List of 9 historically accurate movies

[RadiationMan]

I didn't make this list up but I found it and thought I would share.

http://listverse.com/movies/9-great-historically-accurate-medieval-...

[Susan]

I haven't seen any! I am quite disappointed in myself. Guess I should add them to my que. :-)

[RadiationMan]

Yeah, me neither. humph I need to get busy.

I have seen the more recent version of The Lion in Winter with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. The sets and the clothes looked great. The acting was ....OK. The basic story portrays history fairly accurately, but I did not like the script much. I watched this with my wife and kids, fully expecting this to be "family entertainment". It's from Hallmark, so the NR did not alarm me. There was a scene or two of nudity that caught me off guard and we ushered the 5 and 8 year old out of the room. :)

[Susan]

That is actually pretty funny! The movies you expect to be safe aren't and vice versa.

[Bodhi Grrl!]

I've seen five of the nine, and I enjoyed all of the ones I've seen, which are "Lion in Winter," based on a play; Le Retour de Martin Guere, which was unfortunately remade as Sommersby; Man for All Seasons, about Henry VIII; Name of the Rose, based on Umberto Eco's book, and Henry V, Kenneth Branagh's finest hour.

[Waisted Aire]

I'm not sure if ANY period pieces are truly accurate. I have read a great deal of history throughout my career (I have a M.A. in ancient history) and I find that there is little accuracy in most period films. To really gauge accuracy we have to define the area of focus. I'm certain that costume and setting can be fairly accurate. As to the portrayal of actual EVENTS...that is an entirely different story. So much is dramatized (which is fine) that accuracy takes a backseat to drama. Gladiator was generally accurate, but had many dramatizations primarily because history just doesn't fit into a two-hour time slot very well. 300 had very little accuracy in it, and later period pieces, such as Kingdom of Heaven are even less accurate. I read books to determine accuracy and even then, the historical record is suspect...after all, history is written by the winners!

[Sevorin]

after all, history is written by the winners!

Generally true, but weren't some of the greatest of histories written by the "losers" (i.e., Thucydides and Guicciardini)?

[aardvark]

I've also seen five of the nine and enjoyed them all:

El Cid
Henry V (though I liked Olivier's less-accurate version better)
Lion in Winter (probably my favorite of the group)
Man for All Seasons (a favorite because we did the play in amateur theater years ago)
Name of the Rose

[MargaritaMcCall]

I added The Passion of Joan of Arc to my queue. It sounds really good.
I like the French movie called Sorceress (Le Moine et la Sorciere) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093556/
Can't believe Netflix doesn't carry it. It was a good story about a woman who knew folk remedies and someone from the Church who was against her.
This is a bit off-topic, but the Daniel Day-Lewis movie Last of the Mohicans seemed pretty historically accurate.

[Sevorin]

The movies listed in the link include some great films, but I think it's a stretch to call the lot of them "historically accurate", unless one is referring to the spirit, rather than the letter, of history.

I can't think of a finer movie on that list than The Passion of Joan of Arc, and it's true that much of the dialogue is lifted straight from the transcripts of her trial -- (though the transcriber referred to Joan and her questioners in the third person, "She was asked if . . .", "She answered that . . .", etc.) -- but events that occurred over the span of weeks are telescoped into a matter of hours.

El Cid has long been a favorite of mine, but it's drawn more from traditional drama -- by Corneille, for example -- than from historical record.

Henry V is more Shakespeare than anything else, and his "histories" are somewhat less than historical. Let's just say that the movie, and the play that inspires it, give a more accurate account of Elizabethan jingoism than they do of Henry's invasion of France.

The Lion in Winter does report some things accurately, and Peter O'Toole is as wonderful as the mature Henry II as he was as the young Henry in Becket -- though it's hard to imagine the younger one growing into the older. But the movie goes overboard in presenting family farce as the foundation of history and creates meetings and confrontations where there's no evidence they ever took place. If you're after the real facts you'd be better off going elsewhere. All the same the movie is fun to watch.

Who doesn't remember Paul Scofield as Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons? He's the essence of integrity, of resolve, of faith. He was also a man of powerful intellectual gifts and much personal good humor. Scofield's performance touches every base. His reasons for refusing to take the oath ran very deep into his character and beliefs. Yet I have a tough time squaring the man on screen with the magistrate who burned religious dissenters at the stake. He was no martyr to the cause of tolerance or justice or scientific truth or anything else that we moderns cling to. If you think about it, he was guilty of precisely the crime he was charged with and executed for. So let's call him a Man of His Time, but -- please -- not a Man for All Seasons.

Andrei Rublev may take place in a historical context, but is it really an historical film? Isn't Tarkovsky after something different from a contemplation of historical matters?

I haven't seen The Messager, but I assume it must be accurate enough not to offend the fastidious religious sensibilities of its Islamic audiences.

The Return of Martin Guerre is an interesting film. I liked it the one time I saw it and can't answer for its accuracy. But since it obviously arises from an historical anecdote of some publicity, there's no apparent reason to falsify it.

The Name of the Rose is from the Eco novel. Does it really belong among "historical" movies? It's a mystery story.

Just because I nitpicked over the movies on the list, don't assume that I dislike them or that I would refuse to watch some movie that I believed was historically inaccurate. I'm like everybody else. If I like a picture, I'll overlook any "manipulation" of historical facts. If I don't like it, I'll jump all over the historical inaccuracies.

Personally, I love Spartacus, Alexander the Great, Quo Vadis, Prince of Foxes, Shakespeare in Love, as well as some of the movies on the above list, yet I acknowledge that -- to save time or avoid giving offense or add "drama" or for some other worthy reason -- filmmakers often play fast and loose with the truth.