Historical inaccuracies in film/TV

60+ year old actresses playing Rose in GYPSY. No one can believe at the beginning of the play that she has two little girls under 10 years old. She is not even an easy bet at the end of the play to have a 20 year old daughter.

Are you sure, OP? Shorter hairstyles are notoriously flattering to older ladies and bathing in virgins' blood may not have been her only trick to staying young.

"...the part of Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed has a bob hairstyle with bangs...they couldn't even get a wig that somewhat matched the period."

MARY!!!!!

Only a big Mary would notice and be humored by a fact like this...

Big Marys RULE!

The mother (Melinda Dillon) in “A Christmas Story” hair was so fucking wrong for the period. Even if the family were dirt poor in the Ozarks she would have still pinned it up or back. The frizzy long perm takes me out of every scene she is in. I hope fans of the movie annoy the shit out of her at autograph conventions asking about why she was a cunt and thought she was too good for the hairdressing department.

R3 Women bobbing their hair was a significant moment in the 20th century. The countess lived in the 1500's. It's a very obvious mismatch

Another screengrab from the series. She looks like she just came back from auditioning for the role of Mrs. White in Clue...

It's not even a 1920's version of a bob. It's absolutely contemporary to the date of the filming.

What a stupid thing to do.

Adventureland takes place in the mid 80’s. Everyone is styled that way except for lead Kristen Stewart who looks like millennial Kristen Stewart 2009. I figured that she wouldn’t let them style her.

Choosing actors who look NOTHING like the real-life people they're portraying. I understand that you won't get a perfect match, but at least try to have some kind of resemblance.

if anything, Bathory would have worn an elaborate headdress of some sort as she was Hungarian nobility. Sort of like something a ‘boyar’ wife would wear, uncovered hair would have been too common looking. Even a servant would have worn a little bonnet or something. She looks like she’s playing Velma in a cheap production of “Chicago”

R5, that always bugged me, too!

She looks like a 60 year woman playing Rose in GYPSY.

Complete with the legendary LUCY/MAME filter.

The Countess was ahead of her time. She was a great inspiration to Louise Brooks and other vampiric lost generation types.

There are no FLAT TOPS in ANCIENT ROME!

More recently The Crown and Victoria take liberty with the truth. Not sure why because, for each of these monarchs, the truth is much more interesting. I was going to make a list of the inaccuracies but it is readily available if anyone is interested.

I like the response from R15.

Do you have a link to all the inaccuracies? @R16

The Crown drives me crazy. Princess Andrew did NOT wear her nun’s habit to Elizabeth and Philips wedding. She wore a long purple velvet dress which she had made from a court robe she wore when presented to The Tsar in Russia. She cut a regal figure and as a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, sister to The Crown Princess of Sweden, daughter-in-law to The King of Greece, and sister to Lord Mountbatten, not have been openly snickered at by Queen Mary.

Imogene Coca as a cave woman speaking English in It's About Time! I mean, come on.

They never locked the 3rd class passengers in a steerage on Titanic as it was sinking. That's just something James Cameron came up with, to make the rich people look even more evil.

This whole look is wrong for the period.

Correct, R21. That costume was absolutely contemporary to the day the film was made. And WAY too trashy for Sandy Dumbrowski. But pretty much everything in that movie is wrong.

In the film of Phantom of the Opera (musical) there is a nutcracker costume in the basement of the Paris Opera. The ballet had not been written as yet and and as a Christmas ballet, The Fairy Doll was performed in France, not the Nutcracker.

Dolls are never right in films. Far too many to list.

In Babylon Berlin, the extras wear 1960s cloche hats.

Twins!

I have read articles that this fluff movie didn't even try to be accurate. Wrong times, wrong weapons and wooly mammoths hanging out in the dessert. I was never able to get to far into this one, so I'm sure there is more.

R25, and they all speak English.

[quote]I was never able to get to far into this one,

Nor too far in a grammar book I see.

On a related topic it annoys me when the portraits of entirely different persons are used to portray an historical character. For some reason Lucrezia Panciatichi, the elegant Florentine aristocrat, has been used to depict Countess Bathory in several instances. The only thing they have in common is that they both lived in the 16th century, were female, and were upper-class.

Any film. opera, play, or television series about Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots always has them meeting.

They never met.

Apart from that, I give artistic license to playwrights or film writers, directors et al when writing or portraying historical events. I'd rather have them produce the right atmosphere or feeling of an age, rather than get bogged down in exact historical detail. After all, they are interpreting it for entertainment or art, not as historians.

The great Glenda Jackson classic series Elizabeth R didn't have Mary and Elizabeth meeting, R29.

The Tudors is pretty fast and loose with the facts too. Eg Cardinal Wolsey killing himself: didn't happen.

I'm a historian and historical inaccuracies don't bother me. Dumb schlocky American takes on history do, however. The worst to my mind is the trailer for the Korean movie "Brotherhood of War." (Taegukgi) The entire message of the movie is that the war was stupid and fought over nothing. Yet the American trailer says that "they fought for honor; they fought for glory..." That is 100% wrong. But that is how Americans love to portray wars. The Japanese, German and Korean trailers did not contain this spin.

No but the Japs and the Krauts were full of that war 'honor' b/s.

Diane Keaton as Amelia Earhart made a bologna sandwich with a squirt bottle of mustard. Apparently in those days mustard only came in jars.

All the 50s Biblical or medieval epics where the women are wearing bullet bras, false eyelashes and red lipstick

In those days mustard mainly came in tins of mustard powder.

One Million B.C.

Apocalypto. Loosely modeled after the Mayan Empire -- shows human sacrifices on the level of the Aztecs; implies contact with Spanish conquistadors also more in line with Aztec.

Bet you didn't know they had Claire's Jewelry Boutiques in the civil war days.

80's mini-series North and South

WTF was with the break dance and jitterbug and vogueing moves in The Favourite?

The women in North and South all had 80s hair and makeup

I didn't watch the TV show "Reign" so I don't know how many historical liberties the writers took during its run. However, I can with some confidence say that Aylee, Greer and Kenna would NOT be ladies names during the period of Mary Queen of Scots. The usual names at the time were old names like Anne, Catherine, Elizabeth, Mary, Margaret etc...

The degree of anti-Semitism inflicted on Logan Lerman's character in his Brooklyn neighborhood in HUNTERS seemed extreme in 1977. I used to hear of stuff happening like that in the 1930s, but I never witnessed anything like that. I'm a baby boomer, non-Jewish, who grew up in North Jersey.

Grease Live! a few years ago had every third student at Rydell High be black. In the 50’s???

"The mother (Melinda Dillon) in “A Christmas Story” hair was so fucking wrong for the period. Even if the family were dirt poor in the Ozarks she would have still pinned it up or back. The frizzy long perm takes me out of every scene she is in. I hope fans of the movie annoy the shit out of her at autograph conventions asking about why she was a cunt and thought she was too good for the hairdressing department."

Calm down, Mary. I always thought that the mother in "A Christmas Story" was a woman with uncontrollable frizzy hair who had no vanity and never went to the beauty parlor. But some people are obsessed with her hair (you included), screaming "IT'S AN EIGHTIES PERM! IT"S ALL WRONG FOR THE PERIOD! AAAARRRGH!" So she had frizzy unpinned hair...so fucking what?

Practically everything in "Braveheart" was historically inaccurate. Here are some examples:

The central character of Braveheart is William Wallace. In the film, he’s shown as a man of humble background who goes to war after the love of his life is murdered by English invaders. In reality, Wallace was part of the lesser Scottish nobility. His family was too obscure to leave detailed information about his origins, but we know enough to get a picture of his lifestyle. Far from being raised as a farmer, he was raised to be a minor noble, and trained in the arts of war from a young age. Wallace was no peasant patriot. He was a member of a warrior aristocracy who excelled at the life he was given.

The film depicts Edward I sending his daughter-in-law Isabella to negotiate with Wallace. The two are attracted to each other and do what pretty people do in Hollywood movies, leading to Isabella becoming pregnant with the future King Edward III. At the time of Wallace’s execution, Isabella was nine years old, living in France, and not yet married into the English royal family. So let’s just get angry about the inaccuracy of portraying her as a fully grown negotiator and not even think about the rest of what’s going on here.

We also get to see one of Wallace’s defeats – the Battle of Falkirk. Setting aside every other problem with the depiction of this battle, including the make-up of Edward I’s army, Irish troops are shown carrying a flag that wouldn’t be invented for another 340 years.

n costuming its Scottish army, Braveheart veers wildly into both the past and the future. Scottish troops are seen wearing blue woad face paint – a habit of the ancient pre-roman Celts and Picts, not medieval Scots – and tartan kilts, a fashion that would only be invented hundreds of years later. They look incredibly Scottish, to the modern eye, but not at all realistic.

There’s a lot to praise in the depiction of William Wallace’s execution, which shows the terrible brutality of medieval punishments. But there’s also a massive problem. Edward I is shown dying at the same time as Wallace. In reality, he died two years later, not in his bed but on campaign, marching north to put down another Scottish rebellion.

Mel Gibson, a native of the US who has lived for a long time in Australia, worked hard to create an accurate-sounding Scottish accent as he played the lead role. While it may sound about right to some, to the Scottish ear it leaves much to be desired and comes in for a great deal of mockery.

[quote] the terrible brutality of medieval punishments

One thing Victoria is accurate about is that the Newport Chartists were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in November 1839. Their sentence was commuted. Prior to that, the last person to be hanged, drawn and quartered was in 1788 which is not medieval at all.

I laughed out loud at a scene in The Untouchables (1987) when the G-men seize a shipment of Prohibition-era bootleg whisky from Canada, with the crates stamped with our current Maple Leaf flag. It wasn’t adopted until 1965.

R44, you think there weren't black people back then? It wasn't supposed to be set at a segregated Southern school (Of course this is what DLers complain about, not the fact that the "kids" were all 30)

"From 1876 until 1901, the leaf appeared on all Canadian coins and remained on the penny after 1901. The use of the maple leaf by the Royal Canadian Regiment as a regimental symbol extended back to 1860. During the First World War and Second World War, badges of the Canadian Forces were often based on a maple leaf design."

I cant watch The Goldbergs because they cant seem to get anything right.

TWO THINGS:

Period pieces set before the 19th Century where characters speak with British received pronunciation. People didn't talk like that then. I can sorta see it for British actors, but not for Americans, like Cynthia Nixon in World Without End.

Hairstyles from the time the movie was made, not the time depicted. The 60s were awful for this with women wearing bouffant hairdos. Examples: Funny Girl and Dr. Zhivago.

[quote]I didn't watch the TV show "Reign" so I don't know how many historical liberties the writers took during its run. However, I can with some confidence say that Aylee, Greer and Kenna would NOT be ladies names during the period of Mary Queen of Scots. The usual names at the time were old names like Anne, Catherine, Elizabeth, Mary, Margaret etc...

I remember one review mocking the show by calling it "Mary Teen of Scots"

[quote] Period pieces set before the 19th Century where characters speak with British received pronunciation.

Have you ever listened to Eleanor Roosevelt?

In The Crown, The Queen visits The Duke and Duchess of Windsor as The Duke is dying and she does so alone when she was actually accompanied by Prince Philip and Prince Charles. Both The Duchess and The Queens' clothing is also wrong. There are photographs of their meeting outside the Windsor's home.

R50, you’re right, the maple leaf has long been used as a symbol in Canada, but the Maple Leaf flag was introduced in1965, and it was this flag that was stamped on the bootleg whisky crates in The Untouchables.

So, uhhh, I guess we’re both right.

What sort of historical inaccuracies are we speaking about here; costume or setting faux pas? Or things that are just plain inaccurate factually?

For the latter nearly every film/television show, opera, etc... about Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I has some sort of show down scene where the two queens meet. It never happened. Elizabeth I never clapped eyes on the Scottish queen even as she languished for almost 20 years on English soil jailed by HM's government.

R57, meet R29.

I've noticed recently that after years of trying to adhere to Merchant/Ivory levels of historical accuracy, many films/TV series set in the 18th and 19th centuries have now pretty much given up and depict female characters wearing their hair down and loose out in public, and with very obvious makeup. Poldark does this - the women constantly have their flowing hair whipping in the breeze, completely ignoring the fact that no respectable woman would have worn it that way then. Loose, unstyled hair would bring the immediate assumption of hookerdom. The actress who played Elizabeth was always wearing this purply/mauve lipstick that was ridiculous. The recent Little Women had the whole flowing hair thing, too. It gives a totally inaccurate idea of what was acceptable for women in those times and places - only little girls would have worn their hair like that.

Here's an interesting article about historical accuracy in film - actually, it's comparing the two different TV series about the Borgia family, Showtime's The Borgias and the European series Borgia: Faith and Fear, but there are many fascinating tidbits in it that aren't specific to those series. For example, rabbits as class markers in art, and the way the colors of period clothing in film are often inaccurate. The article mentions a lovely pale pink dress worn by Lucrezia in The Borgias, which is meant to our modern eyes to convey her youth and innocence. But a girl of Lucrezia's status in the Renaissance wouldn't have worn such a pale color, because pale colors = poor. The darker and richer the color of your clothing, the wealthier you were, because you could afford the expensive dyes. It's a good read, even if you've never watched those shows:

R58, the move from Merchant/Ivory accuracy has a lot to do with the fact that young people cannot relate to anything that is outside of their own experience. Historical accuracy is alienating to the young, particularly the women. This is why the trend is to try to combine historical detail with modern silhouettes. Pretty much none of the women in Babylon Berlin wear historical makeup because it would be too off putting. Music also seems to be on the chopping block. The current trend is to not use period music.

Loretta Swit's Farrah hair in the last few years of MASH.

Not so, R59. Young people have nothing to do with historical accuracy in hair and make up in film and television.

Go look at stills of Theda Bara as Cleopatra. Look at stills of Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette. COBRA WOMAN was released in1944 and every costume Maria Montez wears has shoulder pads. That part is arguably okay, but how did shoulder pads become the thing so quickly on a small island in the South Seas? DeMille made THE TEN COMMANDMENTS twice. The production from the 1920s looks like the 1920s and the production from the 1950s looks like the 1950s. Jump ahead to Vanessa Redgrave in CAMELOT. Her hair and make-up are exactly of 1967.

The hair and make-up for film and television are always rooted in the styles of the time when they are produced and released into the market. Historical accuracy doesn't stand a chance against fashion. It never did. And as long as actresses are vain and tickets have to be sold, it never will.

That homophobic series Da Vinci's Demons was pretty bad. The men were dressed in sort of appropriate Renaissancely gear if you didn't look too closely, but the women had bizarre sexed-up costumes that looked more like something from Flash Gordon than any historical period.

R61,The historical inaccuracies in early film often had to do with the lack of actual research material available. If you were doing a film about the French Revolution, the studio did not send you to France. You were expected to have your own research library. Unfortunately for you, I *knew* Walter Plunkett, Edith Head, and Cecil Beaton. (And as an FYI, much of what was written about the research for Gone with the Wind was BS from the studio's PR department. )

I am not talking about modern details slipping in due to ignorance. I am talking about a conscious choice to throw out period silhouette. There is a huge difference between the pic of Norma Shearer and the Converse sneakers and the use of the song "I want Candy" in Sophia Coppola's Maria Antoinette.

The yellow dress pictured at the bottom of the blog post about the Borgias is a perfect example. It isn't even trying to be period. There are so many examples: Ripper Street, the Tudors, The Alienist.

In general, anything involving women tends to be wrong nowadays. Can't show women as they actually were in period film. One example is Dakota Fanny in the Alienist. She is on a train, smoking. A woman smoking on a train would have been thrown off immediately. Also, the Alienist gets corsets totally wrong. They were never worn next to the skin.

This is not exactly to the point, but I am always amused when "history-lite" documentaries about ancient times use scraps of silent films to dramatize events. So that when you're watching something about the Bible they'll show bits from "Intolerance" (1916) or about Ancient Rome and they show scenes from "Ben-Hur' (1925). Sound arrived in 1927-ish, but sure, there has always been film!

Talking of young people, a young woman client of mine came to my office 10 years ago and noticed a book called The Tudors there; she said, quick as a flash, "I just loved that show." Obviously she thought I was reading the book of the show; an appalling thought. I smiled sweetly and said, "Yes, I did too." The book in question was by some long-forgotten academic and was probably even then out of print.

The whole of The Tudors. I couldn't watch it. Utter crap. Sadly, people now think this is historically accurate. An actress with blue eyes to play Anne Boleyn. A stunningly beautiful actress to play Catherine of Aragon who by the time Anne came along was short, fat, middle aged, older than Henry and past being able to have children. Even Anne's worst enemies said she had the most beautiful dark eyes. So dark they were almost black.

R66 The Tudors is good entertainment, like Victoria, The Crown etc all of which contain a lot of fantasy fiction.

Of course, the biggest problem with the Tudors was Henry VIII. He remained trim and 20 his whole life. The real Henry was repulsive.

R59 is just looking to attack "young people" especially young women. Seriously, how old is the average poster here, 70?

Historical films are arguably more accurate than they were in the past, unless you think women in ancient times wore Maidenform bullet bras and white go go lipstick like they did in 50s and 60s movies

Faye Dunaway's hair, makeup and costumes for "Bonnie and Clyde." All were very rooted in the sixties, not the thirties.

I agree with R59. Having women in bonnets or tight hair buns and no lipstick would be extremely triggering to 3rd wave intersectional feminists, hence the latest “Little Women” has non-period flowing hair. These kids can’t even watch “The Handmaid’s Tale” without having a panic attack. They want to believe that a 19ty century tomboy would look and behave like Kristen Stewart

r71 is an elderly Republican looking to complain about feminists. The characters in Little Women are supposed to be CHILDREN (despite the overage actors) so, yes, they would have worn their hair long. And actresses have always sacrificed accuracy to look "hot" - do you really think the real Cleopatra looked like Liz Taylor in the movie? But acknowledging that wouldn't give you a chance to complain about intersectional feminism or "kids today" so.....

r71's idea of period accuracy, he think real Vikings looked like this

Flappers from the 1920s always dressed in headbands with very large feather plumes, feather boas, multiple large strands of pearls and very long cigarette holders. Yes, flappers tended to dress up especially for parties and other social events but the day-to-day fashions were much more subdued than often portrayed on camera. (Pictured: actress Louise Brooks in a somewhat typical flapper look)

A historically accurate image of Countess Bathory, for the curious.

Poor Louise Brooks; she went from Hollywood film star to salesgirl, then finally a call girl pretty much often destitute. One of her old flames sent her a weekly check until end of her life that kept wolf totally away from door, but still.

Argo. The real situation was arguably more of a Canadian venture. According to Jimmy Carter: "90% of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian." The British and New Zealand embassies didn't turn the Americans away, both took huge risks to protect them. Ben Affleck's character was barely in Iran in real life, and the dramatic final scene never happened, the Americans merely got onto the plane and went to Switzerland. Not quite as exciting as being chased down the runway by the Revolutionary Guards, but not as ridiculous either.

Cinderella Man depicted Russel Crowes opponent as a leering sleazebag, when there was no evidence that he was particularly corrupt.

The Goldbergs gets everything wrong about the '80s, as mentioned. It's also got bad writing and bad acting. Unwatchable! and I actually love Wendy in a lot of other stuff. She's awful in this.

Two contrasting films regarding historical accuracy and the DDR. Both The Lives of Others and Bridge of Spies are mostly fiction. Bridge of Spies goes overboard to make East Germany look bad (not that it was that great.) Also, the drive by shooting at the house never happened, though I can give that some slack. It made clear in 2 minutes what might otherwise take 15 minutes to show as small incidents building up. I f you really want to have fun, read the errors in depicting the subways in the film posted on IMDB. Those subway historians are brutal.

While the Lives of Others has a premise that is just laughable. The Stasi officer would *never* work alone. The Stasi was a complex system of checks and balances. The entire premise of the movie could not happen in real life.

Long hair in 19thcentiry movies is complicated. Yes, young girls would wear their hair down- sometimes. However, by 16 they would wear their hair up. Once Meg is married, her hair would always be up. Married women did not wear their hair down.

Everyone should read the blog at R58. Yes, women today have a huge problem with accurate depictions of women in historical film. The blogger mentions the huge push-back Madmen got for depicting women's roles in the 1960s accurately. Acknowledging this is not misogyny. A real clunker is Dakota Fanning's character smoking on a train in the late nineteenth century. She would have been thrown off immediately, possible while the train was moving.

"Yes, women today have a huge problem with accurate depictions of women in historical film. The blogger mentions the huge push-back Madmen got for depicting women's roles in the 1960s accurately. Acknowledging this is not misogyny."

Most of the people who watched and enjoyed the show were women. There was no "huge push-back" - the show was showered with awards.

In The Help Skeeter corrects a typing error with White Out. Back in those days they still used paper with a sheet of carbon paper in the typewriter for corrections. It was a pain in the ass too.

How about all those historical films where heterosexuals have sex with no fear of pregnancy, huh? I seem to be the only one who's bothered by that, but it's completely true. Safe and reliable birth control didn't happen until the 20th century, before that there were only lamb-gut condoms (intended to prevent STD transmission, the men who whore them didn't care about preventing pregnancy), or women would do things like put a squeezed out half a lemon up the wazoo, if they could afford lemons.

So any film set before, say, 1940, where an unmarried man and woman have sex without being married as a pure expression of love and take the lack of squalling consequences for granted, is historically inaccurate.

R72 = triggered millennial who has stated Zir boundaries

not at all, R73. But thanks for playing. They would have rotten teeth, coats sly woven clothing that stank, and....(hold onto yourself!) occasionally braided hair! YES! Vikings culturally appropriated hair braiding!

R77, I read that army jeeps could never keep up with a 747 and that the wind from the jets would have blown them off the runway.

"The characters in Little Women are supposed to be CHILDREN (despite the overage actors) so, yes, they would have worn their hair long."

No. I havent' seen the new movie version, but in the book, Meg and Jo at least were old enough to be out of school and working at the start of the book. As such, they were considered old enough to be looking for husbands, even if they left their jobs to go home and play "newspaper" with their sisters. As such, young women of that era would have considered themselves to be young adults, and would wear their hair up, even if in Jo's case they just wadded it up in a bun and called it a day.

But modern people consider updos to be formal, spinsterish, and unsexy, and even if Jo spends most of the story doing her best to be spinsterish and unsexy, they still wouldn't let her put her hair up. Modern filmmakers want to put "fuckable" females on the screen, and few modern viewers care about historical accuracy.

r84 = triggered Republican eldergay who just finished beating off to a picture of Donald Trump

r87 = it's not just "modern" filmmakers who want women to look good. There has always been the need to make actresses look good. That's what you don't seem to get. It's not about modern audiences or modern filmmakers. But most DLers are over 70 and want to believe everything was better in the past.

The hair/makeup in the older versions of Little Women were even more inaccurate than in the current version. But don't tell the eldergays!

The 1933 version of Little Women. Apparently, 12-year-old Amy looked like a 30-year-old Ziegfeld Girl

"[R87] = it's not just "modern" filmmakers who want women to look good. There has always been the need to make actresses look good. "

Yes, actresses have always been vain, and studio suits have always wanted to put "fuckable girls" on the screen. It's impossible to sort out who to blame for the overwhelming trend of making young women look modern, through the history of film. Remember all those Westerns from the 1960s, where the ladies had huge hair-sprayed bouffants?

I'm old, old enough to know that there was a bit of improvement in the historical accuracy of hair and costumes for a while. At least in "serious" films, hair and costumes could be fairly accurate in films made from the heyday of Merchant and Ivory until a few years ago. And that in the 1994 version of "Little Women", the girls had their hair up when appropriate.

You need to watch the 1994 version again, because Winona wore the same long and loose style that you're complaining about in the modern version.

R88 = obsessed with the idea of men (!) at 70 being on DL

R88 = early adopter of “hey boomer”

R88 = obsessed with the idea of men (!) at 70 being on DL

R88 = early adopter of “hey boomer”

R93 = obsessed with young people because he's jealous of them.

Gotta love the people who complain about "kids today" but think it's ageist to make fun of them for being old

Calling you a boomer would be a compliment, you probably make Bernie Sanders look like a tween

I think what some people here don't understand, or choose to ignore, it that there was a period around 1980 where historical accuracy in film was exceedingly important. There was one of the Masterpiece Theater productions of a Dickens novel where every stitch of clothing was sewn by hand because the sewing machine had not been invented. Even on stage where details would not show, real vintage clothing was the standard, even if it wouldn't last a week after opening.

What we see today is not so much a return to what was done in the 1930s and 40s, but a loud FUCK YOU! to historical accuracy.

You can find tons of 80s movies, tv movies, and miniseries that are inaccurate, though.

Use of wildly inaccurate military equipment in war movies drives me up the wall. Robert Shaw played the SS commander "Hessler" (inspired by Joachim Peiper) in the 60s war movie "Battle of the Bulge," and his King Tiger Tank was actually a US M-47 tank painted grey. The grey is almost as bad, as the Germans were painting their tanks a mustard yellow with brown and green markings by late 1944.

A better photo of the tank, with Shaw, from the movie.

Please tell me if this counts. In Babylon Berlin, one of the characters enters a hotel room that is papered with a William Morris wallpaper. It also has Pre-Raphaelite art on the wall. That just seems to English for 1930 Berlin, also very out of date, particularly for an upscale hotel.

Can anyone please make a strong argument why 'historical accuracy' has importance except to queens with OCD?

What difference does it make if the hair styles and costumes and make up are historically accurate? How does that make the film better? I think it does not inherently make the film better. And it might limit the creative staff.

I want these elements of the film to be theatrical and interesting to see and complimentary to the performers and the narrative. Creative is good. A great deal of faithfulness to the period is needed to convey the period to the viewer. Blowing it off entirely is not going to work. But 'historical accuracy' makes the designs more historically accurate. Not better.

"What difference does it make if the hair styles and costumes and make up are historically accurate? How does that make the film better?"

Because spotting a mistake can take the viewer out of the film, it interferes with the willing suspension of disbelief, emotional involvement, and enjoyment. Studios ought to be aware of this, and when they make historical or technical films, ought to allow for the fact that some viewers know about things like WWII machinery or Medieval clothing, or the manners and mores of other times and places.

As an example, I submit the 2005 version of "Pride and Prejudice", starring Kiera Knightley and Matthew McFadden. Okay, I'm willing to live with a certain level of inaccuracy, like lipstick on the ladies, or even Knightley putting her elbows on the table. But there were some real horrors, like Mr. Bennet actively engaging in farming, which would have made it absolutely impossible for his daughters to marry the likes of Bingley or Darcy, plus the moment when they was an awkward encounter between Darcy and Lizzie Bennet... and she sprinted away from him. Which allowed them to fit a tracking shot into a rather static film and put a bit of movement on the screen for once, but running away from an awkward social encounter would have meant social death for a gentlewoman of that period! Those people valued poise, controlling ones feelings, courage, and good manners, and despised anyone who didn't have the nerve or good manners to greet someone they didn't necessarily want to meet.

So yeah, if you make a film that totally ignores facts and realism, viewers who actually know something about the subject of the film will be disappointed and stay home. And since people who are interested in WWII or the Regency period are presumably the target audience for films about WWII or the Regency period, it makes economic sense to cater to their tastes, by using enough historical accuracy to keep them from giving up on the film.

R100, something like that could have meant to indicate the hotel was owned by an English person or catered to English tourists, or had back in the last century, and that the hotel hadn't been updated in decades.

Or it could have meant that they were re-using a set from something set in the 19th century.

The glaring inaccuracy in 2001: A Space Odyssey is that the characters use tablet computers and they did not exist until 2012.

r102, being interested in a time period is not the same thing as being an expert. I doubt 99% of people who saw Pride and Prejudice gave a shit if Knightley ran in one scene, it didn't stop them from enjoying the movie. It's like some of you have never heard of suspension of disbelief.

Of course even experts can engage in willing suspension of disbelief, R105, and even the guy who was bothered by the wrong tank is probably willing to put up with a little inaccuracy, or he wouldn't be watching fictional movies.

The threshold where willing suspension of disbelief stops and annoyance at the inaccuracies is different for every viewer, but if someone is making a movie about a specific time and place, well, you'd think they want the people who know something about that time and place to come see the movie! It doesn't really cost more to be accurate or fairly accurate, an ostentatious dress that's wrong for a given period costs no more to make than one that's right.

I'm sure the people who made Pride and Prejudice probably know more about the time period than you, the supposed expert. Your "expertise" seems to be believing that every single person had "good manners" and people never behaved horribly to each other, which is dead wrong.

Agree about mannerisms/blocking/character development since you can't really get an accurate picture on how EVERYONE behaved at a given point in history. Trying to nail today's social etiquette is going to be difficult in a couple hundred years but much easier than at a time when no video evidence or recordings existed.

The party/dance scene in the Favourite I think lent itself to the decadent and hedonistic atmosphere they were trying to portray and I think they nailed it. It was played for humor. Murdering psycho bitch from the late middle ages with a haircut 500 years from the future not-so-much.

Don't check my math. 350 years. Whoops.

Kathy Bates and Kate Winslet were too fat to survive the sinking of the Titanic,

[quote] ...but running away from an awkward social encounter would have meant social death for a gentlewoman of that period!

MARY!

It had to be stated.

R110, Molly Brown wasn't exactly petite yet she was unsinkable.

Biopics can be full of inaccuracies. One scene in Frances is an example. They re-enact a scene from Flowing Gold where she is repeatedly made to fall in the mud by a vengeful director. The movie shows her doing this on a sound stage but if you watch Flowing Gold you see that the scene was done on a location. This may seem a trifle but the logistics of doing retakes on a location are different to working in a studio.

Keen observation R113

I forgot to add the bigger problem with the re-enactment. in that I doubt it actually happened like that. Frances presents it as if the director makes her re-do the scene over and over on orders from the Paramount studio head who had a grievance with Farmer. But Flowing Gold was a loan-out to Warner Bros. a studio known for making films quickly and efficiently. They would not have tolerated a director wasting time in that way, since Frances would need to have her wardrobe and makeup and hair redone for every new take.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

I'm not an American. I've been to New York, but I have no problem with films supposedly set in the Big Apple yet filmed in Toronto while I'm sure it might bug a native New Yorker, but even I will find it unacceptable to spot Toronto needle in such a film. So yes, R101, accuracy is important. For some it's only about not having a wrist watch on a Roman soldier or a cat, for others it's about avoiding clueless social anachronisms or even having the right wallpaper.

Almost fifty years ago now BBC gave us Elizabeth R, good as things were going to get for historical drama both large and small screen. There were some other greats afterwards, but even the BeeB, ITV, etc.. aren't what they once were in terms of budgets and so forth for that sort of thing. BBC recently sold off much if not all their costume department including tons of historical costumes.

Not even NetFlix, HBO, or Amazon for all Jeff Bezo's wealth wants to spend the vast sums on research, costume, hair, make=up and all else that goes into historical dramas. They just don't think such things are sexy, nor bring in value for money.

The argument that historical accuracy in not important is anti-intellectual and often homophobic. The classic example is when someone, during film development or a 1930s film about 18th century France , pointed out that that La Marseillaise had not been written at the time, the producer's response was, "Only a fag would know that."

The point of doing a film set in a historical period is to convey history. Otherwise, set the story in modern times- if you can. A really good example is The Women. They attempted to do a modern dress film version, but the story does not work as a contemporary piece. The entire premise of the play/film is that a woman is nothing without a man and the lengths a woman will go to get/retain him. It doesn't work set in 2008. It also doesn't work set in the 30s, if you are not true to the period. The play was revived during Sex and the City and was directed as if it was Sex and the City 1930. Again, the play did not work. For the play to work, having a man has to be a life and death situation for these women. None of them are empowered. None of them are independent. The play, even though written by a woman, is heavily misogynistic. If you tone down the misogyny for contemporary audience's sensibilities, you no longer have the play.

Part of the anti-intellectualism has to do with today's trigger warning society. These people feel that nothing unpleasant should be depicted no matter how accurate. One cannot accurately depict the roles of men, women, blacks, Asians, or gays in any given period. The problem is that a lot of historical fact and fiction depends on the stratification of society, racism, and homophobia. Who could marry whom, who could associate with whom was extremely important.

R118

[quote] Part of the anti-intellectualism has to do with today's trigger warning society. These people feel that nothing unpleasant should be depicted no matter how accurate. One cannot accurately depict the roles of men, women, blacks, Asians, or gays in any given period. The problem is that a lot of historical fact and fiction depends on the stratification of society, racism, and homophobia. Who could marry whom, who could associate with whom was extremely important.

Sometimes...

[quote] The argument that historical accuracy in not important is anti-intellectual and often homophobic.

That’s a GIANT leap!

Saying because a set decorator or costumer, many of whom are gay, got a period piece wrong is homophobic is absurd.

R120, no it is not a giant leap. Attention to detail is often (usually) considered "faggy". I gave a very good, actual example. And FYI, the set decorator and costumer/ costume designer (they are not interchangeable) do not work autonomously. The director and the producer controls the look of the film. Actually, the vast majority of costume designers for film are straight women. Look at the Academy Award nominations. With the exception of 2013, the nominees are overwhelmingly female.

I asked how strict attention to historical accuracy makes a film better and the responses posted here are interesting. Respectfully, the responses are mostly not about the films, but about the individual posters' own preferences. Saying that an inaccuracy pulls the viewer out of the film is a comment about that individual writer's response. It is not about the film, at all. Clearly, any director or screen writer who works imaginatively and creatively and steps out of realism is risking being pooh-pooh'd or cut off at the knees by the adherents to Historical Accuracy.

If attention to detail is merely lacking, then the end result will probably be unsatisfactory. But the dance sequence in The Favourite is an excellent example of stepping out of realism in a film that went out of its way to capitalize on realism in its settings and, especially, its lighting. You may hate the idea of the director and the creative work of the choreographer and dancers, but it is a strong contribution that makes the film what it is. I found Kate Blanchett's film CAROL to be a dreary failure, but not because all of the New York City street scenes looked nothing at all like New York City. Had they traveled back to the 1950s to film those scenes in Judy Holliday's New York City, it would not have made the film better.

THE WOMEN is an interesting example, but I would argue, respectfully, that it stands for the opposite of the point R118 uses it to make. The 1939 film version of THE WOMEN is a broad comedy, stylized to the heavens. And back. There are no realistic characters, only comic archetypes. Whatever each of those characters is her heart and soul, she is that 110%, from start to finish. And each stitch of wardrobe underscores it to the greatest possible degree. Joan Crawford's bath tub? Fabulously absurd. Mary Boland's jewelry, complete with strings and strings of pearls? Wonderful. There is lots of truth in the comic characters of THE WOMEN, but that's not historical accuracy. Every frame of THE WOMEN is stylized to its Jungle Red claws. And that's what makes the film better than it would have been without it.

R42 IRL all of Mary's ladies were also named Mary. Most women were back then.

If you can't do something right, don't do it all!

"Part of the anti-intellectualism has to do with today's trigger warning society. These people feel that nothing unpleasant should be depicted no matter how accurate. One cannot accurately depict the roles of men, women, blacks, Asians, or gays in any given period. The problem is that a lot of historical fact and fiction depends on the stratification of society, racism, and homophobia. Who could marry whom, who could associate with whom was extremely important."

Nope, the "anti-intellectualism" is coming from the kind of people who complain about "today's trigger warning society" - Republicans. We have a president who can't spell and doesn't know basic facts and it's people like you who elected him.

R125 History thread. Please don't.

I am going to go back to my post at 119 as a response to R118 though. This partly explains his worldview. A lot of people grew up thinking Gone With The Wind was an accurate historical image of how slaves were treated. The happy, well fed slaves myth. In reality, 12 Years a Slave is the historically accurate depiction and by contrast shows Gone With the Wind to be an article of historical negationism. It's directly in contrast with the "snowflake generation" claim.

Just want to point out that Clinton was given the cut and paste treatment over her "coal miners" comment.. the full statement actually being that she wanted to retrain and innovate those areas as new forms of energy would eventually be putting them out of work.. and that she wouldn't be leaving them behind...

She never got into a direct confrontation with someone from the working class. Biden won't be nearly as scrutinized or maligned. Whatever they're talking about. I want a transcript.

Goddamnit. Ignore. R128

The biggest historical inaccuracy in The Women is colossal. No men. It does not matter where these women go, from NYC to Nevada, there is never a man in sight.

This glaring inaccuracy is the essential element that makes possible everything that follows.

R127 Actually, if you read the slave narratives, the actual stories of slaves from their own mouths, the reality was between the two.

Mary, Queen of Scots (2018) with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie not only has the two women meet, it casts a actress of Chinese ancestry as Bess of Hardwick, a black actor as Lord Randolph, and a Puerto Rican actor as the Italian David Rizzio. Then, after Rizzio has slept with Lord Darnley after his marriage to Mary, she forgives him (but not Darnley) because "it's your nature." So ridiculous.

R131 Cite your sources. All of them. This is a bald faced lie.

R133 I can't cite all of the sources because there are literally hundreds of them. Some slaves described horrible harsh experiences with their "masters" and some described them with fondness, most narratives were a mixture.

Not at all ridiculous, R132. What would be ridiculous, not to mention reprehensible and unforgivable, is to deny current artists access to current opportunity because of past racism.

Leave it in the past. I am confident you were not confused by any of that casting. You knew exactly who those characters were. Delivering the character is the actor's job. The only objection you have raised is to their race. It is wrong to do that. Wrong and ugly. You should stop doing it.

You'll be able to cite at least 100 examples then to demonstrate your claim about a lack of consensus. Which ones are they?

Why are you putting the term masters in scare quotes? It's obvious that you are a white supremacist.

I've read slave narratives. The most important being Frederick Douglass' account which you can find online for free. R134 is trafficking in myths that arose as an effort to curtail civil rights for blacks. Have I combed the entire archives that he links to and cherry picked them for some slaves expressing fondness? No.

LOC itself mentions they are unreliable for a host of reasons on the same page he links to. Get real. Next you'll be claiming the AIDS crisis and the subsequent government neglect was a great bonding experience for those attending funerals each week. Any inconsistencies with the Holocaust evidence you'd like to bring up as well?

From the Library of Congress:

[quote] The alleged untrustworthiness of these interviews with aged former slaves has, therefore, been a frequent and not inconsequential objection to their use in historical research. For example, John Blassingame, whose book The Slave Community was a pioneering effort to analyze the personal accounts of former slaves--in this case primarily the antebellum slave narratives--has been especially skeptical of the Slave Narrative Collection interviews, and, although aware of their existence, did not use them in The Slave Community for fear that their use would "lead almost inevitably to a simplistic and distorted view of the plantation as a paternalistic institution where the chief feature of life was mutual love and respect between masters and slaves."26

[quote] Certainly the interviews in the Slave Narrative Collection present problems beyond the general issue of the reliability and accuracy of recollections of the past. Not only had more than seventy years elapsed between Emancipation and the time of the interviews, but most informants had experienced slavery only as children or adolescents. Those interviewed were extremely old and most were living in conditions of abject poverty during the Depression years of the 1930s. These factors often combined to make them look upon the past through rose-colored glasses; they fondly described events and situations that had not been, in reality, so positive as they recalled them. Moreover, it is apparent that some informants, mistaking the interviewer for a government representative who might somehow assist them in their economic plight, replied to questions with flattery and calculated exaggeration in an effort to curry the interviewer's favor. Exaggeration may often have been the consequence of the interview itself, which gave informants an opportunity to be the center of attention.

r135, my problem is that it is a misrepresentation of the past that will confuse and mislead viewers. I don't have a problem with the actors playing the roles -- in fact, one of the better performances in the film IS from the Puerto Rican actor (Ismael Cruz Cordova); rather, it's how it dilutes history into a fairy tale existence of people of different races and sexual orientations when that was not the case.

There are plenty of stories about actual "POC" in prominent positions in the European past so why not make those films that reflect the reality of their experiences? We've had one a few years back - Belle (2013) - that was pretty good; how about films about Thomas-Alexandre Dumas or Abram Petrovich Gannibal?

R136 I put masters in quotation marks(not scare quotes) because I don't believe in the concept of masters. You can read them for yourself, and make up your mind about them. The very first one in the collection, I linked to, is from a man named Silas Abbott. He describes loving the masters children as brothers, and how after the war his family stayed and was given twenty acres by their former owners. The third narrative from Laura Abromson describes her owner giving slaves 500 lashes and then putting a mixture of salt and black pepper in the wounds.

I know of the problems people have with the narratives, but I reject discounting the words of actual slaves just because we do not like what they say. They were already slaves, to then completely discount their own words is a further cruelty. Also, the exaggeration can go in both directions, I'm sure some exaggerated how much they loved their owners and others exaggerated how cruel they were. For instance, Fredrick Douglas and Solomon Northup were former slaves trying to bring about the end of slavery, there is every reason to call into question their narratives, for exaggeration, as well, as it would aid their cause to exaggerate the cruelty.

I never said it was a great bonding experience. My point is that while we can all, now, agree that the very institution of slavery was wrong. It was neither the utopia of Gone With The Wind nor the horror show of recent movies. On the whole it was somewhere between and largely depended on the owner.

R139's historical evidence of happy slaves

[quote] It was neither the utopia of Gone With The Wind nor the horror show of recent movies.

Too bad there's photographic evidence to show otherwise. Your halfways compromise bullshit is itself a technique Holocaust deniers use to minimize the scale of those atrocities. Minimization IS a negationist argument. Only X amount of Jews died and there's gray area as to the causes, yada yada. I've seen this before.

Slaves were property. There were no pro's and con's.

[quote]The threshold where willing suspension of disbelief stops and annoyance at the inaccuracies is different for every viewer, but if someone is making a movie about a specific time and place, well, you'd think they want the people who know something about that time and place to come see the movie! It doesn't really cost more to be accurate or fairly accurate, an ostentatious dress that's wrong for a given period costs no more to make than one that's right.

Yes. One thing I find very bothersome is that, sometimes, certain aspects of a period film seem to be historically accurate -- for example, maybe the costumes -- while others are obviously and wildly inaccurate -- for example, maybe the women's makeup and hairstyles. In a way, I think that's almost worse than all of the elements being too modern and therefore inaccurate. Two examples I can think of from the 1960s are FUNNY GIRL and DR. ZHIVAGO.

[quote]What would be ridiculous, not to mention reprehensible and unforgivable, is to deny current artists access to current opportunity because of past racism.

Many people fully accept this argument, but that doesn't make it any less nonsensical and dangerous. Producers do not HAVE TO continue making period films, but IF they do, those films should be period accurate in terms of not casting POC actors as characters that would never, ever have been POC -- not to mention as actual historical characters who were absolutely not POC. To cast "color blind" is to rewrite history. And please don't say, "These are just movies and TV shows, people can find out the true history by reading books and watching documentaries," because lots of people won't make that effort, and anyway, I don't think that's the point.

If you want to further increase opportunity for actors of color (over and above the tremendous increase that has happened over the past decade or two), one excellent way is to produce more NEW plays and movie/TV scripts, fewer period films, and fewer Broadway revivals of old plays. But, of course, it would be better to let the revivals continue and just accept the fact that many of them are going to have all-white or mostly white casts, to avoid rewriting history.

R122, I made the comment about inaccuracies "taking the viewer out of the film". And I agree that "The Favorite" is a great example of a film that isn't strictly accurate, but which still pleases the nitpicky viewer. Yes, the dance scene worked, a touch of surrealism and modernism thrown in in a scene that was intended to be entirely about Anne's feeling hurt at being left out of the court's amusements. The momentary lack of realism felt like the scene was in Anne's head. And FYI the costumes weren't quite historically accurate but worked anyway, during that time period rich colors were in fashion but the black-and-white looked great on film. Since everything was cut and underpinned in an accurate way, it didn't matter that the colors were fanciful or the materials modern. Really, I saw an interview with the costume designer, and she (yeah, she) used materials like laser-cut neoprene. It didn't register as modern on camera at all.

And I don't think it costs more to have historically accurate production design. Does a costume designer who knows their historical shit cost more than one who wants to use their imagination? Probably not, any more than a fancy-ass queen's costume that's accurate doesn't cost any more than a fancy-ass queen's costume pulled out of someone's ass, plus if you decide to be accurate rather than fanciful, you can rent pre-existing costumes from the BBC! And shooting "The Favorite" in a pre-existing palace from that period probably cost less than building inaccurate sets.

The thing is, historical accuracy flies over the heads of the ignorant, and pleases the knowledgeable. Sometimes it even helps the box-office, I mean, I know several people who became obsessed with "Titanic" because of the incredible level of re-creation and accuracy, and saw the film 200 times just to see the details of the "Titanic". Okay, that's an extreme example, but if accurate production design costs the same as inaccurate*, then accuracy may draw in viewers that would otherwise stay home.

R141 I never said there wasn't horrible outcomes for many slaves. It is simply idiotic to think that all slave owners treated their slaves like that. Slaves were property, very expensive property, whose labor their owners depended on to make them money. A dead, sickly, or maimed slave would be less use to a slave owner, than a slave with at least minimally adequate food, clothing, and average health. I hate the analogy, but they were basically viewed like livestock. Look at farmers today, some mistreat their livestock, some treat them wonderfully, and most are in the middle. In 1850, the average slave cost the equivalent of $40,000. Today the most expensive cows average around $5,000, any farmer that pays that much for a cow and then beats, starves, maims them, etc... for the heck of it, won't be a farmer for long. But, there are some farmers who behave like that, but you can't generalize that they represent all farmers.

You also have to take into account that different slaves were treated differently field slaves were different than house slaves. Also, the location of the plantation affected how the slaves were treated. Slaves on Virginia tobacco or Low-country rice plantations were treated very differently than on cotton plantations, the former had much more free time to grow their own crops and pursue other opportunities, outside of planting and harvesting time. Whereas on the cotton plantations they used a gang system in which they basically worked year-round, except for the dead of winter. That is why a good number of slaves in Virginia and the rice areas of the Carolinas and Georgia, were able to buy their freedom and others weren't.

A great example of how it wasn't a cut and dry issue is to look at two black South Carolinians of the time, Robert Smalls and William Ellison. Robert Smalls was so determined to escape slavery that he commandeered a confederate ship and took his family and others to freedom. William Ellison however, after buying his freedom and the freedom of his wife and children, went on to become a major planter, cotton gin maker and slave breeder, that supported the Confederates.

Whoever you are that is arguing "the other side of the slavery issue," as so eloquently articulated in "Greater Tuna," I hope you are really, really old, so that you will be taking your horrid opinions with you to your heavenly reward, if any is in store for you. Everything you are writing about historical accuracy and... the other side of the slavery issue... is transparently narrow-minded and rigid, at best.

Historical Accuracy is not a hill to fight and die on. Keeping Mary Fucking Queen of Scots free from having people of color in her court, in perpetuity, is not a good thing. To do it you must perpetuate the very racist actions you say you are against. To do it you repeat the same harms to the same kinds of people, again and again and again. That you are okay with that, for the sake of Historical Accuracy, is obviously unacceptable. I don't think you will change your mind. But you might. And you should. And unlike money, you can take this with you.

Which is it? A movie should accurately portray slavery/racism as the evils that they were? But a movie should also allow minority actors to play characters that either weren't minority in reality or 99.9% likely were not even in a fictional setting? How do you reconcile two such opposite positions?

R145 You can choose to believe what you want, but it is false. The FWP slave narratives are just a few of the many collected. Many were collected and distributed purely for the purpose of defeating the abolitionist movement as propaganda. I believe learned men like Frederick Douglass who was born into slavery and helped bring about its demise. Your insistence that his account should be questioned is Trumpian. The slave narratives you've presented are unreliable historical accounts because they were collected from the elderly living through the Depression and they were likely telling the interviewers what they thought they wanted to hear. It is entirely possible to elicit false testimony from a victim-- even more so when you hold social power over them as was strongly the case in the 30's.

Lincoln did not free the slaves. It was an ongoing REBELLION since the moment they were captured and thrown in chains. Evidence of these rebellions is plentiful. Contented people do not revolt. Masters were greatly aware of slaves desires to be free and did not allow the room for potential escape by providing suitable conditions. They were given rations "like dumb animals get theirs. It was a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there…a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another" according to Booker T. Washington who was born on a Virginia planation, which you've held up as an example of a "good" one.

I'm sure in your mind Harriet Tubman was a fringe trouble maker upsetting the natural order of things and depriving all these supposedly happy slaves of their cushy accommodations generously provided by their masters. The claim that most slaves were treated well or somewhere down the middle because SOME were allowed in the house is absurd. The very notion of the house slave being so much better off is a myth according to Lewis Clarke.

[quote]"There were four house-slaves in this family, including myself, and though we had not, in all respects, so hard work as the field hands, yet in many things our condition was much worse. We were constantly exposed to the whims and passions of every member of the family; from the least to the greatest their anger was wreaked upon us. Nor was our life an easy one, in the hours of our toil or in the amount of labor performed. We were always required to sit up until all the family had retired; then we must be up at early dawn in summer, and before day in winter."

You're a denialist. It's what you were taught growing up and you'll go to your death holding these views. It is what it is. I'm grateful for films like 12 Years a Slave for busting these myths that we're all culturally inundated with to sanitize what happened.

Let's see...."The Crown", "Outlander", "The Tudors", "The White Queen".

R148, the person you’re lecturing didn’t invent those former slave interviews, they are what they are. Mentioning that they exist doesn’t automatically make someone a white supremacist as you claim.

I read about those interviews a long time ago. I have a particular interest in WPA program work because my grandfather worked for the WPA. That concept was invented for the Great Depression by FDR and the purpose was to provide work for as many types of trades and professions as possible. In my town, the local post office and my school both had wonderful 1930s art murals painted as WPA jobs for artists so they could support their families.

When I originally read about the WPA interviewers going to interview elderly former slaves, the interviewers were described as scholars who could not find work during the Depression. The ones I read about were young people who should have been establishing themselves as scholars, but there was no work. They were sent to very small towns and villages in the Deep South, but the ones I read about were young college graduate Northerners who would travel to interview the elderly people. The people were too old to travel themselves, so people had to go to them. I believe at least some of the interviews were recorded and then transcribed. The people interviewed were very elderly and it was thought that recording their thoughts before they died was worth doing as a historical document.

If you’re going to say that all these old people were liars or crazy, that’s just dismissing their personal experiences. They were the few people left on earth at that time with any first hand knowledge of that era. Assuming every one that said something you don’t like was a liar, is dismissing the only historical record we have. The whole point of recording their thoughts was so there would be a historical first account record, even though it was many years later. Many of those people were illiterate, and couldn’t write their own memoirs. Being interviewed was the only way to preserve their thoughts.

The same thing has been done with Holocaust survivors, and many of those people were also very old and described scenes from many decades before. No one discounts their accounts as being lies or by crazy people because of their age. That’s the age they were when they were interviewed. People don’t necessarily lose their minds because they’re old. If you choose to disbelieve anything you disagree with, that’s your choice.

But the interviews were recorded at the behest of a Democratic, Northern President, who had no reason to defend slavery. They were done by people from out of town, not the local Ku Klux Klan member. And while the old people were living through the Great Depression, often in poverty, many had always lived a similar lifestyle out in the country, on remote, small farms. Nothing had changed too much for them because of the Depression. They were old and retired by that time, so they weren’t working anyway.

In those days, the majority of Americans lived in rural areas and on farms. Large cities were a much smaller percentage of the population. Those old people’s small farms and modest country homes were typical for that era. My own family had a modest farm in that era: no electricity, outhouse and Sunday bath in the kitchen from water heated on the stove. That wasn’t considered particularly unusual in those days, it was pretty normal. So the idea of poverty back then is not what you think now. People weren’t as materialistic then. People weren’t conscious of lack of fancy possessions equaling “suffering.” Lots of people with no money thought they were doing fine. Including my family, who grew all their own food during the Depression and had no cash money. My mother wore dresses made of flour sacks and wore cut down adult clothing, which many children did then. That wasn’t “poor” then. Hungry was “poor.”

In the last seasons of Happy Days they stopped the period hairdos on the women, including Mrs Cunningham.

R150 My family also survived the Depression and you are wrong. Cherry picking a few Slave Narratives collected in the 30's while discounting the abundance of testimony and historical evidence that shows the true horror of what chattel slavery was in order to claim most slaves were treated well/contented is a racist endeavor and historical negationism used to justify slavery and erase the fact that these were forced labor camps.

I don't care about your sympathetic appeal to "hearing out" the now dead former slaves that were interviewed-- this is an emotional appeal and a reversal that obscures the intention of the argument you're presenting. I care about the current black people that exist in America that have to endure having their history distorted and morphed by racists like you and R145. Yes, what you are engaging in is unbridled racism akin to Holocaust denial. I care about the slaves who were not able to give testimony because they were murdered. 2 million starved and tortured during the Middle Passage transport, 85k of those destined for North America. You can't even quantify the amount of slaves that died due to deprivation, disease, and brutality within these labor camps. You can measure the health and living standards of a population by its mortality rates in early childhood. Half of all slaves born on plantations died within the first year, twice the rate of white babies. This fact alone demonstrates that what has been been claimed about living conditions and everyday life on Plantations here is manifestly untrue. This was a genocide. You will not succeed in covering it up or minimizing the destruction.

You are going to need to come back with something much more solid than "listen to what this one slave thought about their experience!" if you want to pursue this frankly disgusting defense of slavery. Enough.

And before you come back at me with some multiple paragraph screed about your grandmother wearing bread bags on her feet; DO YOUR RESEARCH. Address the mortality rate as a measure of population's health, do not just keep repeating yourself about the FWP slave narratives having equal weight as actual scholars and abolitionists of the era.

I’m going to have to block both of you girls, because you made this potentially interesting thread extremely boring with all the slavery talk.

I have appreciated the slave narrative discussion. I learned all sorts of new things.

well, smell R155

R154 Enjoy. You'll get no more of my potentially interesting threads in the future because I'm the OP that has interceded once the slavery denial became a feature.

And yeah, I'd much rather be discussing out of place coffee cups and impossible historical situations than explaining why slavery wasn't a sleepaway camp. I recognize bringing up Gone With the Wind was a mistake on a board mostly peopled by an older generation sentimental for that era in film.

New thread for anyone who found the slave narrative discussion insteresting.

This thread takes me back to Norm and Cliff counting the anachronisms in sandal flicks in Cheers. ("Norm, I'm telling you, there is no way Gaius Maximus was wearing Reeboks!")

Maybe historical accuracy WAS more important in the 80s.

For all its failings to the modern eye, at least Gone with the Wind got the hair pretty right. Scarlett's is out in the first couple of scenes, but that's because Leigh was 25 and was supposed to look 16: they had to do something to signal this. As soon as she marries Charles, when she's in company it is always either in a snood or styled close to her head with numerous combs and clips. It is looser in the "velvet curtains" seduction scene, and notably flowing (and much longer than in the opening scenes) on her honeymoon with Rhett, when she casts him out in favour of Ashley, and again in the "rape" scene. I'm sure this was consciously done to emphasise the erotic underlying these situations. (After all, there WAS quite a bit of hooker in Scarlett, which is why we love her here.)

Can we stop talking about whether slaves were beaten and go back to talking about more pressing issues, like the correct height of the waist for Regency-era gowns?

I just watched the TV version of Picnic at Hanging Rock where they had an Aboriginal girl as Marion Quade. In the film she was played by a white girl which I seem to feel is more believable for an upper-class boarding school in 1900.

Well, if anyone needs a guide to the correct placement of waistlines for Regency-era gowns, here you are!

Right up under the boobs, that's where.

I've been enjoying some of these videos the past couple of days. I've not seen The Patriot, but it sounds ridiculous:

The Queen's Favourite was total crap, although I love Olivia Coleman in everything she does.

R166 Apparently not enough to learn how to spell her name.

I’m sorry guys, but they are movies not PhD dissertations.

The filmmakers have no interest in appealing to the small number of people who have in depth knowledge of the manners, tanks, hairstyles, color palettes, local flora — or hell, even the actual history — of any given period; they are making a mass entertainment designed (hopefully) to appeal to a mass audience. This usually involves a handsome hero and a beautiful love interest (styled in a manner that reads as sexy at the moment; and with very good teeth) Overcoming Adversity and Finding Love in an exciting and suspenseful manner — no matter what the fuck actually happened.

Sure some films are appalling, and It’s fun to spot & discuss mistakes and oversights, but you really honestly and truly are not the target audience. And like any other human endeavor there is never enough money and time, even with the biggest budget, to get everting perfect. Not is there the desire; the real focus is mostly elsewhere.

And if you believe “it doesn’t cost any more to be correct” think like a Line Producer for a second — I’m shooting a WWII movie 50 years and maybe a continent away from the fact — I’m going to get whatever10 tanks are available nearby, paint a Nazi emblem on them and move onto my next headache, not source and ship some scarce, mechanically unreliable antiques that probably won’t hold up to the rigors of the shoot & that I can’t destroy if I need to.

If the hair is wrong, the props anachronistic, or the background music it from the 1980s instead of the 1880s just keep telling yourself - it only a movie.

[quote]it only a movie.

Yes, if I want attention to detail, I'll definitely be calling you.

Black people in any historical Euro-centric project or tale.

Disney is most egregious in remakes of anything:

- Beauty and the Beast - Mary Poppins Returns - Cinderella - Maleficents

R168, when it comes to things like tanks and autos that have to appear in the flesh, then yes, accurate period detail can be difficult and expensive and I can see why some productions can't take the trouble. But when it comes to re-creating battlefields with CGI, then faking up period-accurate tanks costs no more than faking up inaccurate ones.

And when it comes to sets and costumes, well, if you have to sew everything than period-accurate Regency or Medieval gowns aren't going to cost any more than inaccurate ones, and you can probably rent accurate ones from the BBC anyway. Same for sets, building accurate-looking sets doesn't cost any more than letting the production designer's imagination run wild, it's the same amount of wood, canvas, paint, whatever, either way. And if you want accuracy, you can go on location and use something that's actually from the period, as they did in "The Favorite", and that might cost less than building anything, either accurate or inaccurate.

I hate when concentration camp films don’t use actors that look like they’re starving, filthy, and teeth are rotting.

I always laugh when adult women pre-20th century have blond hair. Or very professionally done highlights.

I hate when concentration camp films don’t use actors who are actually just about to be exterminated.

Dirty Dancing - set in the early 60s but the hair was so 80s. Patrick Swayze with his mullett and Jennifer Grew with her big 80s perm and bangs.

[quote]I always laugh when adult women pre-20th century have blond hair.

If you're talking about bleached blonde hair I agree, but natural blonde hair has been around since the beginning of time.

[quote] Black people in any historical Euro-centric project or tale.

You're brainwashed. Obviously Queen Bess couldn't be played by Viola Davis, but there were several affluent members of society that were not white. Many non-affluent as well. Africans have been in Europe since Roman rule.

R176 But natural blond hair is common in children, not adults.

If your movie is not set in Denmark or Sweden, then it looks a little silly.

Some people have natural light-blonde hair as adults, but it's very rare.

There was some 19th century novel where some girl was described as having "golden hair, not yellow, dark enough for her to have visible eyebrows and eyelashes". Or words to that effect. Before mascara and eyebrow pencil, light blonde hair was considered unattractive, because natural towheads without makeup look like lashless chemo patients.

[quote]Black people in any historical Euro-centric project or tale.

I have to agree with this. While I'm in favor of inclusive casting, when you are an 19th century British society lady -- and black -- it totally takes me out of the film/show.

They did this in PBS's latest Jane Austen adaptation. It was silly.

skin color is a tricky one. few eras have been as obsessed with skin color as this one, meaning for the past few hundred years. but it does take you out to pretend that some Victorian duchess was black. didn't happen, wouldn't happen. and most medieval Europeans of course were white, but not nearly as obsessed with whiteness as all of us since the 1700s. it's a tricky one.

R180 R181 How ironic is it that a thread about historical inaccuracy is being used to spread historical inaccuracies. The story of Dido Elizabeth Belle shows these claims to be false and also off by about 100 years.... Granted, she was certainly the exception.. but that visible black people at all in Europe are sources of irritation for some should be interrogated. There was so much more happening.

Yes, there were black people in Tudor-era England, and there was a more significant African or Franco-African population in France during the 17th and 18th centuries, when that awful "Beauty and the Beast" remake was set. Both nations had trade with Moorish Spain and with Africa, and by the 18th century the trans-Atlantic slave trade was so well established that the free descendants of slaves were coming from the colonies to Europe, or people were bringing slaves to nations where they became free servants.

However, there was no direct dealings with eastern Asia during the Tudor era, and none at all during the Dark Ages. Did you know the godawful "Arthur: Legend of the Sword" had a Kung Fu Master Chinese character in Dark Ages England? Just because the director thought it was cool? Of course you didn't, you had better sense than to see that mess, and I wish I hadn't.

that is absolutely fascinating r182. But it does have all the elements of that era: illegitimate daughter, white father, black mother. she lucked out, but it doesn't change anything I wrote. She's already in a world in which black and white are big categories that people care about, even if there are occasional lucky people who escape the worst. She is given her freedom and given a lesser inheritance, which, hey good for her, and a decent marriage, but it's all part of the larger picture. We're already in a world where black people are generally inferior, and only a few very lucky black people get to escape the "black" fate.

I will say legends are legends. Beauty and the Beast, and really King Arthur, the Arthur of legend, not what may have been some very minor Welsh hill chieftan, don't exist in some actual Europe. They exist in some legendary time and I don't mind if people play around with that time.

I don't know who would have any objection to the recent theme of including people from other ethnic backgrounds in the fantasy genre especially. I really liked how Carnival Row handled this. They created an alternate Victorian-era timeline where issues of class and race were able to be addressed and the whole thing just worked. They had a great storyline with a black actor that couldn't be socially accepted because he was a different mythical species but it had black high society people as well. I think you all will like that if you haven't seen it already. It's on Amazon Prime.

Also, just my shitty little opinion, but if you're gonna have a fucking singing teapot and wardrobe there's no reason why she can't be black. Agree about blantantly rewriting undeniably white/black/asian/latino historical figures as any other ethnic background. Crazy as it sounds, these films are preserving history for future generations and they deserve to get as close to accurate portrayals of the time as we can get. I don't think future storytellers are going to be able have total unclouded objectivity if it means it's going to make someone feel bad about their place in history at a certain time.

I had a friend was was irritated to NO END that in Wonder Woman there was a peasant woman and her baby in the WWI trenches!!!! I mean, yeah, okay, it's Wonder Woman, but it really DOESN'T MAKE sense.

Speaking of inappropriate hair colors in historical films, one egregious example that immediately comes to mind is Cameron Diaz in Gangs Of New York. It's set in the 1840s and there she is with professionally styled and colored reddish-blonde hair and a red carpet makeup job. In the 1840s. She looked like she could've been on the cover of Vogue, it was ridiculous.

[quote]Too bad there's photographic evidence to show otherwise.

Just the uppity ones, R141.

"Gangs of NY" was set in the 1860s, with the Civil War providing a few plot points, and which I suppose is some excuse for the weird Asian-themed brothel we see. I mean, Japan was trading with the West by the 1860s and Chinese had been immigrating in numbers ever since gold was found in California (if not earlier), so I suppose there that New Yorkers might have an interest in the exotic east.

Which is no excuse for how ridiculous and out of period Diaz looked in that film. I mean, they kept have her wearing her corsets over her dress! And no, not even whores did that, having the corset on the outside would have seemed about as sexy to the men of the 1860s, as a modern woman wearing her bra over a blouse.

I mean, honestly.

Sorry r190 you're correct. The beginning of the film was set in the 1840s but the Cameron Diaz scenes were 1860s.

A person who worked in costume design once told me something I've never forgotten. The thing that period films and tv shows always get wrong is that everybody in the film/show is in the style of whatever year it's supposed to take place, and real life is never like that. There are always people who are in the styles of a decade or two decades behind the current times, depending of their socioeconomic status.

It's true when you think about it. In the 1980s, for example, there were still TONS of people who were still in the styles of the 1970s and even 1960s. Not everybody was wearing what was current in 1986, for example. Lots of women still had Farrah hair, and middle-aged women still had 60s helmet hair in the 80s.

Another example is that in everything that takes place in the 1920s all the women look like flappers. In the 20s there were many, many women who wouldn't have looked like they were still in the Victorian era.

Who WOULD have looked like they were still in the Victorian era. Sorry.

Right, like Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. They take place in the 50s or 60s but an elderly presumably upper middle class woman of the period would dress in modest long dresses, up to the neck, maybe with a brooch, and with unfussy hair pulled back I to a bun, just like Granny. Almost Victorian.

Accuracy is great, but it doesn't win awards.

[quote]. The thing that period films and tv shows always get wrong is that everybody in the film/show is in the style of whatever year it's supposed to take place, and real life is never like that. There are always people who are in the styles of a decade or two decades behind the current times, depending of their socioeconomic status.

I always notice this, too. If a show is set in the early '60s, all the cars on the street are from the early '60s, when there would have been cars from the '50s -- even '40s -- on the street too.

Same with home decor. If the show is set in the '50s, EVERYONE has those mod lambs and coffee tables. When most people would have had traditional decor.

I know people in 2020 whose homes haven't changed since the 1990s.

I know homes that haven't changed since the 1970s.

R168, I understand your perspective, but let me ask you this: If a studio is going to make a period film that's NOT historically accurate, why make a period film at all? Why not make films set only in the present day? Surely no one is putting a gun to their heads and saying, "You MUST make period films!" But IF they feel they must make a film about the Revolutionary War, for example, then they really should get the historical details right. That should be part of the deal, in my opinion.

[quote]Also, just my shitty little opinion, but if you're gonna have a fucking singing teapot and wardrobe there's no reason why she can't be black. Agree about blantantly rewriting undeniably white/black/asian/latino historical figures as any other ethnic background. Crazy as it sounds, these films are preserving history for future generations and they deserve to get as close to accurate portrayals of the time as we can get.

It's so interesting to see where different people draw the line. I'm with those who are taken out of a movie that shows us black people completely integrated into societies in which that was not the case historically. But, on the other hand, I was suite amused when some people got very upset at the news that the role of Ariel in the new LITTLE MERMAID would go to a black actress. I mean....she's a fish!!! I really don't think they have different "races" in the way humans do.

QUITE amused.

Olivia Colman is NOT the real Queen. Not Queen Anne. And not Queen Elizabeth, either.

Sorry. I don't mean to spoil movies and television for the OCD crowd here, but it had to be stated.

There's something to be said for productions that are able to make the audience believe things are accurate, when most of those audiences don't know anything about the era the film or tv series is set it. So, from my example, I know very very little about the Georgian era/Regency era, but I could just feel how much effort had been put in to making the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries as authentic as possible. So if someone who knows comes along later and says: "well, they didn't use that type of carriage" or something, I would just find that really interesting, and it wouldn't take away from my enjoyment of the piece.

On the other hand, the 2005 movie just feels anachronistic as a whole, once again, not knowing anything about those times. It feels like a modern movie with the trappings of 200-odd years prior. Which is interesting as I think probably every historical adaptation interprets the past through the lens of the future, but it just feels different in 2005 as opposed to when it was done in 1995.

Thanks to Jane Austen, I am more familiar with the fashions of the 1810s than I am of the 1910s.

R201 - R 168 here. Well to answer your broader question, obviously some stories only work as period stories. As to your views on my post, I may have not been clear enough.

There are some period films in which, for creative reasons, the director chooses to be in some ways anachronistic Derek Jarman's Carravaggio is an art-house example, Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" or Tony Richardson's "Tom Jones" are more mainstream films that do this. Like some posters above, you may dislike this style, but it is a choice of the director and creative team. You can say it is done to make a larger point or pander to a contemporary or both.

What most people on this thread seem to be obsessing over are the vast majority of period films that do attempt to recreate the era but don't to it to the Nth degree. Hair styles or costume details or props end up wrong; but my point is these are films, not museum installations or historic academic scholarship. They are by nature not as hung up on every small detail as an expert would be, and while there will always be some in the audience that spot the "mistake" most views won't, and movies are made for a mass audience. Films are primarily concerned with the character, entertainment and the dramatic arc of the story. They will almost always err on the attractiveness of the stars over having every piece of their onscreen presentation being completely historically correct. And there are many many instances in a production where close enough is a good deal cheaper than being exact -- film shoots are expensive, unwieldy, difficult endeavors and at a certain point the production has to pick where to spend the time and money.

'The mother (Melinda Dillon) in “A Christmas Story” '

That's because she was a raging cunt and wouldn't let the producers do her hair right.

A lot of period movies situated in the 1960s have a hard time emulating the hippie-mod-bohemian look of the late 60s.

"The hair/makeup in the older versions of Little Women were even more inaccurate than in the current version."

Oh please girl. The hair and make-up in the new Little Women is dreadfully 2019. Wait 15 years and you'll see.

Who the fuck cares about Melinda Dillon's hair? That's not what the movie was about. And for the record, lots of women had naturally curly, frizzy hair and they had better things to do than spend their life torturing it into submission.

"Room With A View" got most of the period detail on screen right, but they completely changed the ending to make it a "happy" late 20th century one. The costume queens who were nodding in approval at the wardrobe department but had never read the book didn't notice.

I hate when biopics change circumstances to make things more dramatic. At the end of Sweet Dreams, the plane Patsy Cline was on did not slam into the side of a mountain. The engine failed and the plane just crashed in the woods.

My favorite "costume queen" on the Datalounge was the antiques expert who bitched about "The Age of Innocence" having a soup tureen that was wrong for the period.

[quote]At the end of Sweet Dreams, the plane Patsy Cline was on did not slam into the side of a mountain. The engine failed and the plane just crashed in the woods.

I also think underscoring that scene with "I Fall To Pieces" was in rather bad taste.

"A lot of period movies situated in the 1960s have a hard time emulating the hippie-mod-bohemian look of the late 60s. "

As for the hippies, that's because somebody in the production isn't willing to let actors be photographed with the genuinely unkempt hair of the period, or let women look like they have no makeup. I don't know if it's the actors themselves, the hair or makeup people, or the directors or the producers, but someone always has to smooth out or neatly scrunch the long-hair wigs, and trim the beards, sideburns, or moustaches on the men.

And nobody's willing to use the white lipstick on women. It was the height of glamour back in the day, but somehow not even "Mad Men" was willing to give it a go.

R213 - Exactly - some people really can't see the forrest but for the trees.

r215 has a good point. You have to take the vanity of actors and actresses into the equation as well. Some of them surely don't want to do an authentic period re-creation because they're concerned it would look too unflattering and want to be glammed up a little, even if it's inappropriate for the period. Like what we were saying about Cameron Diaz upthread.

a woman would always pull it back, clip it, bun it, or put it under a hat.

A woman's hair can only be down when she is about to go to bed or when she has lost her mind and gone insane. All other times... a lady in command of her faculties puts her hair up and away from her face.

I have posted this elsewhere but just realised it would be better suited to this thread. People here may be interested in this video, it is about an hour just to warn you. I don't really know what I think; there are some good points here, and others I disagree with.