Do Movies Owe Us Historical Accuracy?

A discussion from Elvis and Priscilla to Gone With the Wind

When a filmmaker decides to reproduce history on film, whether they know it or not, they are taking the responsibility of an educator, but sometimes filmmakers will decide that it better serves their story to change some of the historical details. There can be many reasons for this. There could be budgetary or runtime constraints, the filmmaker could believe that the story would be more interesting if the circumstances were different, or the director could also be blending their biased opinion with fact (Castro Rumbo 4-6). A classic example is depicting vintage corsetry as overly tight and constricting as a metaphor for women’s place in society at the time

“Because cinematic historians must communicate brief but entertaining and understandable stories, they usually exercise a good deal of artistic license” (Toplin).

Audiences generally take historical films as fact, neglecting the reality of the film being a creative retelling of an event, person, or time period. Most importantly, the …