Posted on 09/24/2011 4:19:32 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
I am a huge history buff so and enjoy watching movies about events in the past. However, many of these movies really irk me because they are incredibly inaccurate as to the historical facts. Here is a sampling of movies that have bugged me due to their historical inaccuracies:
1. Battle of the Bulge: So just how inaccurate was this 1965 movie? So inaccurate that former President Eisenhower who was Supreme Commander of the Allies in Europe denounced this film in a press conference. To watch this movie you would think that some Boston detective was able to predict all the German tactical moves based on such police work as shutting off the engine of a spotter plane in the middle of a fog bank in order to hear sounds of tank treads. Oh, and the German Panzers looked exactly like M47 Patton tanks which is what they were. As to the heavily forested Ardennes forest, at times it looked like a deforested western prairie.
2. Gunfight at the OK Corral: Couldn't Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp have bothered to grow a mustache or at least wear a fake one? The cleanshaven Earp in that movie is a slap at the intelligence of anybody with even a little knowledge about Wyatt Earp. Also the real life gunfight took just a few seconds, not at all like the extended gunfight in the movie which did not take place at the OK Corral but NEXT to it.
3. Huns. Why is it that every movie depicting Huns make them look like white guys? In actuality the Huns were a nomadic tribe from deep inside Asia who looked like ugly Mongolians with scarred faces. And the movie Attila the Hun looks like Jack Palance which is just wrong.
4. Confederate uniforms. This really bugs me. Civil War movies which depict Confederates late in the war wearing immaculate uniforms. Only officers had uniforms at that stage of the war that were in decent shape. The uniforms of the average foot soldiers were either one step up from rags or were stolen Federal uniforms dyed a beechnut color. And even those latter uniforms were usually in bad shape.
5. Pearl Harbor: Did anybody else cringe when Franklin D. Roosevelt rose from his wheel chair and walk a few steps to make a point? Guess what? That never happened.
6. The Alamo: Final Mexican attack took place in the dark before daybreak not in the middle of the day as depicted in the film. Also Col. Travis in the movie spoke with a clipped British accent. Oh, and the character of supposed frontiersman Smitty from Tennessee looked and sounded like he was an urban guy from South Philly.
Awful.
Oliver Stone’s JFK
Battle of the Bulge was filmed in Spain, I assume b/c it was cheap. There are lots of places that look more like the Ardennes than most of Spain.
Battle Of The Bulge is just too problem ridden for me to watch.
Wouldn’t it be easier and much shorter of a list to post accurate historical movies? (still can’t think of one).
How about all those modern ships at Pearl Harbor?
Tora Tora Tora circa 1970 was far more accurate.
I liked that movie and Midway too.
p.s. Before you jump down my throat, I would like to commend your remarks on the Battle of the Bulge movie. It wasn't a Henry Fonda, American detective type, that predicted the Battle of the Bulge, but a female British spy having an affair with Eva Braun's brother-in-law.
The female British spy's warning about the Battle of the Bulge was ignored. Just as the pro German spy Cicero's warning about the date of D Day was ignored.
for later
The writers went out of their way to get every last detail wrong and the costumes and tactics matched. Absolutely a disgrace, especially for a film that went out of it's way to claim historicity.
I also remembe a movie about one of the Seminole Wars where the soldiers were wearing Roughriders uniforms.
my problem is with the confederates inside the uniforms - in reality these guys walked from the deep south to the battlefield. They chewed tree bark and drank creek water.
You'd hope the producers of civil war films could find extras that didn't look like they lived inside a Hometown Buffet.
Life of Brian :-P
FARBS
“I liked that movie and Midway too.”
Did you happen to see it in the theater? It was shown in SENSOROUND which would almost knock you out of your seat during dogfight scenes.
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