What are the best historical movie/TV shows? (1990s, Chinese, Japan)
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Ernie Pyle's Story of G.I. Joe. A tribute to the American infantryman in World War II.
Breaker Morant South Africa during the Boer War (1899-1902). Scapegoats for the Empire.
Heart like a Wheel
Reading "Casting Notes" at the above link, I learned that Pyle had survived a friendly fire bombing at the onset of Operation Cobra. Cobra was a massive carpet bombing attack that opened a hole in German defenses in the Normandy Campaign, that enabled the breakout of Gen. George Patton's Third Army.
The casting also was superb, perhaps the best of any war movie ever made:
<<The Army agreed to Wellman's request for 150 soldiers, then training in California for further deployment to the Pacific and all veterans of the Italian campaign, to use as extras during the six weeks of filming in late 1944. Their training continued when they were not filming to present the best image possible for the Army, although the War Department allowed them to grow beards for their roles. Wellman insisted that actual soldiers speak much of the "G.I." dialogue for authenticity. He also insisted that the Hollywood actors ("as few as possible") cast in the film be required to live and train with the assigned soldiers or they would not be hired.[8]>>
Titanic is highly accurate in terms of the actual events of the sinking.
I know it's corny, but I liked Titanic. I thought it had intense special effects, & was entertaining historical fiction.
Other movies I liked w/historical story lines:
Gettysburg
1492 (Conquest of Paradise)
Mini-series I liked:
The Atlanta Child Murders (w/Morgan Freeman, 1985)
North & South (w/Patrick Swayze & lots of low-cut hoop dresses).
Always liked the way the Indiana Jones franchise used Nazis as historical villains.
I wish they'd replay Madoff w/ Richard Dryfuss. I saw one of them and didn't see the rest. Done well.
I liked Ken Burns Vietnam, but I know it's somewhat controversial within Vet circles. I was emotionally affected by it--rough to watch--but learned more. Anything Vietnam related interests me.
"Tora Tora Tora" has already been mentioned several times, it probably stands as the most accurate non documentary film ever made.
Another film which stuck very closely to the facts was "Nicolas and Alexandria', the story of Russia's last Czar and the revolution which toppled him. They obviously had to invent some dialog for some scenes, but nothing happens in the movie which did not happen in real life.
"A Bridge Too Far" altered a few facts and compressed a few characters, but as with the above, nothing happens in the film which did not take place in reality. I don't know that it was the first film to do so, but it is the first war film I can recall which showed artillery shells bursting in the air, as they actually did, rather than the typical ground blasts seen in most flicks.
Remove the boring business between Charlton Heston and his son, and "Midway" is quite accurate about the sequence of events, although much had to be overlooked in order to have a reasonable running time. The movie works much better on the small screen than it did in theaters. They blended footage they shot with actual combat footage from the war, and on the big screen it was screamingly obvious because the quality would drop terribly whenever the real footage was shown. On television this was not at all so noticeable.
The 1971 "Charge of the Light Brigade" stuck pretty closely to the facts, although some events were compressed for the sake of the flow of the drama. That was in stark contrast to the Errol Flynn "Charge of the Light Brigade" which was a joke in historical terms. That flick had the reason for the charge being Errol wanting to get personal revenge against a Turkish officer he had encountered in India. The film's end makes it seem like the charge was a success. Flynn would slaughter history once more in "They Died With Their Boots On" which ignored the facts in favor of trying to make Custer's last stand seem like a heroic, deliberate sacrifice rather than the blunder that it was. It was actually an enjoyable movie if you don't mind them inventing whatever history they felt was needed.
I watched my old video tape of this last night, complete with my hand done commercial cuts and the "superstation" bug in the lower corner. I have to admit that it does work better in the lower resolution format. As I had just watched "Tora Tora Tora" I was on the lookout for stolen footage. I easily saw six different cuts that were direct lifts from the bombing of Pearl segment in that movie. Before CGI, getting a shot of a PBY-5A Catalina blowing up was an expensive proposition.
It has always distracted me that Robert Ito played such a prominent role, since he was such a fixture on "Quincy, M.E." Seeing Pat (wax on - wax off) Morita was also distracting, and Hal Holbrook's overplayed scene stealing was just plain annoying.
The tv version that you and I watched was longer than the original and included more of the "business between Charlton Heston and his son" including the shots of his girlfriend.
The number of goofs in the film take it out of the "real description of history" category in my book: Midway (1976) - Goofs - IMDb
The final scene of the plane crashing into the deck is particularly interesting, since the actual footage of the initial strike was from 1953 when a JET hit an air pocket and crashed into the aircraft carrier (wait for it..) Midway! https://theaviationgeekclub.com/famo...movie-history/
I watched my old video tape of this last night, complete with my hand done commercial cuts and the "superstation" bug in the lower corner. I have to admit that it does work better in the lower resolution format. As I had just watched "Tora Tora Tora" I was on the lookout for stolen footage. I easily saw six different cuts that were direct lifts from the bombing of Pearl segment in that movie. Before CGI, getting a shot of a PBY-5A Catalina blowing up was an expensive proposition.
Yeah, it was annoying each time they recycled "Tora Tora Tora" footage, especially the sequence of the crippled B-17 landing..that was thrown in gratuitously because they had it, not because it added anything sensible to the film.
And speaking of goofs....Next time you happen to watch the John Wayne "Alamo" movie, which inaccurately depicts two major daylight assaults on the mission, in the first assault you will see three Mexican soldiers charging forward, a shell explodes and the three are all blown back. Then in the second and final assault scene, these same three guys make the same charge and get blown back by the same shell, they cut the scene into both charges.
Be aware that "documentary" movies are often the WORST offenders as far as bias and distortions of documented facts.
A two hour movie only equates to a couple of chapters worth of words.
"Tora, Tora, Tora" was considered one of the best attempts at historical accuracy in a feature film.
When I was a child the "Alamo" with John Wayne was one of my favorites. Decades later as an adult I worked one year in Austin/San Antonio. I learned the film was not even close to being accurate.
The more recent version of 2004 had more relative "accuracy" but was a horrible film. From simple
entertainment, the John Wayne version was much better to "watch as a Hollywood film". But both were not very good for accuracy.
Amazon has some documentaries from foreign countries. One of them was by the Russians about the Korean War. I watched all four parts just out of curiosity. It was an eye opener. I had always thought the US Air Force's aircraft loss ratio was "one of ours" vs "about fifteen of theirs". I found it is not historically accurate. It was actually roughly even with the MiGs winning some battles. I checked it on Google and it was indeed supported by documents out there.
To be fair, the Russians were honest about the struggle to get jet crafts to work. There were mechanical problems and crashes. Pressurization, g-forces, etc. were discussed in the early days of the high-altitude jet in the midst of a Cold War showdown in Korea. They were also clear about losses of pilots - casualties, effects on Russian widows, etc.
The war was very brutal. The bombing of civilians, effects of power loss, clean water, etc. showed.
The Russians also discussed a scene with a decimated all-black unit frozen in the plains near the Yellow River. I did research on that and it must have been a unit of the semi-segregated "24th" that suffered controversy for decades after the war. Army Removes Cloud Over Black Korean War Unit - tribunedigital-chicagotribune
The Americans had the advantage with the Sabres, and the Russians made it clear how they wanted to capture one intact. I thought the series was very informative. Much better than the "M.A.S.H." of my childhood. They found one that had landed at low tide but was often underwater hidden at high tide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-86_Sabre
But don't get me wrong. I am Pro-American with many veterans in my family. I was just curious about a documentary from the foreign perspective about the Korean War. One of my relatives got a purple heart in Korea from combat.
It's hard to get objective facts about wars with controversy. In summary, I thought the Russian documentary about the Korean War was actually very good with historical documents on Google to back it up.
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