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"Historical facts are treated with particular contempt" was part of a magazine review of the film Anastasia, but I put it to you all, how about a list of films in which historical facts are treated with contempt. Not just wrong, or done for satire or compression, but so off that anyone really knowing the facts wants to throw the proverbial shoe through the flatscreen.

First up, Sailor on Horseback, the Jack London biopic that somehow converts London into a flag-waving war hero.

James Cameron's Titanic.

James Cameron's Titanic.

Do you mean because of the fictional story?

The Grand Prize winner surely must be WB's Mission to Moscow--reputedly made at the explicit behest of Papa Joe's fervent admirer, FDR. This picture was particularly beloved in the Gulags...by the guards, I mean

Do you mean because of the fictional story?

Isn't that quite enough?

The granddaddy of all American film epics, Birth of a Nation, Mr. Griffith's objective presentation of the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction from a Southern point of view.

I could also add Raoul Walsh's They Died With Their Boots On, the true story of how General Custer tried to protect the rights of Native Americans who were being cheated by the government.

These are two of the most egregious examples I can think of at the moment.

Not sure if Lawrence of Arabia belongs in this list, it's historically inaccurate but deliberately so. Every Robin Hood movie ever made, wow, Bad Medieval. And who cares? I don't have a problem with biopics, frankly. They're all historically inaccurate but "biopic" is a narrative form, I don't think they're intended to be any more accurate than is Lawrence of Arabia. The Cat's Meow.

Is this the place to discuss why movies have no responsibility to be historically accurate? or is that another thread?

Probably any film with a title format of "The <name here> Story". Buster Keaton for example. Or is doing biopics just shooting fish in a barrel?

Poor Rudolph Valentino was ill-treated in the 1951 film Valentino, as well as the 1975 television movie The Legend of Valentino and and Ken Russell's 1977 film Valentino. The historical facts and poor Valentino were treated with contempt.

The forthcoming film produced by Vlad Koslov looks like it will be the icing on that cake.

Do you mean because of the fictional story?

Isn't that quite enough?

No. It's not possible to make a film that's 100% accurate then. Even documentaries are selective with what they present and are biased.

Do you mean because of the fictional story?

Isn't that quite enough?

No. It's not possible to make a film that's 100% accurate then. Even documentaries are selective with what they present and are biased.

It's not even possible to write a history/biography that is 100% accurate. Even if the events presented are factual they are still being "presented;" they appear because a historian/biographer has chosen specific events (and not others) as significant. That introduces a bias but it also (thank heavens) means that we don't have to read 900 lb biographies detailing what the subject ate for breakfast every day of his life.

Probably any film with a title format of "The <name here> Story". Buster Keaton for example. Or is doing biopics just shooting fish in a barrel?

One of the big problems with those post-war 20s entertainer biopics (Incendiary Blonde, The Buster Keaton Story, The Helen Morgan Story, etc.) is that even though the subjects were often deceased, their co-workers, romantic partners and family members were still very much alive. In order to avoid libel lawsuits, painted what truth they wished to tell (Buster Keaton was a silent comedian) with a very broad brush and filled in the details with complete fiction so that no one would call their lawyer.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Bob

Is this the place to discuss why movies have no responsibility to be historically accurate? or is that another thread?

Unless they are using a defense of satire, how are the studios able to dodge libel suits when they put manufactured dialogue into the mouths of the still living?

how about a list of films in which historical facts are treated with contempt. Not just wrong, or done for satire or compression, but so off that anyone really knowing the facts wants to throw the proverbial shoe through the flatscreen

Even the Lincoln Vampire movie could have been improved if they'd only stuck more faithfully to the (non-vampire) facts of Lincoln's story e.g. his family life and children

Many people seem to confuse legend with fact. A few examples, Hearst killed Ince (no he didn't, read Brian Taves' book on Ince), there's no set date of birth for Patricia Cleve so of course she's Hearst and Marion's love child. Hum, where people jealous of Hearst and trying to tear him down, is that why so much paints him in such a negative light?

Many people seem to confuse legend with fact. A few examples, Hearst killed Ince (no he didn't, read Brian Taves' book on Ince), there's no set date of birth for Patricia Cleve so of course she's Hearst and Marion's love child. Hum, where people jealous of Hearst and trying to tear him down, is that why so much paints him in such a negative light?

Jealousy? I don't think it's that. Hearst was in a lot of ways a terrible person (the way he and Brisbane suckered subscribers and readers into spending money on their schemes to enrich themselves was beyond the pale), which leaves writers grasping for something to make him seem the ultimate villain. Hearst wasn't really so bright as regards how he ran his media empire.

It's one of the banes of biographies. Every one of them seems to need a hook, so much so that many books don't get written due to their subjects being people whose complications (we all have them) are not sufficiently gripping to entertain. Luridness especially sells.

Many people seem to confuse legend with fact. A few examples, Hearst killed Ince (no he didn't, read Brian Taves' book on Ince), there's no set date of birth for Patricia Cleve so of course she's Hearst and Marion's love child. Hum, where people jealous of Hearst and trying to tear him down, is that why so much paints him in such a negative light?

Jealousy? I don't think it's that. Hearst was in a lot of ways a terrible person (the way he and Brisbane suckered subscribers and readers into spending money on their schemes to enrich themselves was beyond the pale), which leaves writers grasping for something to make him seem the ultimate villain. Hearst wasn't really so bright as regards how he ran his media empire.

It's one of the banes of biographies. Every one of them seems to need a hook, so much so that many books don't get written due to their subjects being people whose complications (we all have them) are not sufficiently gripping to entertain. Luridness especially sells.

I really cannot (again) recommend David Nasaw's biography on Hearst highly enough. Nasaw has little patience with the ultimate villain scenario and turns Hearst back into a human being, in the same way Scott Eyman did for Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille.

Many people seem to confuse legend with fact. A few examples, Hearst killed Ince (no he didn't, read Brian Taves' book on Ince), there's no set date of birth for Patricia Cleve so of course she's Hearst and Marion's love child. Hum, were people jealous of Hearst and trying to tear him down, is that why so much paints him in such a negative light?

Some show folk were rightfully peeved by his semi-stranglehold on entertainment reviews, gossip, news coverage...... Roscoe Arbuckle and Herman Mankiewicz being, of course, just two of the more celebrated victims of Hearst's yellow press. But, if the love child claims prove true, Hearst, given the times in which he lived (he was born during the Civil War), coupled with his wife's reluctance to divorce, in many ways behaved quite admirably... .

Many people seem to confuse legend with fact. A few examples, Hearst killed Ince (no he didn't, read Brian Taves' book on Ince), there's no set date of birth for Patricia Cleve so of course she's Hearst and Marion's love child. Hum, where people jealous of Hearst and trying to tear him down, is that why so much paints him in such a negative light?

Jealousy? I don't think it's that. Hearst was in a lot of ways a terrible person (the way he and Brisbane suckered subscribers and readers into spending money on their schemes to enrich themselves was beyond the pale), which leaves writers grasping for something to make him seem the ultimate villain. Hearst wasn't really so bright as regards how he ran his media empire.

It's one of the banes of biographies. Every one of them seems to need a hook, so much so that many books don't get written due to their subjects being people whose complications (we all have them) are not sufficiently gripping to entertain. Luridness especially sells.

I really cannot (again) recommend David Nasaw's biography on Hearst highly enough. Nasaw has little patience with the ultimate villain scenario and turns Hearst back into a human being, in the same way Scott Eyman did for Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille.

Human being in what sense? They weren't monsters (the epithet creep seems more apropos) but none were exactly people I'd waste a shred of sympathy on. If any of those bios attempt to milk such out of me, count me out. I read enough straight factual stuff re:Hearst to see he was no genius, just rich with a lot of rich friends who'd bail him out (and some who wouldn't). He and Davies really did love each other, but I never saw where/how she had a lick of influence on him.

Caligula
Amadeus
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Litzsomania
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Little Big Man

Interesting answers. I'd go with my short list as Mission to Moscow and They Died with Their Boots On. I'd even give Mission a mild pass since the war must have seemed like 'the end justified the means.' But it's harder to excuse Died, as it was clearly a case of ignoring history to give the public what they wanted: complete hagiography with no attempt to give Custer even the slightest weakness. Even his poor record at West Point was given as an element of his charm.

The facts about Custer were fairly clear by the time the movie was made, in other words, it was a effort to film the legend not the man, and who knows, even today this might regarded as largely true by modern audiences who are otherwise uniformed.

BoaN is an entirely different problem. One of the strange elements of the Griffith film was the filmmakers's surprised reaction to the outcry after the film was released, after all, weren't they just telling the truth? So one can hold the white American society contemptible for the egregious falsehoods promoted in the film, but these lies were bedrock in American culture at the time, so one can hardly say the filmmakers were lying deliberately.

I never thought I'd defend Cameron's Titanic, but whatever the failings of that film, he was not treating the facts with contempt, rather he was doing what all filmmakers do, moving the facts around to dramatize them. If the Titanic had NOT sunk, THAT would do it for me. And when the most recent studies of the Titanic came out this year, Cameron hosted a special that detailed where his film got it wrong (most visible was the wrong angle that the stern went down) and it's clear they spent an enormous amount of time to try to get those details right. So it's really unfair to say the Cameron treated the facts with contempt. Maybe he treats love with contempt, but not the facts.

I can tell you for an absolute fact that Cameron didn't treat the facts with contempt, or even ignore them. An awful lot of time and research went into it. And when production started we had a five hour meeting at his office at Lightstorm with several Titanic historians (Don Lynch, Ken Marschall and one other) to go over the exact sequence (lifeboat launchings, water levels), where everyone was at every moment during the sinking, etc. People can dislike the film, fine, but great effort was made at historical accuracy for the things that were real, excepting, as Lokke mentioned, where minor things needed to be altered for dramatic purposes, which is perfectly acceptable since it was an entertainment piece, not a documentary.

Is it just me, or does TRIUMPH OF THE WILL seem a bit polemic in retrospect?

LONELY HEARTS (2006) based on a true 1940s-50s story of "the Lonely Hears Killers",a murderous couple on the rampage.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonely_Hearts_(2006_film)

The real woman in the film was fat and unattractive whereas she's portrayed by Salma Hayek at her most (attractive best) in the film.

[Mike Gebert]

The Titanic part of Titanic is accurate. What cracks me up is that a Picasso which has a critical part in the history of modern art, and is surely worth far more than any old jewel, goes down with the ship (after being bought, apparently, by the least likely rich guy on earth to buy a painting of whores with African masks on in 1912).

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,2048313 ... 03,00.html" target="_blank

LONELY HEARTS (2006) based on a true 1940s-50s story of "the Lonely Hears Killers",a murderous couple on the rampage.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonely_Hearts_(2006_film)

The real woman in the film was fat and unattractive whereas she's portrayed by Salma Hayek at her most (attractive best) in the film.

If you use that as a criterion, that list would include almost every movie ever made inspired by real events.

I want to see a movie in which the actors were cast to be less attractive than the people they are supposed to be playing.

Is it just me, or does TRIUMPH OF THE WILL seem a bit polemic in retrospect?

When Riefenstahl made Triumph it was current events, but her retrospective take on that film is certainly problematic from an historical perspective.

[Mike Gebert]

I want to see a movie in which the actors were cast to be less attractive than the people they are supposed to be playing.

My Week With Marilyn?

I really cannot (again) recommend David Nasaw's biography on Hearst highly enough. Nasaw has little patience with the ultimate villain scenario and turns Hearst back into a human being, in the same way Scott Eyman did for Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille.

Human being in what sense? They weren't monsters (the epithet creep seems more apropos) but none were exactly people I'd waste a shred of sympathy on. If any of those bios attempt to milk such out of me, count me out. I read enough straight factual stuff re:Hearst to see he was no genius, just rich with a lot of rich friends who'd bail him out (and some who wouldn't). He and Davies really did love each other, but I never saw where/how she had a lick of influence on him.

Neither Eyman nor Nasaw attempt to "milk" anyone, but they have written elegant, unsensational, detailed, vigorous books on their subjects. Again, I cannot recommend all three works highly enough, but your reading decisions are your own to make.

I really cannot (again) recommend David Nasaw's biography on Hearst highly enough. Nasaw has little patience with the ultimate villain scenario and turns Hearst back into a human being, in the same way Scott Eyman did for Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille.

Human being in what sense? They weren't monsters (the epithet creep seems more apropos) but none were exactly people I'd waste a shred of sympathy on. If any of those bios attempt to milk such out of me, count me out. I read enough straight factual stuff re:Hearst to see he was no genius, just rich with a lot of rich friends who'd bail him out (and some who wouldn't). He and Davies really did love each other, but I never saw where/how she had a lick of influence on him.

Neither Eyman nor Nasaw attempt to "milk" anyone, but they have written elegant, unsensational, detailed, vigorous books on their subjects. Again, I cannot recommend all three works highly enough, but your reading decisions are your own to make.

Well, I had to ask. I don't take the genre lightly anymore. I've been through enough bios where the biographer attempted to milk sympathy out of me for a character who didn't deserve it (usually after said person has aged and/or lost power) that I'm no longer too patient with any book which does so. Facts are alright, I just prefer mine drier than most people. As soon as they start getting wet with fond remembrances and suppositions, I'm not so eager to read.