While I enjoy writing these posts, sometimes it’s good to take a little time out. Which is what the folks at electoral-vote.com did this past week; they took several days off, and then on Saturday, instead of answering a bunch of political questions, as is their wont, they announced that they were going to devote the Q&A to topics like movies and sports and asked their readers to submit those kinds of questions.

Friday morning a question occurred to me, but with one thing and another by late afternoon I realized I hadn’t gotten around to submitting it. So at 5:30 I quickly wrote it up and sent it off, thinking that I was probably too late. But to my great surprise they answered it.

Here is my question and their answer in its entirety. They answered a whole bunch of other questions that you might find of interest as well.

J.T. in Philadelphia, PA, asks: Over 10 years ago, I saw a program on C-SPAN-2 where, among
other things, a group of historians were discussing movies about the Revolutionary period and how historically accurate
they were. At least one of them mentioned the musical 1776 as being, in his opinion, the most historically accurate. As a fan of that musical, I was especially happy to hear that.

Not necessarily confining yourself to that period, do you have a list of films that you consider the most historically
accurate?

(V) & (Z) answer: First, let’s note that most filmmakers, since the 1970s or so, have endeavored to get the details (costumes, hairstyles, architecture, technology) as correct as is possible. So, there are plenty of films that are accurate in that way, but that tell a historical tale that is highly distorted.

Second, let’s note that some allowance has to be given for the medium. A filmmaker has roughly 90 minutes to tell
a compelling story, one that the audience can follow, and one that adheres, more or less, to standard plot structure.
That means exposition in Act I, a journey in Act II, and a climax and resolution in Act III. In order to achieve this,
some amount of fidelity to the historical record has to go by the wayside.

Third, and finally, we cannot speak to all films, because we have not seen all films. We can only speak to the ones
that we have seen. And so here is a definitely-not-exhaustive list of 10 historical films (in rough chronological order)
that are way above average when it comes not only to details, but to the characterizations of historical figures, and
the events portrayed:

• 12 Years a Slave: If you want to know the horrors of slavery, this is the movie to see. It’s pretty faithful to the book it was based upon, which is also titled 12 Years a Slave.
• Glory: There are three films on this list where some/many/all of the characters are fictional. This is one of the three; while the main character (Robert Gould Shaw) was a real person, and is largely portrayed accurately (though they downplayed his racism), the Black soldiers he commands in the movie were composites of different “types” of Black soldiers (educated freeman, respected elder, runaway, etc.) and were not real people. However, the film does an excellent job of giving the feel of Civil War combat, and also gives a generally accurate portrayal of the major events in the story of the Massachusetts 54th Infantry Regiment
• Lincoln: It is uncanny how on-point the characterizations are in this film. Except for the actor who played Ulysses S. Grant, the various performers are damn-near spitting images of their historical counterparts. Meanwhile, they all speak and behave in a manner consistent with what the historical record tells us (particularly Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, and Jackie Earle Haley as Alexander Stephens). The events, as portrayed in the film, are also basically correct. The names of the members of Congress who voted to keep slavery were changed, so as to avoid embarrassing their descendants, and Steven Spielberg contrived a way to squeeze the Gettysburg Address, an 1863 speech, into a film set in 1864-65. The filmmaker also accepted, uncritically, the gossip that Stevens was sleeping with his Black maid. But outside of those things, the film is very solid.
• Titanic: This is the second film on this list that includes fictional characters. The key background figures—Benjamin Guggenheim, Molly Brown, John Jacob Astor IV, Capt. Edward Smith—are all real, and basically all look and speak like the genuine article (well, except for Astor). The main characters, however, are all invented. That said, even if the Jack Dawson/Rose DeWitt Bukater romance never happened, and there was never a “Heart of the Ocean” necklace, and there was never actually a question as to whether or not they could both fit on that door, the film really gives you a sense of what things looked and felt like in 1912, from the aggressive lines drawn between social classes, to the sense that the world was embarking on a new era. And the actual sinking of the ship is just about as accurate as is possible—in fact, the movie timeline and the real-world timeline line up exactly.
• The Grapes of Wrath: This is the third film with fictional characters; in this case, in contrast to Glory and Titanic, none of the people you see in the movie were real. However, both the screenplay and the book were based on real ethnographic research conducted by John Steinbeck. Further, doing real research, and using that the basis for a work of fiction, was a legitimate approach to getting at “the truth” in that era. And if you want a feel for the truth of the Great Depression in California—how it looked, how it felt—there is no better film than this one.
• Schindler’s List: This is a movie directed by a Jewish man (Steven Spielberg) and written by an Armenian man (Steven Zaillian). In other words, we’re talking about members of communities who know something about genocide. Both men took it as a point of honor not to take liberties with the historical record, and they largely did not do so. Yes, there are some dramatic flourishes, but not really any outright falsehoods.
• Selma: This one was made while many participants in the events shown were still alive. And they pretty much all said the film got it right.
• Apollo 13: Again, most of the participants in the events were still alive when the film was released, and they helped make the film into something like a documentary. Some details were changed, for various reasons, but the main narrative of the film is pretty much spot-on.
• Milk: In a vein similar to Schindler’s List, this is a film directed by a gay man (Gus Van Zant) and written by a gay man (Dustin Lance Black). They also felt it was a point of honor not to take liberties with the historical record. And so, the movie is a pretty spot-on telling of the story of Harvey Milk.
• All The President’s Men: A clear theme running through this list is “made while the participants were still alive.” Well, in this case, not only were the participants still alive, but the events shown were just a couple of years in the past. The film is so concerned with fealty to what really happened that, in fact, some contemporary reviewers wrote that there was too much factual information, and that it messed up the pacing of the film.

Obviously, these are U.S.-centric films. That is because the list is being compiled by a U.S. historian, who’s
not in a great position to evaluate films about other nations’ histories. That said, we are pretty sure that
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is basically documentary-level accurate.

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