen. 'Chinese' Charles Gordon takes on the Madhist revolt in the Sudan.

1892 Heaven's Gate (1980)
Johnson County War in Wyoming.
USA

1900 Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Mysterious disappearance of several students and a teacher from Appleyard College
Victoria, Australia

1905 Battleship Potemkin (1925)
An uprising on board a battleship during the revolution in 1905 (which failed).
Russia

1906 - 1967 The Last Emperor (1987)
Biopic of Pu Yi
China

1910’s Reds (1981)
A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.

1912 A Night to Remember (1958)
The Titanic story, based on a documentary novel - just the facts, ma'am.
The Atlantic Ocean

1915 (cirka)-1948 Ghandi (1982)
Founding of the Indian nationalist movement.
India

1916-24 Michael Collins (1996, Neil Jordan)
Ireland's struggle as told through the eyes of an idealistic rebel.
Ireland

1916 – 1935 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
biopic of T.E. Lawrence
England and Arabia

1919 Eight Men Out (1988)
The "Black Sox Incident" where some Chicago White Sox players conspired to lose the World Series.
USA

1920 Matewan (1979)
Coal mine workers attempts to unionize leads to violence.
West Virginia

1920's Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Based on the story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, mad opera-loving irish rubber baron, who pulls steamboat over South American mountain.
Peru

1920’s The Untouchables (1987)
Federal Agent Elliot Ness sets out to take out Al Capone
Cleveland, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois

1931 Ådalen '31 (1969)
The military shoots demonstrating strikers
Sweden

1934 Triumph of the Will (1935)
Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film of the NSDAP's Sixth Nuremberg Party Congress.
Germany

1936 Olympia, parts I and II (1938)
Riefenstahl's documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.
Germany

1936 Land and Freedom (1995)
Communists fighting in facist Spain
Spain

1938 Seabiscuit (2003)
Biopic? of an inspiring, undersized racehorse
USA

1942-1943 Stalingrad (1993)
The battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle of WWII
The Soviet Union

1943 The Dam Busters (1954)
how the British attacked German dams in WW2 with "bouncing bombs"
Germany

1943-1944 Schindler's List (1993)
The Holocaust
Germany

1944 The Longest Day (1962)
The story of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, WWII
France and Great Britain

1945 Der Untergang (2004)
Hitler and the fall of the 3rd Reich
Germany

1948 Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
War crimes trial following WW2
Occupied Germany

1954 Good Night and Good Luck (2005)
Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow looks to bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy
USA

1958 Badlands (1973)
The Starkweather/Fugate murders (fictionalized, but based on real cases)
USA

c 1958 - 1962 The Right Stuff (1983)
NASA's Mercury 7 program of the late 1950s and early '60s, the first American astronauts.

1962 Thirteen Days (2000)
The Cuba crisis
USA, Cuba, The Soviet Union

1963-1969 JFK (1991)
The John F. Kennedy assasination, the aftermath and Jim Garrison's hunt for the responsible ones
USA

1963 Zapruder Film of Kennedy Assassination (1963)
The home movie footage that caught the assassination of the American President, John F. Kennedy.
USA

1965 Malcolm X (1992)
Biopic of Malcolm X
USA

1970 Apollo 13 (1995)
"Houston, we have a problem..."
USA & Space

1972 Bloody Sunday (2002)
The murder of 13 people by the British Army during a Civil Rights march.
Ireland

1972-1974 All the President's Men (1976)
The Watergate scandal
USA

1973 Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Documentary about a coal miners strike turned violent and ugly
USA

1974-1977 The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
The story of how two young americans became spies for the Soviet Union.
USA & Mexico

1975-1979 The Killing Fields (1984)
The horror of the Khmer Rouge regime seen through the eyes of war correspondents Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg
Cambodia

1993 No Man's Land (2001)
Three soldiers, two bosnians and one serb, caught together in a trench and having to deal with each other during the war in ex-Yugoslavia.
Bosnia-Herzegovina

1994 The Insider (1999)
The story of former Vice President of Research for Brown & Williamson Tobacco, Jeffrey Wigand, who became a "whistle blower".
USA

1994 Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Rwandan holocaust
Rwanda

1998 Omagh (2004)
The bomb attack in Omaugh, Ireland which killed 29 innocents and two unborn children. The single most devastating day in the modern troubles.
Ireland



The People's Republic of Clogher
Excellent!

Here's some Paddified entries...

1916-24 Michael Collins (1996, Neil Jordan)

Ireland's struggle as told through the eyes of an idealistic rebel.

1972 Bloody Sunday (2002, Paul Greengrass)

The murder of 13 people by the British Army during a Civil Rights march.

1998 Omagh (2004, Pete Travis)

To balance things up: The bomb attack in my home town which killed 29 innocents and two unborn children. The single most devastating day in the modern troubles.
__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan



I am having a nervous breakdance
1863 Gettysburg (1993)
The battle at Gettysburg, The American Civil War
USA

1931 Ådalen '31 (1969)
The military shoots demonstrating strikers
Sweden

1936 Land and Freedom (1995)
Communists fighting in facist Spain
Spain

1942-1943 Stalingrad (1993)
The battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle of WWII
The Soviet Union

1944 The Longest Day (1962)
The story of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, WWII
France and Great Britain

1945 Der Untergang (2004)
Hitler and the fall of the 3rd Reich
Germany

1958 Badlands (1973)
The Starkweather/Fugate murders
USA

1962 Thirteen Days (2000)
The Cuba crisis
USA, Cuba, The Soviet Union

1963-1969 JFK (1991)
The John F. Kennedy assasination, the aftermath and Jim Garrison's hunt for the responsible ones
USA

1972-1974 All the President's Men (1976)
The Watergate scandal
USA

1973 Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Documentary about a coal miners strike turned violent and ugly
USA

1975-1979 The Killing Fields (1984)
The horror of the Khmer Rouge regime seen through the eyes of war correspondents Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg
Cambodia
__________________
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

--------

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but
now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.



Originally Posted by Piddzilla
1958 Badlands (1973)
The Starkweather/Fugate murders
USA
A fictionalized version of similar events. Not historical fiction either.
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



So many good movies, so little time.
1528 : Spanish explorerers crash their ship off the coast of Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca wanders for eight years from Florida to Texas having a series of adventures.
Movie : Cabeza de Vaca(1991)

1634: Follows the journey of a Jesuit priest, Father Laforgue and his fellow French companion, Daniel, who travel through the wilderness of New France (Canada) by the Algonkian tribe members in order to find a distant Huron Jesuit mission.
Movie : Black Robe (1991)

1757: French and Indian War: Siege of Fort William Henry
Movie : The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

1839 : Slave revolt on the Amistad
Movie : Amistad (1997)

1863 : Black Union soldiers of the 54th Regiment attack Confederates at Charleston
Movie : Glory (1989)

1910’s : A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
Movie : Reds (1981)

1920 : Coal mine workers attempts to unionize leads to violence.
Movie : Matewan (1979)
Genre : historical/drama

1920’s : Federal Agent Elliot Ness sets out to take out Al Capone; because of rampant corruption, he assembles a small, hand-picked team.
Movie : The Untouchables (1987)

1965 : The life and death of Malcolm X
Movie : Malcolm X (1992)

1973 : Reporters Woodward and Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Nixon's resignation.
Movie : All the President’s Men(1976)
__________________

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx



So many good movies, so little time.
I also really like :
A Man For All Seasons (1966)
Mountains of the Moon (1990)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Judgement at Nuremburg (1961)
Patton (1970)



I am having a nervous breakdance
1905 Battleship Potemkin (1925)
An uprising on board a battleship during the revolution in 1905 (which failed).
Russia

1915 (cirka)-1948 Ghandi (1982)
The story of the leader of the Indian nationalist movement.
India

1919 Eight Men Out (1988)
The "Black Sox Incident" where some Chicago White Sox players conspired to lose the World Series.
USA

1934 Triumph of the Will (1935)
Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film of the NSDAP's Sixth Nuremberg Party Congress.
Germany

1936 Olympia, parts I and II (1938)
Riefenstahl's documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.
Germany

1963 Zapruder Film of Kennedy Assassination (1963)
The home movie footage that caught the assassination of the American President, John F. Kennedy.
USA

1970 Apollo 13 (1995)
"Houston, we have a problem..."
USA & Space

1974-1977 The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
The story of how two young americans became spies for the Soviet Union.
USA & Mexico

1993 No Man's Land (2001)
Three soldiers, two bosnians and one serb, caught together in a trench and having to deal with each other during the war in ex-Yugoslavia.
Bosnia-Herzegovina

1994 The Insider (1999)
The story of former Vice President of Research for Brown & Williamson Tobacco, Jeffrey Wigand, who became a "whistle blower".
USA



500,000BC? Quest for Fire (1981)
Early humans try to stay alive
Somewhere in Africa

336BC Alexander 2004
Conqueror of the known world
Macedonia to India

1492 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Columbus' discovery of America
The Bahamas

1776 1776 (1972)
Birth of a nation
Philadelphia, PA
__________________
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.




Standing in the Sunlight, Laughing
Originally Posted by Twain
500,000BC? Quest for Fire (1981)
Early humans try to stay alive
Somewhere in Africa
I'mna hold this to recorded history. Unless you can show me where that one is basd on actual inverviews.


uconjack~ I haven't seen Reds or Black Robe. IMDb doesn't mention them being based on historical events. Are they actually about historical events, or are they fiction set in other times/places?



Originally Posted by SamsoniteDelilah
uconjack~ I haven't seen Reds or Black Robe. IMDb doesn't mention them being based on historical events. Are they actually about historical events, or are they fiction set in other times/places?
Warren Beatty's Oscar-winning Reds (1981) is based on the true story of journalist John Reed (played by Beatty), who's non-fiction book Ten Days That Shook the World is an eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution in October of 1917. After seeing the Revolution he eventually became a Communist himself, and worked for change in America and the rest of the world. The epic movie covers that story of course, as well as his romantic relationship with writer Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) and the love triangle between them and playwright Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson), who also had an affair with Bryant.

Only the people involved know if the details of the romance are fictional or not, but otherwise the narrative is based on history. Other historical figures are portrayed in the movie, including Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), Max Eastman (Edward Herrmann), even Lenin and Trotsky. Beatty also has on-camera interviews with surviving friends of Reed and Bryant who recount their memories.






Originally Posted by SamsoniteDelilah
<ahem> yeah, that sounds pretty historical then.
I'll add it here and to my Netflix queue.
Reds is not aivailable on DVD. Turner Classic Movies has run it a few times this year though, so keep an eye out there.

And in fact, checking HERE I see it's playing on Cinemax a week from today. If you get that channel.



So many good movies, so little time.
Black Robe's main character is fictional but is based on a historical character. To quote from the Reel Ameriacn History site -

http://www.lehigh.edu/~ineng/ejg/rah.html

which has a nice list of films

"While the fictional character Paul Laforgue shares his historical ancestor's aversion to the Algonquin lifestyle, Laforgue's ultimate connection with history is through Noel Chabanel, one of the Catholic martyrs of North America. Chabanel arrived in Huron territory in 1643 and had similar complaints to Le Jeune's regarding the smoky tents and dogs. Although tempted to return to France and a more comfortable ministry, he vows (as Laforgue does) to remain with the Hurons until his death. That vow is fulfilled in 1649, when the Huron Mission is overrun by the Iroquois and Chabanel is killed, either by an Iroquois or an apostate Huron. The Iroquois were in competition with the Hurons for trading rights with the French, and the Christianized Hurons were especially a threat to Iroquois commerce. After that attack, the Huron Mission is permanently abandoned. The French Jesuit missionary presence remained in Canada well into the nineteenth century but never reached the prominence it held in the 1640s."

To me, Black Robe presents the most realistic view of Native American life in the movies.



The Right Stuff (1983 - Philip Kaufman)
NASA's Mercury 7 program of the late 1950s and early '60s, the first American astronauts.

Eight Men Out (1988 - John Sayles)
The "Black Sox" scandal of the Chicago White Sox, who threw the 1919 World Series for money from gamblers.

Heaven's Gate (1980 - Michael Cimino)
1892 Johnson County War in Wyoming.

Anne of a Thousand Days (1969 - Charles Jarrott)
The affair, marriage, trial and execution of Anne Boleyn by King Henry VIII, 1527-1536.



Originally Posted by SamsoniteDelilah
I'mna hold this to recorded history. Unless you can show me where that one is basd on actual inverviews.
Yeah, I thought that was kinda pushin' it. But it would have been first on the list.

And it has sentimental value. I took my dad (who never went to movies) to see it. We both enjoyed it and there was the added plus of a young, nekkid Rae Dawn Chong.



In the Beginning...
Gangs of New York (2002)
Immigration into New York City; Draft riots
New York City

The Alamo (2004)
Last stand at the Alamo; fight for Texas
Texas

The Last Samurai (2003)
Unification of Japan
Japan