ladyofastolat | Historical films

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.

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Yeah, but nobody stays for the credits. I think the producer and the director should have to come on at the beginning of the film and explain the differences!

I have the uneasy feeling that, looked at in that light, Phillipa Boyens and Fran Ward might have gone for it...

Not one of the stronger points of the re-write, but it can be argued that, with the whole of Edoras on the move to Helm's Deep (part of the excellent Theoden character development) and most of the Riders off with Eomer, someone has to see the threat of Saruman's armies. This gives us another action sequence - needed at this point in the movie because you certainly aren't going to get one from the text. It also allows contact with Arwen, who needs to be kept in our thoughts as well as in Aragorn's, and also stresses the emotional links with Legolas and Gimli. I could have done without the Alexander the Great riff earlier, or the Champion the Wonder Horse riff, and there were far too many people dying and coming back to life in TTT, but the sequence does what it is supposed to do, and adds to character depth and emotional tension, as well as allowing a couple of jokes.

Which is why I thought Bloom as Paris was such good casting!

Yes, of course they aim to make films that make money, but has it ever been tested that historically accurate films don't make money? I can imagine that there'd be quite a bit of public appeal in a film that billed itself as the true story, hitherto unseen in film, especially if it contained big name actors.

I wonder what the little logo for "blatant historical misrepresentation" would be on the back of the DVD case.

It could be made compulsory for historical films to have a historian's commentary as one of its DVD commentaries. Or you could switch on "historian's sub-title mode" and have a little historian appear in the bottom right of the screen, holding up placards explaining all the errors.

I think the Internet does help, too. You normally only have to read a few reviews on IMDB before you encounter someone who attacks a historical film for reasons of historical accuracy. In "the past" (i.e. some 40 or 50 years ago) you might go the cinema every weekend to see what happened to be on, and thus see a historical film without having read any review at all of it, and absorb it whole. Nowadays, people are more likely to have read a variety of online reviews. They can also read up the "real" version with a few clicks of the mouse, rather than having to buy (or borrow) a whole book. (Still, I suspect that most people still do neither.)

I'm not sure that people are so resistant to learning something new. Non-fiction history TV programmes over here are very fond of shouting out about how they are presenting a whole new theory that overturns everything everyone always knew. I can only assume that they do this because they think it brings an audience.

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.

I don't think any real live human actress can ever carry of "most beautiful woman in the world." It's the sort of thing that only works in the imagination - rather like very scary horrors that are far better left unseen.

I don't think it's that way round - you'd need to demonstrate to the film makers that the extra effort involved in better research would make them more money, or at least, enough money to cover the extra research time costs.

I'm not sure it would.

Any film that billed itself as the true story is surely setting itself up to be pilloried. There will always be something that's wrong.

I fear you're right... but it seems such a shame, and very misguided. Every year, some film comes along that's fresh and original and appears to break the rules, and goes on to become a break-out hit. Instead of taking from that the lesson "the public likes originality, as long as it's well done", the studios just try to copy it, and you get a bandwagon of by-the-book clones that don't do half as well as the original. I suspect that quite a lot of the Hollywood accepted truths about what the public wants could be proved wrong, if only they were brave enough to try.

Plus, what with the enormous budgets of most modern films, the pay of one historical advisor would be a drop in the ocean.

I met someone who had been an adviser on Gladiator- clearly no-one had listened to a word he had said. He really knew his stuff, but it didn't fit in with what they wanted. I've seen the same thing in so-called documentaries too. Some friends of ours do 1st century germanic and roman re-enactment. They did some filming in an open air museum for a programme about Kalgriese. The museum director was also interviewed about the period. As it did not not fit in with the film they wanted to make about bloodthirsty germanics they cut the interview completely and left out all the scenes of the germanic villagers minding their own business and showed just one shot of someone fletching an arrow.

Oh and recycled the film they shot for a programme about first century...britons.

But surely what you are asking for is not just one historical adviser?

Are you not asking that the the 'correct' historical story be considered as an integral part of the script writing, the overall concept development, that character development, the actors interpretation, the direction...

I think it would change the way films are made. I'm pretty sure it would at least involve a lot of meetings!

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