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Saint Louis University

Dr. Michal J. Rozbicki, associate professor of history, teaches a course called "Film and History." Grand Connections asked for his comments on the best and worst motion pictures viewed from a historical perspective. One of Rozbicki's major interests is the "use" of history by society; for instance, his latest book, The Complete Colonial Gentleman (University Press of Virginia, 1998) deals with the ways historians have misinterpreted colonial American culture to satisfy certain extra-historical goals.

By Michal J. Rozbicki

Here is my list of the five best and five worst films that depict historical events. My criteria: Artistic license is OK, but a film must not depart from essential historical truth and must faithfully convey the look and feel of an era. Five best films:

1. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Splendidly renders the soulless, technical brutality of modern war and the experience of the common soldier, showing how its reality contrasts with jingoism. Great camera art; the landscape, itself looking dead, plays a major role. Mercifully, there is no Hollywood-style happy ending so the film remains faithful to the fate of more than 10 million soldiers who died during World War I.

2. Black Robe (1991). Depicts the cultural confrontation between Jesuit missionaries and Hurons in 17th century Canada. Rare in its respect for historicism; the two worlds are shown as self-contained, logical systems, separated by an invisible wall of cultural assumptions and taken-for-granted knowledge. Although not based on the life of a real Father Laforgue, it captures the spirit of the time and place (even though it was filmed on Ottawa River, an Algonquin and not Huron territory).

3. Patton (1970). Phenomenal portrayal of Patton by George C. Scott. Good as biography of this great military commander (I think of the remarkable feats of his Third Army in Europe). Depicts him with virtues and faults, courage and arrogance, and allows us to understand the man whose maxim was: "When in doubt, attack!" Pacifists as well as those who glorify him can make up their minds without being told what to think. Shortcomings: Tanks used are German, not American, and Gen. Montgomery is shown as an effete snob (which is exactly how Patton saw him).

4. Danton (1983). Tracing the Danton-Robespierre conflict, the film reveals a little-known side of the French Revolution. Director Andrzej Wajda turned its great leaders from abstract, spotless superheroes into real humans with their drinking, earrings and unshaven faces. More importantly, he shows a historical pattern Ñ which reappears in the 20th century Ñ of how the revolutionary confidence of being "on the right side of history" leads power-hungry leaders to justify terror and to eliminate (Dr. Guillotine) the politically incorrect, all for the good of "the masses," of course.

5. Amistad (1997). I am a bit reluctant here because the film inaccurately implies that the court decision somehow recognized their personhood of slaves (they were set free on a technical legality). But putting that aside, it successfully brings to the viewers the reality of slave trade and the middle passage, subjects most people do not know much about. It also effectively demonstrates how cultural differences between Americans and Africans caused entirely different perceptions of the same events. And abolitionist Theodore Joadson makes a profound point that freedom means not so much erasing as tolerating differences.

1. Cleopatra (1963). Abysmally long, deadly boring, and agonizingly trashy. Some skeletal facts are present (such as the assassination of Caesar), but the rest is Hollywood pulp in the best spirit of the kitschy Ten Commandments. And those ancient-model bikinis in the bacchanalian feast scene ...

2. They Died with Their Boots On (1941). Gen. Custer was a brave and tough if flamboyant soldier, but a noble defender of the Sioux? Oh, please ... In the weepy final scene, we hear his last will: Protect the Indians' rights to their sacred Black Hills, and Gen. Philip H. Sheridan promises to enforce it. In truth, Sheridan and Custer believed in Manifest Destiny for the West and the need to oust the "savages"; it was Custer who discovered gold in the Black Hills and wanted to wrest it from the Sioux (the film blames its developers). And Crazy Horse, one of the greatest Indian warriors, appears briefly in the film looking like a glazed klutz.

3. Reds (1981). Putting aside the dragging story of John Reed and Louise Bryant (which includes a scene Stalin would have cherished: love made to the tune of the Internationale), the Russian part of history consists largely of wordy party meetings. The Revolution is cheerfully presented as a "complete takeover by the people." Zinoviev, the great advocate of informing secret police on other people, and Trotsky, one of the co-creators of the system of terror, appear very concerned about liberty and justice. Warren Beatty probably did not know that idealistic Reed took big bucks from the Russians Ñ this is recent research Ñ but having done no homework in history he got away with it because the American public was not too familiar with the Orwellian gap between the reality of communist dictatorship and its egalitarian rhetoric.

4. JFK (1991). Another piece of creative history. For Oliver Stone, a fascist conspiracy had overtaken America and conjured up a hugely complex plot to kill Kennedy in order to thwart his supposed plan to get out of Vietnam. Pseudo-newsreels and invented scenes, such as one with Jack Ruby picking up a bullet in the hospital, falsely suggest that these things really happened. Stone is a talented artist, but he has the heart of a propagandist. Thank God he works for himself and not for some Ministry of Truth! Not my choice for a national historian.

5. Schindler's List (1994). Excellent film; fallacious historical message about the Holocaust. Spielberg cannot resist 1. the good guys/bad guys dichotomy and 2. a happy (if only partially) ending. Both are to give comfort to the psyche of the ticket-buying middle-class. Since real history does not work that way, he had to skip the tricky problem with Nazi ideology (popular in Germany) used to justify atrocities, and focus on the bad or crazy guys. The result is a simplistic point: Bad guys did it all. Then, he took as the core story the atypical, exotic exception of Oscar Schindler, a German Nazi who saved some Jewish lives. The unprepared viewer is relieved; there were bad Nazis and good Nazis (i.e. hope). Let us get real: Except for a microscopic few, the millions who died had no Schindler escape hatch. The deepest historical essence of the Holocaust Ñ and its tragic heart of darkness Ñ is that it was the absolute antithesis of a happy end. This is what the film's message distorts.