Unhistorical Fiction

Some historical movies really need to run a disclaimer in the opening credits, along the lines of 'any resemblance to historical fact is purely coincidental and completely unintentional on the part of the producers'.  I watched a couple of such movies, both from the sixties, which fell firmly into this category over the Easter weekend.  One was Battle of the Bulge (1965), a war movie which was extremely popular in its day and which doesn't seem to have been off of TV screens since the seventies.  It was one of a spate of US produced war movies of the era which, basically, took the name of an actual historical battle in vain, weaving an entirely fictional story around the barest of facts.  Battle of the Bulge is one of the worst offenders - General Eisenhower even came out of retirement to condemn it for its inaccuracies.  Not that that seemed to affect its box office takings.  The film was badly compromised from the outset by being filmed in Spain, which simply couldn't replicate either the terrain or climate of the Ardennes in 1944-45.  Most notably, the Ardennes campaign was fought entirely in wintry conditions - blizzards and thick snow, (indeed, the Germans deliberately coincided their offensive with a severe cold front, so that the Allies' air forces would be grounded).  While the film starts off with snow on the ground, it quickly vanishes, as do the trees, (the Ardennes is, after all, a forest), with the film's latter stages taking place on what appear to be the Russian steppes, without so much as a shrub in sight.  Worse, the film fictionalises the action and characters and ignores completely key parts of the campaign, most notably Patton's relief of Bastogne, which required an incredible feat of logistics, as he managed to disengage part of his 3rd Army from an entirely different engagement, march them north to the Ardennes, then surround the German forces who were themselves surrounding Bastogne.  It also ignores the British contribution, (surprise, surprise) and, being a Hollywood movie, has to end with a big tank battle.  Which never happened - in reality, the German advance slowed, they ran low on fuel and the skies cleared, allowing the Allies' air forces to attack them, forcing a withdrawal, as the Allied reserves (which is where the Brits come in), came into play.

It's such a terrible film, (apart from all the other inaccuracies, all of the tanks and other military hardware are completely wrong and anachronistic), you might well ask why I've sat through it so many times?  Well, it might be crap, but it is surprisingly well made crap.  If you ignore the fact that it is meant to be portraying an actual, historical, battle and instead treat it as a work of fiction, then it is quite entertaining.  Which is more than can be said for Alfred the Great (1969), Britain's contribution to the ahistorical movie genre.  Despite looking great, having a good cast and well-staged battle scenes, it quickly becomes something of a chore to watch.  Even if you don't know about Anglo-Saxon history and therefore aren't aware of the numerous liberties being taken with actual history, the film becomes a difficult watch due to an overly talky script, full of characters giving is indigestible chunks of stilted-sounding dialogue laboriously explaining every point it is trying to make.  It also has some strange ideas about Saxon England. (although, of course, England as an entity didn't exist at the time), seeming to think that it looked like Ireland (where the film was shot).  As someone who grew up in the heart of what had once been the Saxon kingdom of Wessex, I can assure you that it doesn't.  Perhaps most bizarrely, they seem to think that the Saxons didn't have roads - there's not a single one in sight.  Which ignores the fact that most of the paved roads built by the Romans would, at this time, still have been at least partially intact - indeed, to this day, many modern roads still follow their routes.  Probably the film's worst sin, though, is that it seeks to impose twentieth century ideas on historical characters, a common problem with historical movies of this era.  In this case, it seeks to make King Alfred into some kind of populist, proto-democrat, championing the rights of the oppressed.  While it is true that he made many progressive reforms to the laws of Wessex and promoted literacy and better education, the film falls well wide of the mark in its characterisation.  Cromwell (1970), similarly tries to paint the titular character as a champion of democracy and the rights of the common man - his subsequent actions as Lord Protector (conveniently not covered by the film), showed how from the truth this was.  Alfred the Great saves its greatest travesty of historical fact for the end titles, where it implies that it was King Alfred who united the Saxon kingdoms to form the first iteration of a united England (or 'Angleland' as the Saxons would have styled it), a feat which, in reality, fell to his Grandson, King Athelstan.