The production of historical film requires a number of considerations in order to be considered a great historical film with respect to accuracy. From authenticity to avoiding inventions added for their own sake, producing a great historical film requires more than producing a merely successful narrative film. Films like The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind may be considered great films about the Civil War, but they are prevented from being considered great ôhistoricalö films because they are not historically accurate. Even when films like Glory, about an all African-American regiment fighting in the Civil War, are considered great historical films, historians and others often point to historical inaccuracies or inventions on behalf of the filmmakers that keep it from being true to history. This analysis will discuss a number of films, showing whether or not they are considered ôgreatö historical films and why.
Throughout the literature, there are two primary criteria that are deemed important in the consideration of whether or not a film is ôgreatö from a historical standpoint. The first of these criteria is authenticity. Authenticity encompasses all aspects of a film, from dress, locale, and speech to skin color, events, and characterization. As one historian says when considering historical accuracy in films about historical events and personages, ôWill the filmmakers monkey with facts, re-invent historical characters, put twenty-first century slang in the mouths of eighteenth-century people?ö (Plane 6). Typically historians pan films about history rather than praise them, primarily because they are purposeful distortions of historical events or people. For example, a film about the life of Beethoven, Immortal Beloved, is generally panned by historian critics. This is because scholars argue that nobody can verify who Beethoven wrote a letter to, willing all of his possessions to someone he referred to as...