As it turned out, someone asked a followup question to mine from last week about historically accurate movies, and I thought I ought to include that question and response here for completeness and because it is quite interesting as well.

S.S. in West Hollywood, CA, asks: You told us which films you consider the most
historically accurate. So, which films do you consider the most historically inaccurate? Not the films that are
obviously and intentionally inaccurate, like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, but the films non-historians may perceive as accurate. The films that have gone the farthest in miseducating the public and our perceptions of history.

And if you don’t include The Birth of a Nation on that list, I’d like to know your thoughts on it and how it’s shaped our understanding of history and specifically race relations in this country.

(V) & (Z) answer: We think you largely have to exclude films from before 1950 or so, for two reasons. The first is that they were often based on received history. In other words, when D.W. Griffith made The Birth of a
Nation, he was basing it on what the professional historians of his day were saying. He was not aware, or at least not fully aware, that he was spinning a racist fantasy. The same is true with Gone with the Wind or with any of a thousand Westerns.

The second reason that pre-1950s films should be put aside is that there was a much greater tolerance for blending
fact and fiction in search of entertainment. The filmmakers largely saw themselves as putting on pantomimes, and were
willing to throw together whatever ingredients were necessary to carry off their vision.

This, then, is a list of ten post-1950 films that are egregiously inaccurate, in one way or another. It is presented
in rough order of the events portrayed, and is most certainly not exhaustive:

1. Spartacus: This is a pretty good example of how pre-1950 films were put together. They tossed in a bunch of elements of Roman history, including centurions, gladiators, Spartacus, a single character named Gracchus (there were actually two Gracchi), Marcus Licinius Crassus, sandals, togas and crucifixions and they made a movie of it. Most of the characters in the film were not contemporaries of each other (both Gracchi were dead before Crassus was born, for example), and the portrayal of Spartacus’ rebellion is only loosely based on what really happened.
2. Braveheart: This is another pretty good example of how pre-1950 films were put together, although it’s far less excusable, since the film was made decades after that style fell into disfavor. The Scots’ kilts are about 200 years too early, their blue face paint is about 1,000 years too late. The film considerably reinvents the story of William Wallace, and mixes details from his life and that of Robert the Bruce. The weapons are wrong, the details of the battles are wrong, Wallace’s execution is wrong.
3. Pocahontas: Pocahontas is the only Disney princess based on a real person. Let’s hope it stays that way, because when Disney gets its hands on history, well, the results are problematic to the point that there’s actually a word for it—the “Disneyfication” of the past. Most obviously, there was no romance between Pocahontas and John Smith. And that is for the best, as she was 9 years old when he arrived in the New World.
4. The Patriot: Do you get the sense that Mel Gibson cares little for the historical record? This picture makes the Americans look way too heroic, makes the British look way too villainous (Gibson wanted viewers to think “Nazis”), and aggressively whitewashes the story of Benjamin Martin, who was actually a giant a**hole.
5. Amistad: Other than a couple of the Indiana Jones films, Lincoln, and Schindler’s List, (Z) is not generally a fan of the work of Steven Spielberg, and this is exhibit 1A as to why. Spielberg is clearly a gifted technical filmmaker. However, he so wants to pull on the viewer’s heartstrings that he engages in emotional trickery that is somewhere between “cheesy” and “dishonest.” The details of Amistad are fine, and the events are portrayed basically as they happened. However, the horrors of slavery were apparently not enough emotional weight. And so, Spielberg and his screenwriter (David Franzoni) grafted on top of the main narrative the notion that these events, which took place from 1839-41, very nearly started the Civil War. This is not remotely true.
6. The League of Ungentlemanly Warfare: This film has virtually nothing to do with the actual events upon which it was based. Several characters in the movie are invented, others who “work together” never actually met. Anders Lassen, who was actually a fairly slight fellow (think Tom Cruise) is portrayed by Alan Ritchson, who looks like the Incredible Hulk. Winston Churchill looks and sounds more like Rush Limbaugh. And the actual raid on Fernando Po was nothing like what is portrayed in the movie.
7. Pearl Harbor: Michael Bay likes his villains to be cartoonishly evil. That’s not a problem when we’re talking alien robots or violent felons. But it is a problem when your villains are, in effect, a racial group. At various times, the film shows Japanese Americans collaborating with the invading forces and Japanese planes deliberately targeting both civilians and hospitals. None of this is true, and it’s actually kind of racist. There’s all kinds of other stuff in the film that’s ridiculous (like the counterattack on Tokyo, which did not happen), but it’s the racist stuff that’s really problematic.
8. The Imitation Game: When (Z) teaches his “Film and History” course, he uses this film to illustrate some of the reasons that filmmakers make the inaccurate choices they make. The work of the thousands of people at Bletchley Park is reduced to a team of half a dozen. A challenge that, in reality, involved many steps forward and many steps back, is resolved with a single blazing flash of insight. Commander Alastair Denniston is made into a villain; in actuality, he was one of the biggest supporters of the work being done. Alan Turing is portrayed as autistic and antisocial, and he was not. Turing also has close, working relationships with the head of MI-6 (Stewart Menzies) and with later-revealed-to-be-a-spy John Cairncross. In fact, he did not meet these people. One can infer why these choices were made, which is why it’s a good film for discussion, but the fact is that it’s a pretty gross misrepresentation.
9. JFK: Oliver Stone conspiratorial thinking framed as if it’s a documentary. Moving on.
10. Argo: There are two big problems here. The first is that the role of the Canadians (and the Brits) was downplayed to the point of being insulting. The second is that while the escape from Iran is very dramatic in the film, with militants chasing down the runway as the Americans’ plane takes off, in reality it was no different than any other plane flight. That said, Bryan Cranston gives a hell of a performance.

As to Birth of a Nation‘s impact on race, we don’t think it was all that substantial. That film affirmed ideas that white people already had more than it created new ideas.

---