I know that movies made from true stories are not the same as documentaries …
… but it has long annoyed me when such movies play fast and loose with the truth, especially when the additions are not improvements – which is often the case.
Last night I watched a movie based on a Holocaust memoir I’d read, and I’d also seen the author’s interview with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation. That’s really why I watched the 2011 movie In Darkness in the first place, because it’s based on that family’s experience hiding in the sewer system of Lvov for over a year.
Krystyna Chiger (later Keren) was only a young child when her family was forced into the Lvov ghetto, and then when the ghetto was liquidated they hid in Lvov’s sewer system where they remained for fourteen months. That’s the story the movie purports to tell, the same story in her book The Girl In the Green Sweater.
But it’s not the same story, although it sticks to the general outlines. Although the movie was one of the Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Film (it’s a joint Polish/German/Canadian effort), and also received a whole bunch of awards from European groups, IMHO it’s only about one-tenth the film it could have been, using the same source material. And that left me in a state of frustration at many moments while watching it, yelling at the screen things like, “That didn’t happen!” and “What about [fill in the blank]?”
The writers saw fit to add a bunch of exceptionally dramatic – sometimes cheesy and cliched – scenes that didn’t happen, and left out or minimized many of the most dramatic true events that did happen. They also threw in a host of completely gratuitous sex scenes that added nothing but more cliches.
Just to take one of many examples where the movie played down scenes when the truth would have been far more suspenseful and cinematic, we have the way the Jews managed to get fresh water every day. According to Krystyna’s book, there was a broken pipe that dripped fresh water, but it was several kilometers away from their hiding place and could only be reached by her father (or another of the men) crawling through a narrow pipe, carrying the kettle that would hold the water in his teeth the whole way. Now, we don’t need to see the entire trek, which must have taken a long time. But in the only scene in the movie that refers to the process, we see someone (is he walking or crawling? The scene is so fleeting I don’t remember) for a couple of seconds going to get the water, and to the best of my recollection he was carrying the receptacle in his hands.
That’s it for the water. No drama at all. Why oh why? And this is just one of many instances like this, including the film’s climactic scene – which I won’t describe, in case you want to watch it.
Instead, we have the repetitive sex scenes, and a few made-up action scenes as well as the action scenes that really did happen. The film also skips the main motive of the Polish Catholic man who is most instrumental in helping them – which is that he’s led a fairly dissolute life, wants to go straight, and believes that helping the Jews will save his soul. It’s an exceptionally moving fact – at least, I think so – but the movie leaves it out entirely or in one brief sentence makes a sort of oblique joke out of it.
The title In Darkness makes sense; the sewers were very dark indeed, so dark that when the survivors emerged after fourteen months, their vision was temporarily affected (although the movie shows their vision as blurred when in fact they saw things shifted to red, as though through a red filter). But it makes for a mostly dark movie, and even the scenes shot outside the sewers – and there are quite a few – are somewhat monochrome.
But there would have been a simple remedy for that. Leave out some of the hokey action scenes and the sex scenes, and give us some of the people’s previous life before the Nazis. Introduce them to us as they were before the war, and let us get to know them before they become nearly-indistinguishable from each other in the dark of the sewers. The contrast – which we learn from Krystyna’s book and her interview – was stark, and would have made good cinema. But we get none of that. We first meet these people when they’re about to escape the ghetto and go down to the sewers, and I (who knew pretty much who the actors were supposed to be) still spent at least the first half hour trying to figure out their identities.
Speaking of the characters’ missing backstories, in the film the little girl who plays Krystyna wears the green sweater of the book’s title throughout the film. But it has no significance for us; we never learn that the sweater was knitted by her grandmother. Here’s the actual story, not a bit of which is told in the movie:
The green sweater, which her paternal grandmother knit before the German invasion of Poland, was a treasured object. Two years before, Kristine had watched that beloved grandmother being loaded onto a truck and deported, likely to the nearbyBelzec death camp. When her grandmother had waved goodbye, a Nazi guard had bashed her head with the butt of a rifle.
The sweater was a precious link to prewar love for the child, from a grandparent who’d been cruelly ripped away, and the garment is now in the Holocaust Museum in DC.
And then there was the time element, which is practically ignored in the movie. The movie only discloses at the very end of the film, in titles, that the length of their sewer stay was fourteen months. Why couldn’t the viewers have known that while watching the movie, with some sort of periodic time stamps now and then to let us know how long this was taking? Instead, we have no idea, and it could just as well have been fourteen days or fourteen weeks as fourteen months.
Now that I’ve said all this, I bet it’s not a bad movie if you don’t know the story in advance. But I suggest this video in which the beauteous Krystyna (now Kristine) tells the story, or her book to which I’ve linked above. And yes, she seems to still be alive now, at around ninety years of age. A strong constitution, I guess. The video interview is from 1998, when she was 63 (and as usual, I suggest that if she speaks too slowly for you, you can watch at faster speed by adjusting the settings). It’s long but I think it’s very rewarding:
Much, much less serious, but along those lines: I thought a film based the Great Maple Syrup Heist would be interesting and kind of funny. Don’t add any goofy humor. Keep it pretty much along the facts of the actual event, but of course, speed up the story a bit. The Sticky was so removed — made up a fairy tale “woe is me!” back story — and in my opinion, not very good. The real story and background is MUCH more INTERESTING!
In general, I think too much sex is added to films where the plot line can advance easily without the added sex.
The added sex gets pretty graphic. Is that necessary? I really don’t need to see the sweaty humping bodies to know what they’re doing. Heck, you know what was going on in the old ode-era films!
About ten years ago, I had a conversation with a friend about how the film industry would ruin “The Diary of Anne Frank” with gratuitous sex.
Lassie’s Mom has gone Home.
June Lockhart has died at age 100.
I know nothing about the development and “parentage” of the film neo describes, but it usually happens that the people closest to the original story, fiction or non-fiction, don’t have much control over the final form and edits of the film.
Many great screenwriters quickly become dismayed or appalled at the final version of their story, and some more or less solve the problem by becoming directors. It takes skill, planning, and some cunning to make that jump.
Some of what neo describes as missing information could have been added via voice-over narration. Lots of film experts dismiss the simple technique as a mistake. I can sort of see the point, and yet it can get the job done when it is really needed.
Look at Orson Wells, who I believe was already extremely highly regarded when he made The Magnificent Ambersons. When he was happy with the final edit, he left the country for an extended trip to Brazil. During which the film studio re-edited and butchered the film. You can get a feel for the magnitude of the tampering from this film trivia section below:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035015/trivia/?ref_=tt_ov_ql_3
neo:
I understand. I even get nutty when reading French translators distort American writers.
Recent case in point — a translator of Richard Brautigan (“Trout Fishing in America”) who made him sound like a Parisian café intellectual, while Brautigan was a dyslexic American kid who grew up in poverty and learned to read from tabloids.
Brautigan made a silk purse out of that pig’s ear, but he never sounded French.
I understand changes that result from the special visual needs of movies, as well as the reliance on audible dialogue rather than the book’s interior thoughts or narration, but a sign of a real hack job is the box-checking that gives us the perfunctory sex scenes and, if we’re not lucky, a car chase.
Also, as you say, sometimes the original material was so obviously more striking even in cinematic form, like carrying the kettle in the teeth, and not difficult or expensive to film, that the change is purely mystifying.
Neo, it sounds understandably very disappointing. I hadn’t read the book, but did you see the series We Were the Lucky Ones? It portrays the amazing story of a Jewish Polish family and incorporates all the things you point out as necessary and worthwhile in composing the film. I highly recommend it.
One of the downsides to this “artistic license” that is often taken with movies is that too many people do NOT bother to find out the truth or even care to. So, they believe that the movie is accurate – even when it is very misleading to settle some sort of political viewpoint.
The studios do the same thing with movies made from popular (or even little-known) books: eviscerate everything that made the book well-regarded, and insert “obligatory” scenes to fit the bean-counter boilerplates.
Sometimes “cuts” and “shifts” must be made, as Wendy said, but sometimes the entire content and meaning of the book is tossed out just so the film can use the same title – that’s a scam, IMO.
Nicholas Meyer has written an excellent memoir that details the same process regarding movies he has been associated with (book author, scriptwriter, and director). I was most familiar with him as the author and then screen-writer of “The Seven-percent Solution,” but he had a long career in Hollywood, including directing 3 Star Trek movies.
Hence the title of his book, “The View from the Bridge.”
https://www.nicholas-meyer.com/the-view-from-the-bridge
And of course there is a similar title for an Arthur Miller play, “A View from the Bridge,” which I would never have known without the internet.
The movie I would not bother with, but the book would be a good read.
As a historical reader, lots of movies distort actual events for made up ones that are not as dramatic.
I go to very few movies, so I’m not precisely qualified to enter this discussion.
However. The last one I saw based on real facts was “American Sniper”. I have no idea how the movie might have strayed from the real facts. Lots and lots of real facts of combat and particularly sniping can be left out unless some kind of mood is required. And it was a story about what happened, not what you were supposed to feel.
WRT the “feel”, there were a number of guys in the theater standing at attention during the ending funeral scene.
I’ve just rented American Sniper.
This really, really bothers me also. Some have mentioned fictional works butchered by Hollywood, and that’s a different thing. It’s artists (director, screenwriter, cinematographer…) taking another artist’s (author) work and interpreting it artistically. Whether one likes the outcome, or not, artists interpret. It’s the nature of the medium and the folks who create art.
But films or books intended to convey historic facts ought to stick to the facts. At least that’s my conviction. And it really bothers me when they don’t.
I hate James Cameron’s, “Titanic” for that reason. The actual, real story is amazing enough. Enough drama for several, full length movies. Yet he focused 80% of it on a fiction that was no part of real events. A fiction, coincidentally, that focused on class struggle and made the wealthy onboard look like uncaring murderers. In reality, Astor, Strauss, Guggenheim… all behaved like gentlemen and sacrificed their lives with quiet dignity.
Oliver Stone’s, “JFK” also bothered me greatly.
Far, far too many historic movies not only rewrite history, but the butcher actual history and often makes heroes out of villains and villains out of heroes.
Rufus, I agree. And as Charles wrote:
“One of the downsides to this “artistic license” that is often taken with movies is that too many people do NOT bother to find out the truth or even care to. …”
Which reminds me of public education, sadly.
Teachers can put their own spin on a whole lot of things.
My husband is a history nut & avid reader. He has told me that to really have a knowledgable perspective about historical events, one needs to read accounts from all sides, and read ones that are published years later ( by reputable researchers , of course).
Seems overwhelming. He started young, though. I’d need more lives.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I detest Oliver Stone’s movies and what he’s done to the historical record. He has lots of company, but he’s one of the worst.
And “Titanic” defamed a real person, whose family was very upset. Please see this:
If they thought what they did to that man’s memory in that movie was okay, they are narcissistic twits.
“carried away”
It’s inexcusable for Cameron to not be conscious of the fact that how he portrayed real people could be defamatory if not done responsibly.
As to the crawling through the narrow tunnel – there is a scene in the horror/suspense movie Aliens (the best of that series, I think) in which a character (played by Lance Henriksen) has to crawl on his stomach – so, not like a baby, but like a mouse in a snake – through a very long tunnel that’s just big enough to accommodate him. They only show a few seconds of it, but the camera is very close to his sweating face, the tunnel walls are the entire rest of the frame, and you instantly grasp the claustrophobic conditions and the effort. They could’ve done it that way.
Orson Welles defamed Marion Davies in Citizen Kane. He later admitted as much, and said that he regretted it. She was a talented comic actress.
Rufus T. Firefly & Neo on Oliver Stone:
As another example of Oliver Stone’s impeccable judgment, he was a fanboy of Hugo Chavez.
(It is easy to document that Chavista “achievements” were, for the most part, smoke and mirrors. And it was so when he was alive.)
Chuck:
He didn’t use her name. It was a fictionalized version of her; he didn’t pretend it was the real person.
@ Rufus > in re movies that “butcher actual history and often makes heroes out of villains and villains out of heroes.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_(2015_film)
“Truth is a 2015 American political drama film written, directed, and produced by James Vanderbilt in his directorial debut. Based on Mary Mapes’s memoir, Truth and Duty, it dramatizes the Killian documents controversy and the resulting last days of news anchor Dan Rather (Robert Redford) and producer Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett) at CBS News.”
I trust that most of Neo’s readers recognize the Killian documents as being Rather’s failed hit job on president & candidate George W. Bush in 2004.
Jump to the Wiki segment “Response from CBS” for the real truth, presented only as controversy.
Even the Atlantic reviewer called it out.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/truth-a-terrible-terrible-movie-about-journalism/412036/
Fun fact – the Wikipedia article quoted in the Atlantic post is very, very different from the one I accessed tonight to check my, um, facts.
Or consult Power Line blog for a review – the folks there were the “amateur bloggers” whose posts aided in revealing the hoax. I remember avidly reading all the PL blog posts at the time of the debacle, FWIW. In fact, that was the gateway into my political-blog-reading addiction.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/09/truth-hollywood-style.php
Scott Johnson, who wrote many of the 2004 PLB posts, discussed the history of “Rathergate” and later, in a post for The City Journal, wondered why the NYT was lauding the new movie celebrating the film.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/truth-and-the-new-york-times
Contra both of them, the Times didn’t, and doesn’t, want to be deceived: it wanted its readers to be deceived, and still does.
The NYT in 2015 was interested in rehabilitating Rather and Mapes because it needed to buttress its own credibility, and still does.
Sadly, so far only Rather and a very few other purveyors of fake news have retired or been fired for their “mistakes” (aka lies) about Republicans, going back many years, if not decades. The NYT had then and has now a great interest in making sure that none of the other journalistic liars are brought down, and rewriting Rather’s history was one way to reinforce for their Leftist / Democrat base the narrative that the film presents:
“Our side is never wrong, even if we sometimes make innocent mistakes. It’s those dastardly conservatives pouncing who cause all the problems.”
********** Back to the topic of Neo’s post:
This article cited by PLB would have made a better movie than “Truth,” but it would have not had the correct villains and heroes for that movie’s purpose.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2015/10/30/the-truth-about-dan-rathers-deceptive-reporting-on-george-w-bush/
The bravery of these people I do not comprehend, to live through that…..
I felt the same way about Gladiator. I think it’s okay to insert made-up characters into historical drama, but I don’t think it’s okay that they then go on to radically change history. Of course you can’t count on a movie-going audience knowing enough history for it to matter to them.
On the gripping hand movies are largely made by formula these days. And real life simply isn’t made by formula, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.
The folks who finance the production of movies (and Bdway shows) are guided by money.
The producers will endeavor to make a movie that they believe will generate the most revenue, or, in the case of Bdway shows, will re-cast the original show (say, from a very successful run at a prominent regional theater) , rearrange the music and presentation of the characters and even the songs and music, in an effort to maximize revenue if/when the show hits the “big time.”
Producers of movies realize that the vast majority of potential viewers have zero knowledge of the actual facts the movie is purportedly based upon. So, making a movie that is faithful to reality is just not a top priority.
He didn’t use her name.
And the movie had nothing to do with Hearst, honest.
The two movies I’ve seen, that were true to the written story are:
Of Mice And Men
and
A River Runs Through It.
There may be others, but I haven’t seen them.
“The bravery of these people I do not comprehend, to live through that…..”
And the bravery of the Pole who helped them. He surely would have been executed if discovered. Sadly, he was hit by a car while bicycling, I believe, in 1946 and died. He was honored at Yad Vashem.
Let me suggest the movie Anthropoid, which is about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. In my view it is nearly a documentary. The attention to detail is outstanding. Weapons, uniforms (even the firemen), Heydrich’s car, the church, all exact. The torture scene, the assassination, the gunfight in the church all accurate. Even the tile floor of the apartment was correct (the real one still exists).
Some of the relationship stuff of the key characters may have been made up but are reasonable (relationships are fast in those situations). The number of German casualties in the final shootout might have been exaggerated. But the basic events are correct.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4190530/
I’ll also throw in Das Boot as a very accurate WW2 movie, but this one is well known. It isn’t about a specific evetn but is realistic to the U-boat war generally.
Also Band of Brothers and The Pacific, which are based on real accounts. Helmet for My Pillow was one of the books it was based on. In the film version I believe Lucky’s love interest in Australia was an immigrant woman I think in the actual book she was a regular Australian. Personally I just skip that part in the series, it drags the whole thing down.
Producers of movies realize that the vast majority of potential viewers have zero knowledge of the actual facts the movie is purportedly based upon. So, making a movie that is faithful to reality is just not a top priority.
Also real events often don’t make for a great movie. In particular when talking about large events it is hard to capture them in an accurate way. More of a “medium event”, but Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers was actually fairly accurate until the final scene, but the departure from accuracy was needed to make it a satisfying single movie. The final scene was a battle winning attack by Hal Moore’s troops that didn’t happen. In real life they were replaced and a long term battle was fought by their replacements.
I’ll also throw in Das Boot as a very accurate WW2 movie
Except for the P-47s sinking U-96 at the end. It made for pretty pictures, but the boat was sunk in a strategic air raid on the Wilhelmshaven naval base in 1945, i.e., strategic bombers. The boat itself was consigned to training in 1943. I kept thinking “Steven Spielberg” when I saw that ending.
A River Runs Through It.
==
Engaging movie, engaging set of short fiction. However, the film did depart from the written story in various ways. The timeline was very much compressed in the film. Also, if I’m recalling the film correctly, the circumstances of Paul Maclean’s murder were quite different and less puzzling than they were in the book or in actual history. Have to check.
It’s already bad enough that the movie-makers distort history to make things more interesting and/or cinematic; when they start from a book that already played around with the facts, there is no hope for the viewers to gain any worthwhile knowledge.
I think the gubmint ought to require films to have “fake news” disclaimers on every “historical” movie, and maybe even a screen at the end with the “what really happened” information.
Remember all the old shows that did run a screen before credits telling us “what happened next” to the major participants?
IIRC, A Man for All Seasons told us the unhappy endings of many of the characters, and then (that scumbag liar) “Sir Richard Rich died of old age in his bed.”
Or something similar.
Included for the irony, of course.
“Remember all the old shows that did run a screen before credits telling us “what happened next” to the major participants?”
‘Twas an especially useful device employed with Animal House, itself one of a handful of truthful Hollywood films of its era!
tallowpot,
Which film version of “Of Mice and Men?”
Aesop,
The scene where More threw the chalice in the water to be saved by Rich is instructive.
But Wales Rich, Wales!
One last hit on this thread.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/bayeux.png?w=717
“The Bayeux Tapestry is not strictly speaking accurate, historically. The whole story has been embroidered.”
And see this review of a new More biography.
https://rlo.acton.org/archives/127524-the-question-of-thomas-more.html