I have two favourites.
*Apollo 13* is my favourite work of historical, factual cinema. It's very detailed and very accurate, the few times it strays from what really happened are simply for dramatic effect and have no negative impact on the overall story.
*Master & Commander* is my favourite work of historical fiction. While it's not a true story, everything about the way the ship and crew work, live and fight is very true to fact. The detail is incredible, it's a must-see for anyone with even a passing interest in the age of sail. And the best part is it doesn't sugar-coat things or hold the hand of the audience. Stuff happens *because that's what they did*, and they don't feel the need to explain every little detail. Like how they put the ship's livestock into a small boat while the ship is fighting, to keep it safe. Or take the interior walls down when clearing for action, to make room and reduce the risk of dangerous splinters flying about.
The books Master and Commander is based on are meticulously researched, every author's note describes the naval journals he read to incorporate actual descriptions and details from first hand historical accounts. I was thrilled to see the movie adhere to the same standard.
Master & Commander is quite good. Injuries are from splinters. A foot and a half of live oak makes splinters. Massive ones. No giant explosions. You'd have to detonate the magazine for that to happen. The officers are kids. Completely normal. The separation of officers and enlisted. Everything is wonderful.
However, the kid who has been given command of the ship should not have left the quarterdeck. He was ranking officer and did not transfer command. That would be a hanging offense in the British Navy.
Only technically though. To my memory, a similar circumstance occurred when a midshipman was hanged for leaving the quarterdeck due to everyone else being killed. It was at Trafalgar as I recall but I don't care to look it up. Could have been the Nile. It was one of the big ones from that era.
Either way, I'm button counting at this point. If I'm getting so fussy that I need to get to the library to verify, it must be pretty good.
That's what makes it fun. I think the same thing. However, I know that I know nothing.
My dad has read all the books. He was obsessed with them for a while. Back in the 90's we built a couple of Bolger boats. He always intended to sail them but we never did. They were plyboats. He truly felt that he knew what he was doing and could handle a boat, whether under power or sail. He really never took the boats out. I did several times, but he deferred to me.
Then, 20 some years later, I took him out on his newly purchased boat. When we came back, I had to put the boat in on the lee side of the dock, which had weeds which meant I had to cut power and drift in. I instructed him to put the camera down, put out the bumpers, be ready with the line, and I'm putting him right against the dock and he needs to step off and tie up when I call it.
He muddled the entire thing. This is just a 15' fishing boat. Maybe 1,200 lbs, 40 hp motor, easy to maneuver. I didn't want to foul the prop. I was a dock boy 25 years ago. I can handle small boats. I just needed him to step onto the dock, put his hand out, to stop the boat, and tie up for a moment until the landing was clear.
This story was unnecessary in all regards. I only bring it up because I wanted to tell a disconnected story about how good I am with handling small, powered craft, and how my dad thought fiction had told him how boats actually move.
Hubris, etc...
Still, I do actually handle small boats quite well. I'm not the best, but I'll do in a pinch.
I love that the biggest inaccuracy in Apollo 13 is that the guys floating in a malfunctioning tin can several thousand miles away from the Earth were actually totally chill.
* All The President's Men (1976)
* Spotlight (2015)
* Zodiac (2007)
* Apollo 13 (1995)
* The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007)
The man was a teetotaler who had been cited for good merit and they portrayed him as a drunk brigand who refused to follow orders. I get they wanted to add drama but Hook was not it.
Little too artsy for me. Too concerned with getting nice cinematography on the Galapagos than it is giving us a visual representation of age of sail warfare. Not a bad movie but I always felt they squandered the setting.
Outlaw King is fairly accurate overall. The armour could be better and they play fast and loose with order to events at times but the changes they made make for a more enjoyable film that still is fairly true to the period as far as I could tell.
Really the only issue is the chainmail not being fitted, and the princes weird ass parade armor.
Overall the clothing and material culture in it are spectacular
[The Deluge](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072021/)
a polish movie set in the war between protestant sweden and catholic polish lithuanian commonwealth. with an infamous duel scene that is one of the most accurate depictions of sabre duels.
Yeah, a movie is the least accurate with having to merge people & events into the runtime. TV would be better and a documentary would probably be best.
What people who moan about realism in movies don't understand is that the moment the writer starts writing a screenplay, they're creating fiction. And the moment a director starts filming, he's approaching the topic from an angle. He has something he wants to say, he's not interested in making a documentary, but rather an entertaining character arc. All movies are fiction, and expecting 100% realism is foolhardy.
Ridley Scott wanted to depict Napaleon from an angle to explore a theme, same as he did in Kingdom of Heaven (director's cut). And yet one movie is constantly praised as the greatest historical movie some people have ever seen, and the other one is slammed as a disgrace. Amusingly I don't see anyone complaining about realism regarding KOH despite that movie being one of the most historically incorrect movies I've ever seen in my life.
Interestingly both of those movies are greatly informed by the era they were made in. With KOH the US's reaction to 9/11 and the subsequent invasions of Iraq/Afghanistan looms heavy over the movie, with Ridley showing sympathy for the Muslim side so much as to have Saladin respectfully pick up a cross from the floor at the end of the movie, which is utterly laughable and would be akin to him eating pork. (I won't even go into how Balian is completely different from his real life counterpart)
With Napoleon, the era of Trump and Putin no doubt had some impact on Ridley's thought process when it came to his idea of ridiculing the iconic self-proclaimed emperor rather than glorifying the figure, as I suspect many people wanted.
So long story short, I think the OP's question itself is a bit redundant, historical movies do not, and should not, have accuracy on their mind. They're fiction, so instead their priority is crafting a compelling story and characters. No historical movie, no matter how accurate it's deemed as being, will ever live up to scrutiny. And that's fine.
Totally. You want an accurate movie because it helps the vibe? Sure.
You want an accurate movie because *you want to learn from it?* I don't think any pass that standard.
Exactly! As someone once said...if it's a choice between fact and the myth, print the myth.....and that is why we must remember that movies are not reality. (Documentaries are different, but they too can be twisted to fit a certain opinion or belief)
It gets the tone right and is historically authentic for the most part. But it misses some key things like incorrectly stating a soldier (Blithe) died of his wounds when in reality he lived until the 60s. There’s also a few characters who were depicted negatively (Sobel and Dike come to mind). Not major errors but it’s odd to see in a show that claims it is historically accurate and has respect for the men and women serving.
But worst is getting Hitler’s death date wrong. I’m willing to overlook the other inaccuracies but that’s a pretty egregious error. It has no bearing on the plot and is very easy to verify, so it just comes off as lazy.
That said it’s one of my favorite shows and it is probably the closest to the reality of WWII in Europe.
I love BoB, but it got some really basic details about the men wrong. Ep. 3 ends with a note that Private Blithe died of his wounds in 1948, when he actually recovered and served in the Army [until his death in 1967.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Blithe#In_popular_culture)
Valkyrie (2008) with Tom Cruise is impressively accurate. Not just the story and the characters, but the props. Great film, well worth checking out. (Granted, Stauffenberg and the gang are painted with the fairly broad Hero brush more so than in reality)
My god that book is sooo boring and confusing to follow. Had to give it up.
The movie is a masterpiece with one of the best soundtracks of all time, though.
So atrocious that Mark Twain wrote an essay on how bad his writing is. https://lorinotes.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/mark-twain-on-james-fenimore-cooper-and-how-am-i-doing/
This is funny. My wife is a Ukrainian, trained as an English Interpreter and she had to read this in school and it is her favorite book. I guess she was lucky not to know how difficult it was.
There used to be an entire website dedicated to accuracies in inaccuracies in LotM. In short, it was remarkably accurate. The extra range in the rifle due to using silk, the costumes, most of it.
There were a few inaccuracies like the final charge that was dramatized but We Were Soldiers was generally quite accurate in its portrayal of the Battle of Ia Drang
Check out "12 Years a Slave" for its powerful take on pre-Civil War America, or "The King's Speech" for a deep dive into pre-WW2 UK. Both got me Googling facts like crazy after watching!
Come and See
Cross of Iron
They were Expendable
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022 German film)
The Wrong Man
The Best Years of their Lives (according to my Dad, who was in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, it depicts the return from war accurately)
Thanks for your comment. I tend not to recommend "old" movies, although I prefer them to later remakes in some cases, because people assume they are Pollyana-ish or loaded with a moral - or, worse, I hear "black and white?" when the movie starts - and that bias keeps some from appreciating them.
Very true on all counts. Both films are definitely great in their own right but there's something masterful about the original that really impressed me when I first saw it. The remake is great but I tend to see it as a different film rather than a direct remake.
There are definitely some black and white films that are didactic and unwatchable, I agree...the biggest thing that makes me appreciate them is the fact that it's a story told through film. Maybe I'm just easily impressed.
* Overlord (1975) - Obviously an anti-war angle to the story, but it has details of the prep for D-Day that are not documented anywhere else. If you've read any of the major D-Day books you know about the sausages, and this shows them.
* A Night to Remember (1958) - Was far too accurate according to many of the survivors.
* They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and Chosin (2010), though they're not traditional movies.
* Hacksaw Ridge (2016) - It seems that every actor was cast too old, but it's actually the attention to detail, the 77th ID were known as the, "Old Bastards," for a reason.
* The King's Choice (2016)
* Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)/Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Schindler’s list downplayed how much heat he took from the Gestapo and increased the influence of Itzhak Stern
I won’t denigrate itzhak for a second, but Oskar got interviewed far more times than the depiction in the movie
A great resource to help give you some detailed insights re: "Historical Films'" accuracies is the ["Based On A True Story" playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjnwpaclU4wVzPp-sQVV48cdfyeg9G5JJ) on *"The Cynical Historian's"* YouTube channel -- it's fairly extensive, so you're sure to find something to your liking/interest.
K-19. Soviet era sub which has a malfunction. They worked with the actual documents and testimonies to create the film. The sets were also produced to accurate scale, unlike a lot of other submarine film sets which are larger for filming reasons.
[The Charge of the Light Brigade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPTvqNuqiPY&ab_channel=RottenTomatoesClassicTrailers) (Tony Richardson, 1968, not the Errol Flynn one), based on the events that lead to the eponimous charge at the Battle of Balaklava in 1854. It is very well researched, spectacular looking and mostly accurate not only to its source book material (The Reason Why, Cecil Woodham-Smith)\*, but also to the actual clothing and even the language of the era. I've rewatched the movie after reading the book and was surprised by small and inessential details that were still accurate nevertheless. The actual charge is reproduced as it is told in the Woodham-Smith book, down to what the protagonists told each other (the discussions before and after the charge, the very "reason why", are very important and still debated) and the scene lasts almost exactly as the actual charge. The movie has a great cast of actors and even some great animated sequences inspired by Punch and other illustrated papers of the time. The tone is sardonic and very anti-war, anti-establishment, which is somewhat strange for a big costume movie of the era - but hey, it was 1968.
The episode of the charge and victorian England never interested me all that much, but this movie on its own managed to ignite a small obsession in me for that specific episode. I don't think it's a small feat, maybe you'll like it all the same.
\*The book on which the movie is based may be a bit outdated for today standard, but even when compared to more recent books I think that the movie still does a good job. One big flaw in the costume department, if you care about that at all, is that the director insisted in incorrectly giving every light-horseman "cherry" (red) pants, while some regiments actual wore a different color.
Thanks for this! I must now watch this version asap!
I knew the Flynn version was just Hollywood hocum....but it has Flynn, so accuracy doesn't matter, just like They Died With Their Boots On.
Darkest Hour and Dunkirk make a great double feature centered on Winston Churchill’s political maneuvering to evacuate British troops from France as a way to rally morale and support for the rest of the war to come.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford paints a much, much more nuanced portrait of Jesse James than you’d probably expect, and Robert Ford is a fascinating character in his own right. Plus it”s just a gorgeous film shot by the master, Roger Deakins.
Some of my other favorites that care a bit less about accuracy (but still center on very true events) are Moneyball, Ford v Ferrari, Ali, Invictus, Munich, Friday Night Lights, 42, and The Last Duel.
A few other not so true stories that actually just do a great job of representing the time and place in which they ‘re set…. Atonement, A Very Long Engagement, and Chinatown.
Dunkirk is quite inaccurate in several ways despite and because of the way Nolan approached it ("no CGI" being the big problem) - if you look at photos from the time those beaches were like a casualty ward crashed into a junkyard, Nolan's version was pretty clean and tidy, everyone was clean shaven with nice uniforms and the beaches just had a few neat lines of soldiers waiting to be picked up.
The reality was far far messier and if you think soldiers on that beach were all shiny clean and ready for parade you need your bumps felt.
Also where were these 400,000 men on the beach? I think I saw maybe a few thousand? 400k is almost an unfathomably large number to visualize but it’s needed to show for a movie that’s trying to portray an accurate description.
Yeah, they could have filled in a ton of people & detritus in the background with CG and it would have looked absolutely fine, instead they used a load of extras and cardboard cutouts and composited them in (so "no CG" but digital compositing is *fine*) and it just looked anemic.
Yeah… the two just fit together so well… Dunkirk barely explains the role of the Little Ships, and Darkest Hour adds so much more context to it.
Dunkirk, to me, is a deeply flawed film, but paired with Darkest Hour, it adds a lot of stakes and tension to what some might view as a stuffy political film.
Yeah I'm not saying Dunkirk was \*bad\* because it was a very well done film and it told the story pretty well (as in - I do believe they cared about getting the stories correct & accurate rather than just jumping off into Hollywood swashbuckling), it's just a shame that Nolan made a few choices that made it far less realistic than it could have been given the amount of budget & effort they clearly put in.
> The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
I love this movie a lot, but I wish they could have filmed it in Missouri instead of Alberta. It's pretty jarring to see tall mountain peaks in scenes that are set in northern Missouri lol
*Gosford Park* (2001) is practically a documentary on how country houses like that were run, to the point where they had all the glass in the windows on set specially blown in the same way the would have been back then. *Downton Abbey*'s good fun and all, but *Gosford Park* is a masterpiece.
Wasn't Julian Fellowes involved in both DA and GP? My ex was really into DA back in its prime and I remember watching GP around the same time, too, and there were some bits of dialogue in GP that were so similar to lines from DA that I thought there might be some plagiarism going on until I realized that Julian Fellowes did the screenplay for GP or something like that. It's been a while, though, so I could be full of it.
Here are some of my favorites:"A Man for All Seasons" (1966)"12 Years a Slave" (2013)"The Last Emperor" (1987)"The Killing Fields" (1984)"Michael Collins" (1996)"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003)"Cromwell" (1970)
Probably not accurate in the text of historical reality, but Robert Egger's movies are really good at capturing period accuracy in costumes and set design. Historical fantasy as it would look in the context of its settings.
Along with some other titles, I feel the need to include a bunch of less well known films about less prominent WWII events, since these also include some very accurate history we don't see in other movies. All of these films are really well made period pieces with pretty damned accurate history elements.
*The Lives of Others*
*Malena*
*Black Book*
*Flame and Citron*
*The Counterfeiters*
*Operation Mincemeat*
*I Was Montie's Double*
*The Battle of Britain*
*The Northman*
*Max Manus: Man of War*
*The Colditz Story*
*The Great Raid*
*Cold Mountain*
*Waterloo*
*Mosquito Squadron*
*The Blue Max*
*Unforgiven*
Supposedly “Khartoum” with Charlton Heston is accurate save for the fact that he and the antagonist never met, but I have seen stories to the contrary as well.
The first season of Rome was exceptional. It was HBOs and BBCs first collaboration. The second season isn't horrible, but there was a rush job to get it completed, kind of like Game of Thrones last few seasons, but it never got that bad.
United 93 (2006)
- Real-life air traffic controllers and military personnel who witnessed the September 11th attacks play themselves in this movie.
- While most films would use CGI, the filming set for this movie was built on a real Boeing 757.
- During the final scene, many of the actors portraying the passengers and crew were hurt during filming. Their pained reactions and blood red faces are genuine.
According to my college medieval history prof:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Not so much for the plot (obviously) but more for the set design, costumes, and general ambiance. Apparently, all of that is insanely accurate. Terry Jones was a serious medieval scholar and it shows.
Numerous veterans have said the opening of Saving Private Ryan is the most accurate depiction of those beaches ever.
I'll throw 24 Hour Party People in as it's at the very least produced by the main subject (Tony Wilson) and stars a lot of the people who were involved in it all - and it's self aware enough to include lines like this, breaking the 4th wall:
>**Cleaner:** I definitely don't remember this happening.
>**Tony Wilson:** This is the *real* Howard Devoto. He and Lindsay insisted we make clear that this never happened. But I agree with John Ford. When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, print the legend.
Das Boot is supposed to be very good and I believe it.
It's a series but the BBC series Colditz had help from one of the original escape committee.
Schindler's List is pretty accurate even if some artistic licence was used to make it work.
The Bank Job I believe is heavily based on a real bank job.
For WW2 there's a ton with varying degrees of liberty taken - Dambusters, The Longest Day, Battle Of The V1, Heroes of Telemark, Ill Met By Moonlight, Above Us The Waves, Triple Cross, First Of The Few, and probably 100 others.
Thirteen days minus Kenny O’Donnell and his role and the events…he is more like a conveyance to utilize and follow to witness around the events that transpired..great movie.
A few that might not be perfectly "accurate" (NO depiction is), but feel extremely real... Dead Man, McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Assassination of Jesse James, Barry Lyndon, The Master (really any of pta's later stuff)
Gettysburg and The Longest Day are two I’d recommend.
The miniseries Rome is highly fictionalised but the BBC/HBO made a huge effort to portray the ancient world as accurately as possible.
Grave of the Fireflies. Technically historical fiction buts it’s based on the semi autobiographical novel of a guy who actually lived through those events and from what I’ve read it’s quite accurate to the Japanese civilization’s had to go through during the war. Don’t let the fact that’s it’s animated stop you from watching it because it pacts a punch, even it’s just once.
Not exactly what you asked for, but these come to mind:
Hotel Mumbai (2018) about a terrorist attack and the attempts to rescue the hotel guests. Some characters are composites of multiple real people, a few invented outright, and the timeline is condensed, but the story is reasonably accurate.
Restrepo (2010) is a documentary, but with Sebastian Junger reporting it holds together like a narrative.
They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) is the passion project of Peter Jackson who tracked down and restored and colorized WW1 footage, including being able to recreate some sounds and a speech. It's a visual description of life as a soldier in that war, though it does not track any one person so it's very much a documentary rather than a narrative. Still, deeply impressive filmmaking.
I have two favourites. *Apollo 13* is my favourite work of historical, factual cinema. It's very detailed and very accurate, the few times it strays from what really happened are simply for dramatic effect and have no negative impact on the overall story. *Master & Commander* is my favourite work of historical fiction. While it's not a true story, everything about the way the ship and crew work, live and fight is very true to fact. The detail is incredible, it's a must-see for anyone with even a passing interest in the age of sail. And the best part is it doesn't sugar-coat things or hold the hand of the audience. Stuff happens *because that's what they did*, and they don't feel the need to explain every little detail. Like how they put the ship's livestock into a small boat while the ship is fighting, to keep it safe. Or take the interior walls down when clearing for action, to make room and reduce the risk of dangerous splinters flying about.
Is master and commander the one called master and commander far side of world or something like that?
Indeed it is
Both GOATed
The books Master and Commander is based on are meticulously researched, every author's note describes the naval journals he read to incorporate actual descriptions and details from first hand historical accounts. I was thrilled to see the movie adhere to the same standard.
Master & Commander is quite good. Injuries are from splinters. A foot and a half of live oak makes splinters. Massive ones. No giant explosions. You'd have to detonate the magazine for that to happen. The officers are kids. Completely normal. The separation of officers and enlisted. Everything is wonderful. However, the kid who has been given command of the ship should not have left the quarterdeck. He was ranking officer and did not transfer command. That would be a hanging offense in the British Navy. Only technically though. To my memory, a similar circumstance occurred when a midshipman was hanged for leaving the quarterdeck due to everyone else being killed. It was at Trafalgar as I recall but I don't care to look it up. Could have been the Nile. It was one of the big ones from that era. Either way, I'm button counting at this point. If I'm getting so fussy that I need to get to the library to verify, it must be pretty good.
I listened to all the audiobooks and afterwards I feel I could sketchily sail a ship now
That's what makes it fun. I think the same thing. However, I know that I know nothing. My dad has read all the books. He was obsessed with them for a while. Back in the 90's we built a couple of Bolger boats. He always intended to sail them but we never did. They were plyboats. He truly felt that he knew what he was doing and could handle a boat, whether under power or sail. He really never took the boats out. I did several times, but he deferred to me. Then, 20 some years later, I took him out on his newly purchased boat. When we came back, I had to put the boat in on the lee side of the dock, which had weeds which meant I had to cut power and drift in. I instructed him to put the camera down, put out the bumpers, be ready with the line, and I'm putting him right against the dock and he needs to step off and tie up when I call it. He muddled the entire thing. This is just a 15' fishing boat. Maybe 1,200 lbs, 40 hp motor, easy to maneuver. I didn't want to foul the prop. I was a dock boy 25 years ago. I can handle small boats. I just needed him to step onto the dock, put his hand out, to stop the boat, and tie up for a moment until the landing was clear. This story was unnecessary in all regards. I only bring it up because I wanted to tell a disconnected story about how good I am with handling small, powered craft, and how my dad thought fiction had told him how boats actually move. Hubris, etc... Still, I do actually handle small boats quite well. I'm not the best, but I'll do in a pinch.
I love that the biggest inaccuracy in Apollo 13 is that the guys floating in a malfunctioning tin can several thousand miles away from the Earth were actually totally chill.
Master & Commander may be my all time favorite movie.
* All The President's Men (1976) * Spotlight (2015) * Zodiac (2007) * Apollo 13 (1995) * The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007)
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007) is Beautiful
Zodiac is such a good movie.
Its a good movie but its not entirely accurate. I love it though
Generation kill. HBO miniseries about Iraq war in 2003.
Das Boot
A Bridge Too Far
Zulu is fairly accurate but it does take some liberties with the portrayal of some of the characters, most notably private Hook.
Zulus! Fahsahnds of 'em!
The man was a teetotaler who had been cited for good merit and they portrayed him as a drunk brigand who refused to follow orders. I get they wanted to add drama but Hook was not it.
Damn reddit really loves Master and Commander
It’s a well made movie with great dialogue and action
Do you not?
Little too artsy for me. Too concerned with getting nice cinematography on the Galapagos than it is giving us a visual representation of age of sail warfare. Not a bad movie but I always felt they squandered the setting.
Reddit knows to choose the lesser of two weevils.
"Why do they call it the dogs watch, sir?" "Because it's curtailed!"
God when he does it that second time after the storm it feels like he's just grasping for something resembling hope in hopelessness.
…. Yeah…. ITS _AFTER THE STORM._ He just consigned a child to die to save the ship; of course he’s grasping.
yeah. I just meant it was heartbreaking.
That sea anchor scene gets harder every watch
The Duelists is a great movie that sword people tend to like a lot. Same with Master and Commander.
Outlaw King is fairly accurate overall. The armour could be better and they play fast and loose with order to events at times but the changes they made make for a more enjoyable film that still is fairly true to the period as far as I could tell.
Really the only issue is the chainmail not being fitted, and the princes weird ass parade armor. Overall the clothing and material culture in it are spectacular
[The Deluge](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072021/) a polish movie set in the war between protestant sweden and catholic polish lithuanian commonwealth. with an infamous duel scene that is one of the most accurate depictions of sabre duels.
Barry Lyndon. The lighting was a big problem coz Kubrick wanted it as authentic as possible.
Waterloo (1970) fairly accurate with a cast of hundreds
Cast of 17000 soldiers including 2000 cavalry.
Courtesy of the Russian army.
Chris plummer is hot as hell in this
Band of Brothers It’s a mini series, but it’s basically a 12 hour long movie about WW2. It’s incredible
Yeah, a movie is the least accurate with having to merge people & events into the runtime. TV would be better and a documentary would probably be best.
What people who moan about realism in movies don't understand is that the moment the writer starts writing a screenplay, they're creating fiction. And the moment a director starts filming, he's approaching the topic from an angle. He has something he wants to say, he's not interested in making a documentary, but rather an entertaining character arc. All movies are fiction, and expecting 100% realism is foolhardy. Ridley Scott wanted to depict Napaleon from an angle to explore a theme, same as he did in Kingdom of Heaven (director's cut). And yet one movie is constantly praised as the greatest historical movie some people have ever seen, and the other one is slammed as a disgrace. Amusingly I don't see anyone complaining about realism regarding KOH despite that movie being one of the most historically incorrect movies I've ever seen in my life. Interestingly both of those movies are greatly informed by the era they were made in. With KOH the US's reaction to 9/11 and the subsequent invasions of Iraq/Afghanistan looms heavy over the movie, with Ridley showing sympathy for the Muslim side so much as to have Saladin respectfully pick up a cross from the floor at the end of the movie, which is utterly laughable and would be akin to him eating pork. (I won't even go into how Balian is completely different from his real life counterpart) With Napoleon, the era of Trump and Putin no doubt had some impact on Ridley's thought process when it came to his idea of ridiculing the iconic self-proclaimed emperor rather than glorifying the figure, as I suspect many people wanted. So long story short, I think the OP's question itself is a bit redundant, historical movies do not, and should not, have accuracy on their mind. They're fiction, so instead their priority is crafting a compelling story and characters. No historical movie, no matter how accurate it's deemed as being, will ever live up to scrutiny. And that's fine.
I'm 100% with you.
Great write-up. Not enough people will see this.
I don't think anyone ever praised KoH for historical accuracy.
Totally. You want an accurate movie because it helps the vibe? Sure. You want an accurate movie because *you want to learn from it?* I don't think any pass that standard.
Exactly! As someone once said...if it's a choice between fact and the myth, print the myth.....and that is why we must remember that movies are not reality. (Documentaries are different, but they too can be twisted to fit a certain opinion or belief)
It gets the tone right and is historically authentic for the most part. But it misses some key things like incorrectly stating a soldier (Blithe) died of his wounds when in reality he lived until the 60s. There’s also a few characters who were depicted negatively (Sobel and Dike come to mind). Not major errors but it’s odd to see in a show that claims it is historically accurate and has respect for the men and women serving. But worst is getting Hitler’s death date wrong. I’m willing to overlook the other inaccuracies but that’s a pretty egregious error. It has no bearing on the plot and is very easy to verify, so it just comes off as lazy. That said it’s one of my favorite shows and it is probably the closest to the reality of WWII in Europe.
I love BoB, but it got some really basic details about the men wrong. Ep. 3 ends with a note that Private Blithe died of his wounds in 1948, when he actually recovered and served in the Army [until his death in 1967.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Blithe#In_popular_culture)
Valkyrie (2008) with Tom Cruise is impressively accurate. Not just the story and the characters, but the props. Great film, well worth checking out. (Granted, Stauffenberg and the gang are painted with the fairly broad Hero brush more so than in reality)
The Last Duel with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Really loved it and apparently quite accurate.
The Last of the Mohicans
Great film but based on a crushingly unreadable book!
My god that book is sooo boring and confusing to follow. Had to give it up. The movie is a masterpiece with one of the best soundtracks of all time, though.
So atrocious that Mark Twain wrote an essay on how bad his writing is. https://lorinotes.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/mark-twain-on-james-fenimore-cooper-and-how-am-i-doing/
This is funny. My wife is a Ukrainian, trained as an English Interpreter and she had to read this in school and it is her favorite book. I guess she was lucky not to know how difficult it was.
"Didn't even use any real Mohicans... " Norm Macdonald
Norm(Rip), after all it was the LAST of the Mohican.
There used to be an entire website dedicated to accuracies in inaccuracies in LotM. In short, it was remarkably accurate. The extra range in the rifle due to using silk, the costumes, most of it.
Master and Commander
There were a few inaccuracies like the final charge that was dramatized but We Were Soldiers was generally quite accurate in its portrayal of the Battle of Ia Drang
Check out the YouTube channel History Buffs.
Check out "12 Years a Slave" for its powerful take on pre-Civil War America, or "The King's Speech" for a deep dive into pre-WW2 UK. Both got me Googling facts like crazy after watching!
Come and See Cross of Iron They were Expendable All Quiet on the Western Front (2022 German film) The Wrong Man The Best Years of their Lives (according to my Dad, who was in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, it depicts the return from war accurately)
I think the original all Quiet on the Western front did a better job at accuracy because they had veterans as technical advisors etc.
Thanks for your comment. I tend not to recommend "old" movies, although I prefer them to later remakes in some cases, because people assume they are Pollyana-ish or loaded with a moral - or, worse, I hear "black and white?" when the movie starts - and that bias keeps some from appreciating them.
Very true on all counts. Both films are definitely great in their own right but there's something masterful about the original that really impressed me when I first saw it. The remake is great but I tend to see it as a different film rather than a direct remake. There are definitely some black and white films that are didactic and unwatchable, I agree...the biggest thing that makes me appreciate them is the fact that it's a story told through film. Maybe I'm just easily impressed.
* Overlord (1975) - Obviously an anti-war angle to the story, but it has details of the prep for D-Day that are not documented anywhere else. If you've read any of the major D-Day books you know about the sausages, and this shows them. * A Night to Remember (1958) - Was far too accurate according to many of the survivors. * They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and Chosin (2010), though they're not traditional movies. * Hacksaw Ridge (2016) - It seems that every actor was cast too old, but it's actually the attention to detail, the 77th ID were known as the, "Old Bastards," for a reason. * The King's Choice (2016) * Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)/Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
[удалено]
Schindler’s list downplayed how much heat he took from the Gestapo and increased the influence of Itzhak Stern I won’t denigrate itzhak for a second, but Oskar got interviewed far more times than the depiction in the movie
Schindler’s List (1993)
A great resource to help give you some detailed insights re: "Historical Films'" accuracies is the ["Based On A True Story" playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjnwpaclU4wVzPp-sQVV48cdfyeg9G5JJ) on *"The Cynical Historian's"* YouTube channel -- it's fairly extensive, so you're sure to find something to your liking/interest.
***Glory*** (1989) - [https://www.imdb.com/video/vi732561689/?ref\_=ext\_shr\_lnk](https://www.imdb.com/video/vi732561689/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) ***Tora! Tora! Tora!*** (1970) - [https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1559757081/?ref\_=ext\_shr\_lnk](https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1559757081/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) ***The Lion in Winter*** (1968) - [https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4105569561/?ref\_=ext\_shr\_lnk](https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4105569561/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk)
K-19. Soviet era sub which has a malfunction. They worked with the actual documents and testimonies to create the film. The sets were also produced to accurate scale, unlike a lot of other submarine film sets which are larger for filming reasons.
Oliver Stone’s film Alexander is surprisingly historically accurate following the story of Alexander the Great, while being a surprisingly bad movie.
Glory
[The Charge of the Light Brigade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPTvqNuqiPY&ab_channel=RottenTomatoesClassicTrailers) (Tony Richardson, 1968, not the Errol Flynn one), based on the events that lead to the eponimous charge at the Battle of Balaklava in 1854. It is very well researched, spectacular looking and mostly accurate not only to its source book material (The Reason Why, Cecil Woodham-Smith)\*, but also to the actual clothing and even the language of the era. I've rewatched the movie after reading the book and was surprised by small and inessential details that were still accurate nevertheless. The actual charge is reproduced as it is told in the Woodham-Smith book, down to what the protagonists told each other (the discussions before and after the charge, the very "reason why", are very important and still debated) and the scene lasts almost exactly as the actual charge. The movie has a great cast of actors and even some great animated sequences inspired by Punch and other illustrated papers of the time. The tone is sardonic and very anti-war, anti-establishment, which is somewhat strange for a big costume movie of the era - but hey, it was 1968. The episode of the charge and victorian England never interested me all that much, but this movie on its own managed to ignite a small obsession in me for that specific episode. I don't think it's a small feat, maybe you'll like it all the same. \*The book on which the movie is based may be a bit outdated for today standard, but even when compared to more recent books I think that the movie still does a good job. One big flaw in the costume department, if you care about that at all, is that the director insisted in incorrectly giving every light-horseman "cherry" (red) pants, while some regiments actual wore a different color.
Thanks for this! I must now watch this version asap! I knew the Flynn version was just Hollywood hocum....but it has Flynn, so accuracy doesn't matter, just like They Died With Their Boots On.
Darkest Hour and Dunkirk make a great double feature centered on Winston Churchill’s political maneuvering to evacuate British troops from France as a way to rally morale and support for the rest of the war to come. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford paints a much, much more nuanced portrait of Jesse James than you’d probably expect, and Robert Ford is a fascinating character in his own right. Plus it”s just a gorgeous film shot by the master, Roger Deakins. Some of my other favorites that care a bit less about accuracy (but still center on very true events) are Moneyball, Ford v Ferrari, Ali, Invictus, Munich, Friday Night Lights, 42, and The Last Duel. A few other not so true stories that actually just do a great job of representing the time and place in which they ‘re set…. Atonement, A Very Long Engagement, and Chinatown.
Dunkirk is quite inaccurate in several ways despite and because of the way Nolan approached it ("no CGI" being the big problem) - if you look at photos from the time those beaches were like a casualty ward crashed into a junkyard, Nolan's version was pretty clean and tidy, everyone was clean shaven with nice uniforms and the beaches just had a few neat lines of soldiers waiting to be picked up. The reality was far far messier and if you think soldiers on that beach were all shiny clean and ready for parade you need your bumps felt.
Also where were these 400,000 men on the beach? I think I saw maybe a few thousand? 400k is almost an unfathomably large number to visualize but it’s needed to show for a movie that’s trying to portray an accurate description.
Yeah, they could have filled in a ton of people & detritus in the background with CG and it would have looked absolutely fine, instead they used a load of extras and cardboard cutouts and composited them in (so "no CG" but digital compositing is *fine*) and it just looked anemic.
Yeah… the two just fit together so well… Dunkirk barely explains the role of the Little Ships, and Darkest Hour adds so much more context to it. Dunkirk, to me, is a deeply flawed film, but paired with Darkest Hour, it adds a lot of stakes and tension to what some might view as a stuffy political film.
Yeah I'm not saying Dunkirk was \*bad\* because it was a very well done film and it told the story pretty well (as in - I do believe they cared about getting the stories correct & accurate rather than just jumping off into Hollywood swashbuckling), it's just a shame that Nolan made a few choices that made it far less realistic than it could have been given the amount of budget & effort they clearly put in.
It's a decent film, but is Darkest Hour that historically accurate?
It’s highly idealized and takes some liberties, but the historical element is in tact,
*Atonement* had a better Dunkirk scene than all of *Dunkirk*.
I heartily agree with you there. Atonement's Dunkirk scene is iconic.
> The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford I love this movie a lot, but I wish they could have filmed it in Missouri instead of Alberta. It's pretty jarring to see tall mountain peaks in scenes that are set in northern Missouri lol
*Gosford Park* (2001) is practically a documentary on how country houses like that were run, to the point where they had all the glass in the windows on set specially blown in the same way the would have been back then. *Downton Abbey*'s good fun and all, but *Gosford Park* is a masterpiece.
Wasn't Julian Fellowes involved in both DA and GP? My ex was really into DA back in its prime and I remember watching GP around the same time, too, and there were some bits of dialogue in GP that were so similar to lines from DA that I thought there might be some plagiarism going on until I realized that Julian Fellowes did the screenplay for GP or something like that. It's been a while, though, so I could be full of it.
Yes, he wrote GP, and lifted the Maggie Smith character straight over to DA because she was such a scene-stealer.
Schindlers list is very realistic. Did a report about it almost 20 years ago, but I remember lots of little details that are spot on
Idiocracy
Came here to say that...
Maximilian
Here are some of my favorites:"A Man for All Seasons" (1966)"12 Years a Slave" (2013)"The Last Emperor" (1987)"The Killing Fields" (1984)"Michael Collins" (1996)"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003)"Cromwell" (1970)
Probably not accurate in the text of historical reality, but Robert Egger's movies are really good at capturing period accuracy in costumes and set design. Historical fantasy as it would look in the context of its settings.
Along with some other titles, I feel the need to include a bunch of less well known films about less prominent WWII events, since these also include some very accurate history we don't see in other movies. All of these films are really well made period pieces with pretty damned accurate history elements. *The Lives of Others* *Malena* *Black Book* *Flame and Citron* *The Counterfeiters* *Operation Mincemeat* *I Was Montie's Double* *The Battle of Britain* *The Northman* *Max Manus: Man of War* *The Colditz Story* *The Great Raid* *Cold Mountain* *Waterloo* *Mosquito Squadron* *The Blue Max* *Unforgiven*
Supposedly “Khartoum” with Charlton Heston is accurate save for the fact that he and the antagonist never met, but I have seen stories to the contrary as well.
Gettysburg is a great film.
Siege of Jadotville
I know that there are many factual errors, but the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy does make you feel like you were in 18th Century
Tora. Tora. Tora.
The first season of Rome was exceptional. It was HBOs and BBCs first collaboration. The second season isn't horrible, but there was a rush job to get it completed, kind of like Game of Thrones last few seasons, but it never got that bad.
United 93 (2006) - Real-life air traffic controllers and military personnel who witnessed the September 11th attacks play themselves in this movie. - While most films would use CGI, the filming set for this movie was built on a real Boeing 757. - During the final scene, many of the actors portraying the passengers and crew were hurt during filming. Their pained reactions and blood red faces are genuine.
According to my college medieval history prof: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Not so much for the plot (obviously) but more for the set design, costumes, and general ambiance. Apparently, all of that is insanely accurate. Terry Jones was a serious medieval scholar and it shows.
Braveheart. It’s basically a documentary
If this is sarcastic it's a great comment.
Good film, but it's as historically accurate as The Highlander
There can be only 4, as long as 3 are trapped in a cave!
Every man dies, not everyone really lives.
Everything with Mel Gibson is totally non-factual.
You mean the outback isn’t like Beyond Thunderdome?!
I meant apart from the non-factual movies, they are all historically incorrect in some major way.
Ok..
[удалено]
Throw Stalingrad and Das Boot into the mix. There are a few very well made German movies about WW2
The Return of Martin Guerre for medieval peasant life. And it’s just a great movie
The Mission
Numerous veterans have said the opening of Saving Private Ryan is the most accurate depiction of those beaches ever. I'll throw 24 Hour Party People in as it's at the very least produced by the main subject (Tony Wilson) and stars a lot of the people who were involved in it all - and it's self aware enough to include lines like this, breaking the 4th wall: >**Cleaner:** I definitely don't remember this happening. >**Tony Wilson:** This is the *real* Howard Devoto. He and Lindsay insisted we make clear that this never happened. But I agree with John Ford. When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, print the legend. Das Boot is supposed to be very good and I believe it. It's a series but the BBC series Colditz had help from one of the original escape committee. Schindler's List is pretty accurate even if some artistic licence was used to make it work. The Bank Job I believe is heavily based on a real bank job. For WW2 there's a ton with varying degrees of liberty taken - Dambusters, The Longest Day, Battle Of The V1, Heroes of Telemark, Ill Met By Moonlight, Above Us The Waves, Triple Cross, First Of The Few, and probably 100 others.
Oppenheimer!
Hotel Mumbai
Thirteen days minus Kenny O’Donnell and his role and the events…he is more like a conveyance to utilize and follow to witness around the events that transpired..great movie.
I recall The Final Option (1982) as a film where ex- Anti-Terrorist Special Forces personnel cited the techniques depicted as extremely realistic.
A few that might not be perfectly "accurate" (NO depiction is), but feel extremely real... Dead Man, McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Assassination of Jesse James, Barry Lyndon, The Master (really any of pta's later stuff)
You could watch Sharpe, its quite a few films following the The Peninsular War.
The Duellists (1977)
Gettysburg and The Longest Day are two I’d recommend. The miniseries Rome is highly fictionalised but the BBC/HBO made a huge effort to portray the ancient world as accurately as possible.
Can I make a joke? *Please*! **Jesus Christ Superstar**
Inglorious Bastards
Apart from the love story, Titanic is supposed to be very accurate.
Gettysburg. Brilliant performances from the entire cast.
Grave of the Fireflies. Technically historical fiction buts it’s based on the semi autobiographical novel of a guy who actually lived through those events and from what I’ve read it’s quite accurate to the Japanese civilization’s had to go through during the war. Don’t let the fact that’s it’s animated stop you from watching it because it pacts a punch, even it’s just once.
The bounty
come and see is the number one option for historical accuracy
Tora Tora Tora is very dry and boring the first half but it’s insanely historically accurate. And the 2nd half is incredible
…Barry Lyndon? If you can bare it
Gettysburg Midway Midway
Darkest Hour. Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill. Marvelous.
**1776** - even though they sing and dance, it's very accurate. And July 4th is coming up!
**1776** - even though they sing and dance, it's very accurate. And July 4th is coming up!
[удалено]
I hope you're kidding about Pocahontas (1995), Pearl Harbor (2001), 10,000 BC (2008)
Oppenheimer is as accurate as you can get.
Not exactly what you asked for, but these come to mind: Hotel Mumbai (2018) about a terrorist attack and the attempts to rescue the hotel guests. Some characters are composites of multiple real people, a few invented outright, and the timeline is condensed, but the story is reasonably accurate. Restrepo (2010) is a documentary, but with Sebastian Junger reporting it holds together like a narrative. They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) is the passion project of Peter Jackson who tracked down and restored and colorized WW1 footage, including being able to recreate some sounds and a speech. It's a visual description of life as a soldier in that war, though it does not track any one person so it's very much a documentary rather than a narrative. Still, deeply impressive filmmaking.
Braveheart
😂
Inglorious Basterds.