Historical films

[ladyofastolat]

I was talking to someone today about historical inaccuracies in films. He was of the opinion that they didn't matter, and that only sad anoraks cared about them. I was of the opinion that they potentially do matter – and matter rather more than faithfulness in literary adaptations.



Of course, historical inaccuracies come in various types. There's the anachronistic prop type of inaccuracy – "that type of hat wasn't invented until 1845, but the film is supposedly set in 1842!" I can tolerate these (when I'm aware of them), though I do feel that the film-makers should have tried to get them right, and the fact that they didn't implies that they didn't really care. I read an article a few weeks ago by a historical advisor on films, who said that it is very rare to get called in during the early stages of a film's development. He's usually called in on the day of filming, when most of the content is already set in stone, and he has to let most errors pass, in order to save up the fight for the really big ones. Clearly, for many film-makers, historical accuracy is something they just play lip-service to.

Some inaccuracy is only inevitable. Set a film in 1145, and you inevitably have to update the language, or none of the audience will understand a word. A degree of fictionalising is also necessary. Fictional characters are invented, and are slotted into real events, and often given a pivotal role. When real figures appear, imagined dialogue needs to be put into their mouths, and events are restructured to have the beginning, middle and end that modern storytelling expects. Minor events are dropped, or merged to create one pivotal scene. One secondary character fills the role that four people took in reality, in order to slim down the cast.

However, I contend that it is vital that essential historical accuracy is maintained. History is not dead and gone, but still has the power to shape the modern world. Events from hundreds of years ago – wars in Scotland, Crusades, civil wars etc – are still used as reasons for national hatreds. Take a common fictional portrayal of the Jacobite rising – heroic, united, tartan-wearing Scotland trying to protect their liberties from the evil English. This is a million miles from reality, but how many Scots believe it? My Dad certainly did for years, and he and his friends despised all English people on principle. I was talking to a Scottish person before Christmas who still believes it.

I also have a particular pet hate of the imposing of modern beliefs on the past. People are portrayed as villains because they uphold a belief system that well-nigh everyone at the time would have believed, but which is now considered wrong. Heroes shout about democracy and liberty, and heroines go on about feminism. "Good" characters are the ones who take a stand against the "evil" standards of their day, and spout about the sort of values that today's film-makers consider right. This all helps create the idea that the values held today in the Western world are the only right ones, and that all of history has been a slow and heroic struggle towards today's Utopia. Far more admirable, I think, to make a sympathetic character of someone who happens to uphold values that are nowadays considered wrong, but which at the time were considered right.

Totalitarian regimes are well aware that by twisting history, you can influence the present. Far more people watch historical films than will ever read a non-fiction book about the same period. For many people, it is truth, and beliefs about the past can shape beliefs about today. I think film-makers should take more care to ensure that they're not propagating lies.

Comments

[gramarye1971]

I also have a particular pet hate of the imposing of modern beliefs on the past.

It's old-fashioned Whig history at its worst, really. And it's particularly awful when the badly done 'historical' films are shown in schools without any attempt to have students analyse or even point out the historical inaccuracies.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Thog's period typography in films
http://www.ms-studio.com/typecasting.html

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is rather the way inamac and I look at horse and dog breeds, horse tack and riding styles. ("Those hounds are completely wrong!" "No-one in the twenties would be wearing riding caps!") On the other hand, sometimes you have to forgive. Most of the horses in 18th and 19th Century- movies should be docked, but as this is properly illegal in the UK and out of fashion in the US, they just aren't available for hire!

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I agree with you... and yet...

When the film does not pretend to be historically accurate, for instance anything by Ridley Scott, I can forgive it a lot if it is also a good movie. Also, I do not expect something like, say, Troy to be in the least historically accurate, and am quite happy for them to fiddle with the story, because that is what happens to traditional tales.

What I cannot stand is when a movie starts blabbing about being "the true story" or "historically accurate". King Arthur is a prime example, and the nit-picking is throughly justified.

Then take the various versions of Robin Hood. Again, this is a folk tale, and the legend is more important than any possible fact. Neither of my two favourite versions (the Errol Flynn one and the Costner one) are in the least accurate, and the idiocies in the latter are part of its charm. However, they are both true to the spirit of Hood, and are exciting and funny.

If, however, the movie or TV series fails to deliver on filmic quality, then no historical accuracy will save it.

Funnily enough, I am more willing to forgive said movies than I am to forgive historical novels. I rarely read historical novels because they never seem to get into the heads of the people of the time, and some historical fantasies are just as bad (yes, Marion Zimmer Bradley, I'm looking at you) though I will forgive Guy Gavriel Kay practically anything. Mind you, his research is very good indeed.

[gramarye1971]

Re: King Arthur -- My mediaeval history/literature scholar friends always love pointing out that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of the more period-accurate Arthurian films, as far as these things go. ^^;;

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Yes, in the same way Asterix is.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The tragedy of that King Arthur film (the Clive Owen one I presume) is that doing an Arthur film that tried to tell the historical version is a wonderful idea. It's such a shame that they didn't do that.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

One of these days, I will really get around to posting my essay on review of Troy. (Of course, you can debate whether you want to call this a historical film or a literary adaptation...) As this is more or less my period, you might have expected me to be horrified by it, and certainly there were some gross inaccuracies in, say, material culture (5thC BC red-figure vase in a supposed c.12thC BC setting? A bit like putting computers in Braveheart) as well as such things as the expected prominence of the 'female love interest'. However I forgive the film much for the very unexpected, non-Hollywood feeling of truth to the value-system of the time, of an honour-culture (as opposed to our modern guilt-culture) where Akhilleus' prime motivation is to win glory.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

You're quite right, of course, about the value systems. It's one of the things that raises the movie. I am fond of Troy, partly because I love some of the casting (Pitt, Bean, Bloom), and partly because some of the visuals are stunning and the photography is gorgeous.

[(Anonymous)]

the expected prominence of the 'female love interest'
Now come on..! Normally I would agree with you, it's very annoying when they shoe-horn in some spurious love-interest. But come on, legend of Troy -- female love interest pretty central to plot, no? - Neuromancer

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I feel that folk tales are fair game for reinterpretation. The moment a folk tale becomes set in stone, it ceases to be a folk tale. I don't mind about all the "inaccuracies" in the BBC Robin Hood, since it's clearly not remotely trying to be historically accurate.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you said, but I'd actually go a little further and say that for some filmmakers, misrepresentation of history is deliberate and used to further their own political views. (See for example the work of Gibson, Mel, noted actor / director / producer / anti-English, anti-semitic, christian fundamentalist bastard (delete as appropriate)).

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Why should we want to delete any of it? (Though he did used to be very pretty.)

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Agreed -- of course, this is nothing new. Shakespeare's (and everyone else's) "History" plays all have agenda, some more obvious than others. I don't think it's a problem so long as people are aware of that -- do you think that modern audiences are more credulous than early-modern ones, or was it equally a problem back then?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I agree, though I'd add that in some cases I think the misrepresentation of history is indeed deliberate, but is done for box-office reasons. For example, there was that film some years ago in which heroic American sailors captured the Enigma machine - a feat done in reality by the British. I expect this was done purely in order to appeal to the American cinema-going public - a public far bigger and lucrative than the British one.

[chelemby.livejournal.com]

I think back to the episode (The Body In Question) of the surrealistically funny American tv show Northern Exposure -- in this episode, part of an iceberg calved off and floated down the river to town. In this huge chunk of ice was a body, a man in a uniform of the French army of the Napoleonic Wars and in his pocket was discovered a diary that proved that Napoleon himself was in Alaska at the time of the battle of Waterloo. The whole town gets involved in a debate as to whether they should intorm the world or not.

The points boiled down to these:

1) TELL THE WORLD THE TRUTH! If there is a varifiable fact, it needs to be distributed, no matter whom it might upset.

2) KEEP OUR MOUTHS SHUT! How many thousands of Frenchmen had drawn inspiration from the Last Stand of the Old Guard at Waterloo to defy the odds and carry on, no matter the cost?

Ultimately, this made me think about the basic division in all of history -- What Happened versus What You Think Happened. The latter, of course, is far more important than the former because, when it comes to matters of social science, you will act upon what you know, not an underlying reality that you have no knowledge of.

Livy is probably my favourite Roman historian. Most of what he writes is malarkey, but he writes about what the Romans wanted to believe about themselves. In certain ways I look at such horrid "historical" films as Braveheart (one of the all-time worst offenders) in the same light -- it may take place in a parallel dimension where there happens to be a place called Scotland and happens to be a place called England and happen to be men named William Wallace and Edward I, but beyond that bears no serious resemblance to our version of reality -- thus far it is a lie. However, I have met several people who had pulled a core truth out of this film -- be willing to place yourself on the line for what you truly believe in.

Ah, the problems of being a person with a degree in Medieval History and a deep love of mythology and folklore... ;-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I like 'What You Think Happened' as a description of history generally!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I think most history is "what you think happened." You just have to look at serious historical books written in the 19th and compare them with ones written today. Chances are, historians in 2100 will be saying totally different things about the past. The values of today affect our interpretation of the past in so many subtle ways, however hard we try to stop it. I find the history of historical writing almost more fascinating that history itself. Whig historians thought they were telling the truth, but now their work is more useful for what it reveals about the attitudes of their day, than about the period they're describing.

It just worries me that much of the cinema audience probably lacks the knowledge to see something like Braveheart as a fantasy set in a parallel world. I've read that a lot of Scots cite that film as a reason to hate the English.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"How many thousands of Frenchmen had drawn inspiration from the Last Stand of the Old Guard at Waterloo to defy the odds and carry on, no matter the cost?"

Presumably not that many, given subsequent French history...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think a better solution to the problem would be
a) people shouldn't assume films are historically accurate
b) even if the film is historically accurate, people should avoid using anything that happened before they were even born as a justification for developing resentments.

Then we could all get on with enjoying myth/legend/historical fiction without worrying about the implications.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Agreed - but how are we going to ensure that all the stupid masses out there adhere to this rule? I think it's easier to change a few film-makers than to change a few billion credulous fools.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Maybe there could be a warning. "This film contains, fantasy violence, drug references, nudity and blatant historical misrepresentation."

The BBFC would have to employ historians.

[rustica.livejournal.com]

Hm. It's the lack of purpose in the failings that annoys me most. For example: the beginning scene of Narnia infuriates me still to this day, where they opened the front door to electric light and ran to the bomb shelter with torches in the middle of an air-raid. In my head, the Pevensies died then and there, and serve them damn well right too. I'd reached Narnia with Lucy and Edmund before I forgave the film for the beginning. I also have a big grudge against the railway scene. Why? Because all the guards were men. Men? Men! In wartime! Not a single woman!. Unnecessary shoddiness.

By contrast, Elizabeth didn't annoy me at all, even though they did terrible things to history! The changes they made created a plausible film storyline in a way that real life so inconsiderately rarely does, and the atmosphere was wonderful. I really felt transported by that film.

Then there is the problem I had with Peter Jackson's LotR. Not that he changed things, not that he added and removed stuff -but because he added stuff that didn't fit or make sense and threw out really good bits to make room for it. Here I suppose I'm mostly annoyed by the lack of critical judgement, but at least his changes were deliberate and interpretive, and not just introduced by laziness and ignorance.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with you about the beginning of Narnia, and disagree profoundly about most of the changes in LotR, which were often made for dramatic necessity, and were occasionally a good deal better than Tolkien. [Ducks]

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Reading that article by a historical advisor on films, I do wonder quite how any historian can bring themselves to let their name go into the credits. I suspect that, in Narnia, it was originally far worse, but the poor historical advisor reluctantly decided to let those errors pass, in order to fight to change the even-more-glaring error that did indeed get changed. It particularly annoys me because if I was writing a fanfic set in 1940, I'd make sure I did that basic research - and, really, it's not hard, especially nowadays, with the Internet at our command - but people paid to write real movies evidently don't make that effort.