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Post by kijii on Mar 7, 2019 17:58:21 GMT
There are many movies that cover (or relate) an event (or biography) that I would not have known about through my standard education. Although reviews often say "this is not historically accurate." Movies often tell me the story of something I would not have known about without the movie. And, they often cause me to want to learn more about the event or person.
Here are a few examples of movie like this:
55 Days at Peking (1963) generally covers the Boxer Rebellion, usually not covered anywhere else by anyone else.
The Imitation Game (2014) relates the life an an extremely important person who I had barely heard of: Alan Turing.
Breaker Morant (1980) tells a real story set in the Boer War. The Boer War is something most Americans have heard of but never really understood. At least this opens us up to question: What was this event and why it was fought.
Milk (2008) is the biography of Harvey Milk, the man how opened the closet for thousands of Americans (and non-Americans) whose story might have never have been "explained" as well as it was in this movie. That is, the movie can educate us better than books or paragraphs in a history book.
I love the way the Brits have taken off the "warts" of British colonialism with many of its epics.
What is the Raj?
What were some it contributions and what were some of it problems?
If you want to sort of experience it through a movie rather than a non-emotional textbook, you might want to see A Passage to India (1984) or Gandhi (1982).
For some American "warts" one might want to see Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) or Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Textbooks and novels can educate us with facts, but movies can take us in to feel things a little more graphically.
And what about those wonderful biopics about famous (or infamous) people?
I have learned more about World War II through movies than I could have ever learned about it through history books.
Many of these war movies were made during the war, and were made to teach us by entertaining us.
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Question: What are some of the movies that have taught you things more deeply (positive or negative) than you could have ever learned from a book, textbook, or an oral history?
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Post by mattgarth on Mar 7, 2019 18:44:19 GMT
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (Middle East conflicts)
EXODUS (birth of Israel)
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Post by teleadm on Mar 7, 2019 19:26:52 GMT
To Kill a King 2003, didn't that Britain was a Republic for a short while, during the days of Oliver Cromwell.
Australia 2008, didn't know that Japan bombed the Australia main land.
Gallipoli 1981, didn't know much of the Australian's involvment in that battle
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Post by koskiewicz on Mar 8, 2019 17:28:02 GMT
Russian Ark, with the beautiful St Petersburg Palace in Russia
Charge of the Light Brigade, coupling the famous poem with the historical battle
The Agony and the Ecstasy, homage to Michaelangelo's skill
Alexander Nevsky, for that depiction of the battle on the frozen Lake Peipus with the Teutonic KNights
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 8, 2019 22:39:11 GMT
2018 gave us two BOATS (based on a true story) films about historical women writers that sent me to Wikipedia as soon as I got home. Both are a little dry and drag a bit in the middle. Both leave a lot of history out of the women’s lives, but reading about them was very interesting.
Mary Shelley / Haifaa Al-Mansour. This true story of the author of “Frankenstein” - Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1979-1851) - demonstrates the top notch set design and costuming that has become the standard in period pictures. Other than that it is a by-the-numbers bio-pic and something of a snooze until the final quarter. Once her story arrives at the actual writing of her famous novel, interest picks up a little even though there is a contrived ending where Mary, who was forced to issue the first printing of “Frankenstein” anonymously because of her gender, is finally acknowledged as the only author. There is some needed liveliness to the middle part of the film when Tom Sturridge as Lord Byron appears.
Colette / Wash Westmoreland. This biopic of the famous French author is distinguished by a fine performance by Keira Knightley. Knightly expertly takes us through Colette’s growing idea of independence and the need for acknowledgment of her achievements (her husband’s name was on her first successful books). This was a better movie than I thought it would be, thanks to Keira.
A speaking of women as a subject of a bio-pic in 2018, let’s not pass on the acclaimed and awarded “The Favourite” with historical characters most Americans have never heard of.
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Post by vegalyra on Mar 9, 2019 0:04:49 GMT
Part of the reason I chose a B.A. in History was because of certain films sparking a long love for history at an early age. The films would inspire me to read books about certain subjects covered in the films. Granted quite a few of these films were the ones that were repeatedly rebroadcast on the local UHF stations and later on TBS or AMC, etc. Most were WW2 films, such as Destination Tokyo, Gung Ho!, Guadalcanal Diary, Bataan, Midway, Tora, Tora, Tora!, and Operation Pacific to name a few. My grandfather served in the Pacific theater so I had a little bit of first hand knowledge given to me when I had questions (although he kept his answers pretty brief). Later on I started developing interests in aspects of history unrelated to WW2 but those films were key in my developing interest in all things history.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 9, 2019 0:20:57 GMT
The 1939 version OF MICE AND MEN introduced me to the works and world of John Steinbeck.
LUST FOR LIFE to Vincent Van Gogh.
Have spent a lot of time with these two gents and their creations ever since.
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 9, 2019 0:24:53 GMT
Part of the reason I chose a B.A. in History was because of certain films sparking a long love for history at an early age. The films would inspire me to read books about certain subjects covered in the films. Granted quite a few of these films were the ones that were repeatedly rebroadcast on the local UHF stations and later on TBS or AMC, etc. Most were WW2 films, such as Destination Tokyo, Gung Ho!, Guadalcanal Diary, Bataan, Midway, Tora, Tora, Tora!, and Operation Pacific to name a few. My grandfather served in the Pacific theater so I had a little bit of first hand knowledge given to me when I had questions (although he kept his answers pretty brief). Later on I started developing interests in aspects of history unrelated to WW2 but those films were key in my developing interest in all things history. In a similar vein of a movie inspiring a young person to a career, I was once talking to a Family Practice doctor who was complaining that staff could not keep his medical facility clean enough. Then he went on about transmitting diseases. I mentioned the scene in "The Story Of Louis Pasteur" (1936) where Pasteur took the towel away from the midwife and threw it into the fireplace. His eyes got really wide and he said, "That's the movie that made me want to become a doctor!"
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Post by mattgarth on Mar 9, 2019 0:40:20 GMT
And Mike -- when Paul Muni collected his Oscar for portraying Pasteur, he noted that young boys were requesting microscopes for birthday and Christmas presents as a reaction to viewing the film.
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Post by kijii on Mar 9, 2019 2:38:03 GMT
I like the movie, Cromwell (1970), in that it presents some of the things that happened during the English Civil War. For movies that covered the period after the Restoration, there is England, My England (1995) and a very fictionalize Charles II in Forever Amber (1947). Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948) and Rob Roy (1995) touch upon the Jacobite Rising after the the House of Hanover was in rule. And, of course, there have been many movies about Victoria, Elizabeth I, and Henry VIII.
In fact, the movies (+ the Shakespeare histories) have given me, as an American, more grounding in British history.
It was these movies that encouraged me to learn the listing of the British monarchs from William the Conqueror to the present.
I was even happy to finally see a movie about Queen Anne (the last of the Stuarts) this year, but I was not as impressed as I hoped I would be with The Favourite (2018). I was hoping for a little more history and a little less "contrived playfulness."
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Post by marshamae on Mar 9, 2019 4:45:38 GMT
Second Lawrence of Arabia- my introduction to Lawrence and the mess WWI made of the Middle East.
Dr ZHIVAGO - I was already enthralled, was already taking Russian history, reading Nicholas and Alexandra, but Dr Z put a face and a personal story to the history I loved to read
The Sword and the Rose- got me started at a young age on the Tudors ?
Peter Pan- the Disney cartoon - saw it when I was 3 , became obsessed and never really came up for air. Seeing the Mary Martin musical on tv every year merely convinced me I was right to pursue it. I was in my 40’s before it occurred to me that the reason Peter would never grow up is that he was dead. Neverland , with Tiger. Lily and the mermaid lagoon seemed like a fine eternity.
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