What is the role of a historical film?

I'll start first by stating I've never seen a truly historical film, meaning one that accurately portrayed even a single day, perhaps not even a single moment of a real historical event. Hollywood doesn't care about history. It cares about selling movie tickets. And it will do anything necessary or even likely to accomplish that goal. Which is why no one ever seems to run completely out of ammunition in a movie.

I'm not fond of that quote, although I do understand its significance. Davy Crockett was a living example of a western frontiersman who talked his way into Congress with tall tales of his exploits. Some of my fellow Texans will spit in your eye if you dare suggest that ol' Davy didn't go down fighting at the Alamo. Yet there's good evidence that he and some others defenders were executed after they surrendered--just as happened with an even bigger party of Texans at Goliad. Fact is, if you go back and read the newspapers of the era, there were reports months after the fact that claimed Crockett had been captured and taken to Mexico. No one alive after the fact ever saw or even heard of Travis drawing the line in the sand. Jim Bowie was dying of sickness and too weak to swat a fly, much less use his famous knife on the Mexican soldiers who broke into his room, and all we know about the infamous Ross or Rose or Mose who supposedly refused to cross Travis's line in the dust and was the last man to escape from the Alamo comes down to us from one man who years after the fact said he heard the story as a boy from Ross (or whoever) himself who stopped for food at his father's house. But damn, it sure makes for a good tale of 136 stalwart Texans holding off thousands of Mexicans. Yet not only the numbers but the ethnic mix is a lie. Except for late-comers like Crockett, anglo Texas settlers nominally converted to Catholicism and swore allegience to Mexico as a requirement for being allowed to settle in the Texas territory. And a large number were native-born Texans of Hispanic heritage--the whole revolutionary movement grew out of an effort to make Texas a separate state of Mexico rather than being under the govenor of another Mexican state whose capital was hundreds of miles away. The first vice-president of the Texas Republic was Hispanic. But the legend is simple, neat, and satisfies both our modern prejudices and sense of honor.

There's also more fiction than truth in what most of us think we know about Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Only the extremely dangerous Wes Hardin ever came close to killing as many men as the stories say, but many--maybe most--were unarmed or bushwhacked.

That said, the throughly fictional Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the equally fictional The Devil's Disciple (written by Noel Coward, for gawd's sakes!) at least capture the spirit and much of the truth of the times depicted. There were robbers and psychotic bullies and killers like Valance's gang. And there were honest people like the newspaper editor, the lawyer, the rancher and yes even Andy Devine's sheriff who stood up against them. There were conflicts over land and water with the small ranchers and farmers on one side and the big ranchers on the other. And those conflicts were fought out with fists, guns, and ballots. And most killings occurred by shooting someone from an alley.

In Devil's Disciple, the good-for-nothing anti-authoritarian Kirk Douglas and the by-the-book preacher Burt Lancaster have no interest in the American Revolution until pushed into the rebel camp by the highhanded British troops. It's been said that at the height of the American Revolution about a third of all Americans were for freedom from England, a third were still loyal British subjects, and another third just didn't give a damn either way until a bad experience with the British or with the patriots put them on the opposite side. Disciple portrays that truth better than any film I've ever seen. And if you want to see what war is really like, watch Audie Murphy in The Red Badge of Courage, which depicts the confusion of the battlefield better than any film I've ever seen, certainly better than Saving Private Ryan.

Prime example of this is in a made-for-TV movie based on a well-written historically accurate novel, both titled The Court Martial of Gen. Custer, the premise being that Custer survives the Little Bighorn and is brought up on charges for getting his unit killed. The book describes the real, documented, historical incident where Major Reno's initial attack on the Indian village grinds to a halt before the more numerous and better armed Indians and he orders his command to fall back to a wooded area across the river. As this is going on, Reno is sitting on his horse in the river when one of the Crow scouts rides up and leans over to tell him something above the noise of battle. As he does, the Crow is hit in the head by a bullet, and his head litterally explodes splattering Reno with brains and blood. The effect is that Reno goes into shock and for some hours was ineffective in deploying and instructing his troops, resulting in some bad decisions and several deaths. But in that scene in the movie, the Crow scout is magically changed into a young cavalry officer. Why make that change when the truth is more interesting and--dare I say?--colorful. There's a similar incident in Dances With Wolves when the old chief drags out the helmet of a Spanish conquistador, captured by the Sioux in one of the earliest battles with the white eyes. Trouble is, the Spanish never got so far north and the Sioux never got so far south for such a meeting in that period. The Comanche, on the other hand, did encounter the Spanish explorers and became the best horsemen on the plains by first stealing horses from the Spanish. In The Comancheros, John Wayne encounters Chief Iron Shirt, a character based on a real Comanche who wore the metal breastplate of a Spanish soldier. Thing is the book Dances With Wolves is set in Texas with the Comanches, but the film takes it hundreds of miles north among the Sioux.


On the other hand, John Adams defended the British soldiers accused of firing on demonstrating citizens in the so-called Boston Massacre--and won their acquital. Doesn't mean he was a loyalist--just a fair-minded man and a damn good lawyer.

Jefferson and Adams were good friends whose political stances in the years after the revoluton turned them into bitter enemies. You should read some of the things they wrote about each other in that period! I haven't seen the series, but everyone--including me--loves Jefferson for his great mind and spirit and scientific curiosity and the gumption to buy the Louisiana Territory. But a contemporary who knew him well and was friends with Jefferson once described him as an inordinately ambitious person who never wrote or spoke a single word without first considering whether or not it put him in a good light and advanced his political ambitions.


You're quite right, the signing of the Declaration of Independence went on for more than a year as I recall. Some of the people who voted for independence never did sign it, being no longer delegates to the Continental Congress by the time of the decision to get all members to sign. Some new delegates signed that never voted for the declaration. But I read somewhere once that the story of the delegates lining up to sign the document right after it passed became so popular that some of the delegates in their later years remembered it just that way--as I recall, among those who later endorsed this myth despite all evidence to the contrary were Washington, Jefferson--and Adams. So it would seem that the series tampered with the real history at that point, which makes moot your argument that Adams missed the whole point.

I would argue that one could rape slaves, kill Indians and still be a strong patriot and even a hero, since none of those elements have any relation to the other. One can love his country and be a bigot or a coward in battle. One can be a vile human being and still perform heroic deeds and support worthwhile causes. And some heroes are just nasty, greedy, vain, and selfish most of the time. On that issue, I refer you to the film They Came to Cordura in which Gary Cooper as a cowardly officer bravely stands on his principles while bringing in a bunch of criminal, greedy, vain, and selfish men each of whom he has recommended for the Medal of Honor.

This popular dismissal of history is BS usually trotted out when the historical truth conflicts with what the reader wants to believe. True historians do not deal in opinion. They dig for documented proof. As for your claim that 50 history books on any subject produces 50 different opinions, I challenge you to name even 5 history books on any historical item of your choice that express 5 different opinions about that event. I'm talking real history books now, not that mishmash of lies, half-truths, egos and opinion that clutter the internet.

I can't think of a single film that ever taught me anything of importance. There have been films that piqued my curiosity enough that I read the book on which the film was based or other books on the subject, primarily to find the mistakes.

History is filled with so many interesting people and events that it should be possible to make a film that is both accurate and entertaining. It only requires the scriptwriter to work harder and the producer not to make changes he thinks will boost the boxoffice or fit a preferred actor. One of Hollywood's worst habits is its compulsion to have a romantic interest in every story, when real life seldom works that way.

Talk about screwing with the facts. The Devil's Disciple was written by George Bernard Shaw, not Noel Coward.

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I love history and would love to see some really accurate films about historical events. But I don't expect much when there are million of people around who have served in the military and yet no one in Hollywood knows the proper way to wear a uniform or how to salute nor are they even interested in asking someone who does know. If they don't even try on the small points, what's the use in trying to get them to accurately portray the big points? Today they even distort the principles and events of World War II in order to market the movie in Japan or Germany.

You're right. I wrote that in a hurry off the top of my head without looking up the facts, which is always dangerous. Coward wrote In Which We Serve, a very good WWII movie based on a real incident.

In Which We Serve was a good propaganda movie which can be seen now as something more. I wonder, rufnek, if you'll ever see any films which dare to paint any WWII-era Germans, Japanese or perhaps even certain Native Americans of the past as having human thoughts and feelings as anything more than propaganda.

I feel that I've learned a great deal from the movies. I never knew that there were so many black troops fighting for the Union (by the end of the war 10% of Union troops were black). Although there are many errors in Glory (the thing I didn't get was why Frederick Douglas' two sons who fought in the 54th weren't represented in the film) I still feel I learned a lot by watching it.

I had never heard of Cabeza de Vaca until I saw that movie. I still don't know how much of what I saw was true, but since I knew nothing about the incident before the movie i am sure I know more now.

I had heard of the Amistad, but knew very little about it before I saw the movie. I know there were historical inaccuracies and a made up main character, but I know a lot more about the incident now then I did before. I also think I learned some things about the Middle Passage, the African Slave Trade and abolition from watching this movie (which I really like).

I had never heard of John Reed before Reds. Didn't know much about the suffrage movement before I saw Iron Jawed Angels. I learned things from Inherit the Wind, Good Night, and Good Luck, Malcolm X and Thirteen Days. Although all these movies have historical flaws I think they gave me a good general idea of what happened at that time in history.

My favorite historical movie may be Gettysburg. After seeing the movie I drove down to the battlefield and took a tour. I learned a lot about that battle from the movie (even though it was based on a historical fiction book).

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

I was amazed back when Glory hit the screens that so many people said, "Gee, I never knew that blacks fought in the Civil War." I even heard black people say it, and my initial thought was, "Have these people been living under a rock somewhere?" But then I've been a reader from childhood, and the Civil War has always been of interest to me, having grown up in the South during the days of segregation. So I've read many volumes about that war. But even among those who haven't studied that period of history, look at the logic. If you were an escaped or freed slave and the government gave you a good uniform and a weapon and said, "Go shoot the SOBs who held you in slavery and still hold your family," wouldn't you do it? But black soldiers ran a bigger risk in the war than whites because the South didn't recognize them as soldiers, only as stolen property and criminals. In the Ft. Pillow Massacre, Bedford Forrest's boys shot down black soldiers trying to surrender or swimming a river to escape. In Texas, 2 black sailors captured from a Union ship were held not in a prison camp as were white prisoners but in Huntsville prison, which had a reputation for brutality well into the 20th Century. Another thing I didn't understand about Glory was why Frederick Douglas was portrayed as an old man, which he was not at that time.

As for Cabeza de Vaca, I had a special advantage. We read about him in the 6th grade in Texas history. I remember the first time the teacher mentioned De Vaca's name in class, a Hispanic girl burst out laughing. Seems in Spanish, Cabeza de Vaca means "head of a cow."

I read 2-3 of John Reed's books in college (in a course on Russian government, as I recall) long before anyone ever thought of making Reds. Reed was very persuasive in his defense of communisim, the Russian Revolution, and people like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. But if you read other books of that period, you learn there were better alternatives than either the Czar or communism. According to Karl Marx, communism in theory should never have occurred in a mostly rural, agrarian society like Russia. He pictured communism in urban industrialized countries like Germany and France.

The true facts of the Scopes trial are even more interesting than the fictionalized Inherit the Wind, which nonetheless was a damn good play and movie. Did you know the whole thing started out as a sorta local "chamber of commerce" ploy to get the town's name in the papers in hopes of attracting industry? That Scopes hadn't actually taught a class on evolution but volunteered to endorse the theory so he could be arrested and brought to trial? His conviction resulted in a smal fine, chump change; but it made a laughing stock of the town and industry went to neighboring villages instead. Scopes ended up working as a geolgist for an oil company, a better paying profession than teaching.

I was alive and watching Edward R. Murrow on TV when those events actually happened--Murrow did better programs about bigger problems, especially his expose on the plight of migrant (mostly minority) farm workers.

I also lived through the period of Malcolm X, who was not nearly as gentle, genteel or broadminded as the movie portrayed him (go back and read newspaper accounts of that period, or better yet, his own books).

Thirteen Days refers, I suppose, to one of the endless films about the Alamo (probably the Billy Bob version which I saw but don't recall the title), none of which have ever tried to look at all the facts and realities of that period or have even come close to a truly historical account. As a Texan, I've never seen a film about the Alamo that I've really liked, especially not that load of horse manure created by John Wayne (although some high school buddies worked as extras in it--as both the Mexican soldiers charging the mission and then the Texans inside defending it).

You seem, Mark, to classify any Allied World War II film as propaganda. I disagree. A good English film that depicts England's participation in the war as does In Which We Serve and Mrs. Miniver still hold up today unlike tripe like Tarzan meets the Nazis. (Mrs. Miniver was filmed in 1942; I was born in 1943, so I'm not aware of seeing it until some time after the war when it was no longer "propaganda." Besides, she and the film were most sympathetic to the wounded German airman who invades her home--depicts him with human thoughts and feelings although filmed in a period when it was still not certain the Allies would win unconditional surrender of the Axis.) That these films tell stories from the British point of view is not surprising, seeing how few English shared the German point of view at that time. But I've also seen films and, more important, read books from the Axis viewpoint. Even Hitler and Tojo had human thoughts and feelings. But that doesn't excuse Nazism or Japanese Imperialism or the atrocities both inflicted in wars of agression.

As for propaganda, what makes In Which We Serve a propaganda film compared with post-war movies like The Great Escape, Patton, The Dirty Dozen or Sands of Iwo Jima? Is The Magnificient Seven, pitting Anglo-American gunfighters successfully against Mexican bandits, an example of racist (or more accurately ethnic) propaganda?

Besides, all I said in my previous post was that In Which We Serve is a good movie, and you're off to the races with all these assumptions about what I have and haven't seen.

Rufnek, you've said a lot; not sure I know where to start. But I do want to correct you on something: Thirteen Days is about the Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy's handling of that crisis. It is extremely well done with Bruce Greenwood playing Kennedy in what I think is the best performance of an actor that year and the best Kennedy performance, imo. Anyway, it has its flaws like all historical films, but it captured the history pretty well. Well written. Lots of dialogue. Very underrated flick, imo... but history teachers obviously appreciate it.

To be honest, Thirteen Days is an example of the kind of historical film I would show someone to educate them a bit about the time and what happened. I do think it is one of those examples of a film that sought to entertain but also tried to get the history right.

I also want to disagree with you again, lol, on the helmet scene in Dances With Wolves. Interestingly, though, this goes to the core of my argument: In Dances, that scene is more of an illustration of a greater theme -- the coming end to the Native American civilization as they knew it -- than to any specific detail. Here, that detail really doesn't matter.

It seems to me that historical films should have some leeway here and there but it also has some obligation to the history. Yet, that isn't easy, balancing history and entertainment.

As to your example of The Alamo, though, yes, that does matter! That film played so loose with history, it is an example of shaping legend, not just reporting on it. That is a propaganda film. I was pretty shocked when I read about that film years later after seeing it.

You pointed out a detail on John Adams; interestingly, this was another detail changed for what purpose? In the mini-series, all the British troops are found not guilty; in history, two of them were guilty of manslaugher, but the others got off. If the scene served the purpose of showing Adams was a man of laws and fair-minded, then why change that detail? I felt lied to there and it actually makes me a bit angry.

I'd like to add that I have a hard time believing that not one war film got the military uniform right.

Well, rufnek, In Which We Serve's chief purpose in being made may have been to just try to make a stirring, pro-British, anti-German piece of entertainment during a war, but that sounds like propaganda to me. Not some subversive, lying propaganda, but at least a kind which makes its viewers feel better about the situation in which they find themselves. By the way, Mrs. Miniver is an American film, even if it tells a story about the British during WWII. You're not going to tell me that films like Wake Island, Air Force, Bataan, etc. aren't propaganda, are you? I mean they work on one level as action movies, but since they were all made during WWII and slammed the Japanese (I mean, the Nips), they definitely were made to make American audiences feel better about killing those dirty, rotten enemies. Sure, both the Germans and the Japanese made propaganda films, before and during the war. All I'm pointing out is that the "good guys" did it too.

As far as the post-WWII films you mentioned, they aren't propaganda because WWII wasn't taking place from 1949-1970. There were other wars during that time frame but basically those films eschewed what might have been going on elsewhere. As far as my being off to the races, you opened the door, your thoughts on the subject are a matter of public record, and I didn't do anything in my post but ask a simple (if loaded) question.

I think it was clear in my original post I had not seen the film and guessed at the subject. I remember now the film you speak of. Didn't see it; didn't recall the title. During the Cuban missile crisis, I was an enlisted man serving at Irwin Army Hospital at Fort Riley, Kan., home of the Big Red 1, so I have my own memories of that period. Did the movie mention that the dispatching of Russian Missiles to Cuba was in retaliation to flights of spy planes over Russia from US bases in Turkey, and that Mr. K agreed to remove the missiles when Kennedy agreed to stop those flights, according to some histories? It wasn't quite the US victory some remember. In fact there are some who say Kennedy's sword-rattling almost started a nuclear war.

But the film could have made the same point using an artifact or reference to the Sioux's early contact with French fur traders or with the Lewis and Clark expedition, both based in historical fact. If detail really doesn't matter, why didn't he just pull out a horned Viking helmet (which Vikings didn't wear in real life) and take the point back to the first known contact between Indians (who were not native to the Americas, having migrated here themselves) and the European culture?



I never said no war film ever got the uniform right. Lots of film directors and actors who served in World War II, Korea, and even some from Vietnam, got it right because they were in the military and learned how to salute, march, and carry a weapon. Lee Marvin, a former combat Marine wounded in World War II always looked in the movies (war, cowboy, gangster) as though he was carrying a real weapon, not a prop. But how many of today's young actors and directors ever served in our all-volunteer miltary? So they don't know soldiers are required to wear their covers (hats) whenever outdoors and remove them whenever indoors, and never ever get caught with their hands in their pockets, a point referred to by Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity in the drunken AWOL scene when he talks about putting "stinkin' hands" in "stinkin' pockets." There are lots of Military stipulations about uniforms and the wearing of them, but today Hollywood treats uniforms as casually as if they were jeans and tee-shirts. The military also dictates the degree of angle of the forearm and the proper way to hold your fingers and bring the tip of your fingers to the end of your right eyebrow when you salute, but Hollywood is happy with any loose-limb wave in the general direction of the forehead. In war movies, they don't arm the soldier-actors with zip-guns, so why are they so neglectful of other little details like uniforms and saluting?

Well, damn, Mark, you caught me in another mistake! But then that's not hard to do; I've never claimed to have perfect memory of films or the time to look up the correct details as do some in this forum.

I simply said it was a good film. You interject comments about propaganda and what movies you assume I have or haven't seen. If you don't like "off to the races," how about "swerved into another lane"?

Actually, I welcome your comments. You usually have something interesting to say. Unfortunately, everything I say seems to tick you off. Or is it my imagination that there's a certain edge in your emails to me?

Well that's a little unfair of you.

Personally, I'll write a shorter post or post fewer times in the interest of accuracy if time is a factor for me when I'm posting.

Movies do not need to be historically accurate or factual. I think directors/writers should have the liberty of creative license and it is the responsibility of the moviegoer to research the topic for themselves if they want the truth, facts or an unbiased opinion.

Rufnek, I gather you would have been happier if I hadn't used the word "correct" when I responded to you about Thirteen Days. I was merely trying to tell you what the film was about.

Since you care so much about history, I'm surprised you have never seen it or heard of it. I would have to watch it again to see if they showed the Cuban missiles were in retaliation -- that sounds familiar, but I'm not sure. The author of the book was pretty happy with the film, for the most part.

As to the Spanish helmet -- jeez, Rufnek, it's a helmet! A small scene in a rather long film. What about the fact that the film explored a people that many Americans didn't understand? What about all those "historical" films of the past that had painted them as simple savages? You're harping on that detail? I would complain more that they made every white person, with the exception of Dunbar, to be rather cruel and stupid. Now, that's a criticism that has merit, imo.

Again, to those that think historical films have no obligation to history, I respectfully disagree. Sure they do. Further, in the case of a film about a real person, I think they have an obligation not to distort the person's actual actions/personality for the sake of entertainment. At least capture a portion of the truth. I'm so surprised that so many think that isn't important at all.

It's not important because it's art. Get your facts from a reliable source.

That's actually exactly how I feel about it.

If you're going to make a film and call it John Adams, for example, and point the story toward a historical figure then I think it's an obligation to try to portray that character in as accurate a light as possible.

If it's not John Adams, and the character does things that are similar to John Adams but are not historically accurate as best as it can be, then call it Herbert Smith and feel free to say somewhere in the credits that the character is based on certain elements of John Adams' life.