Monday, February 15, 2010

Hollywood's History Movies

As I'm preparing for a talk on "Using Hollywood to cultivate virtue" I came across a list of movies that try to translate historical truth into cinematic entertainment. One scholar sees such films falling into four basic categories (the examples are his)::
1. exercising artistic license [And lots of it!] (Mississippi Burning; JFK);
2. drawing lessons from the past (Sergeant York, Missing);
3. reflecting current controversy in the past (Bonnie and Clyde; Patton);
4. celebrating heroism (All the President's Men; Norma Rae).
Without critique, here's 100 of Hollywood's most celebrated efforts at doing history. [It does need to be updated. So, e.g., don't forget Gladiator or The Passion of the Christ or Seabiscuit.] Try to forget Kingdom of Heaven.

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