Witch movie do you all think is the most correct history depiction?

With swords in of cause :lol:

I'd have to nominate an old Charelton Heston movie, The Warlord, as being the most authentic overall. In spite of being an older movie they managed to nail most things down pretty well. There are some issues with the arms and armor, but they are relatively slight when compared to other movies. One area where this movie excels is in the portrayal of the religious and social viewpoints of the time, as well as the living conditions. In that respect it's far better than nearly any other movie of the genre.

Yeah I think the Warlord was a good one, other than the use of prima nocte. Dialogue aside I thought some of the scenes in The LIon in Winter were nice, like when Eleanor's guard slides his knife around the seam in the other guard's coif to kill him instead of doing the hollywood thing and just punching through his armor.

Warlord is a great pick by Patrick, I think the three/four musketeers is another good one in my mind, nice historical clothing and the swordplay looked authentic to me or atleast tried to be.

Another vote for The Warlord.

The Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis is probably one of the best Viking movies, in terms of authenticity of weapons, clothing, architecture, even the horses are authentic! And not a single horned helmet! No, it's not perfect (the Saxon soldiers look like they came from the first crusade), but it's better than most....

Alexander -- Yes, it sucked. But it had some of the most accurate ancient-era arms and armor I've ever seen on the silver screen. That's what a phalanx was like, that's how it moved, that's what a war elephant attack was like, etc.... sadly, a wasted opportunity. Good history doesn't gaurantee a good story.

Eric, is that the 1973 film on Dumas book you refer to? Because thats one of my top three. The 199-something is not on my list :D

I can't believe this. When I read the first post, before reading ANY of the responses, I thought, "Warlord", the 1950s "Vikings" , and the early 70s "3 Musketeers". Guess we're all a bunch of clones!

--ElJay

Definitely Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves! :lol: :lol: :lol: :eek: :wtf: :eek: :lol:

But seriously, I too have to go with The Warlord. A little goofy at times, but still very cool. :)

How about Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"? Japanese arms and armour of that period are not something that I am an expert on, but I cannot think of any glaring inaccuracies and have never heard anyone mention any...

My two personal favorites are Richard Lester's The Three /Four Musketeers (filmed together, released separately 1973, 1974) & Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1978)



In both films, the fight sequences are choreographed by the great William "Bill" Hobbs. In the Three & Four Musketeers we see the 17th century portrayed as darker & dirtier than any previous versions of the film. The fights in the film are free of the flashiness seen in the 'Golden' days of Hollywood's swashbucklers where the heros wield cup hilted epees....a la Errol Flynn.

Hobbs presents us with a more with more realistic view of what swordplay was really like. He brings historical technique, along with punching & kicking in the mix, we also get to see the characters actually get tired whilst fighting.

The Three/Four Musketeers, IMO, is the definitive film version of the Dumas classic.

Oh yeah, it also stars Raquel Welch. :cool:


The Napoleonic film, The Duellists, with Harvey Keitel & Keith Carradine is a classic. Ridley Scott paid special attention to details of the uniforms in the film. In The Duellists, Hobbs shows the audience that duels were not one continuous thrust & parry after another; we see that a duel could be over in less than a minute.

Throughout out the film, there are two smallsword duels, three cavalry sabre duels (1 on horse back) and the final duel with pistols.







Another one of my favorites is the recent naval film, Master & Commander. Good movie. ;)

There are also many others I could mention, Rob Roy with Liam Neeson & Tim Roth for example. Some of the others fall into the 'fun' and 'not so historically perfect' category . But are great films nonetheless.

Doh, I should have mentioned Rob Roy (certainly more accurate than Braveheart, anyway).
And the Richard Lester Musketeers. And the Duellists. Master and Commander too, while we're at it....

I thought the battle scenes in The Messenger were very well done, and seemed accurate to me. The rest of the movie stunk, though...

The Last Valley. Michael Cain and Omar Sharif 1970. Set in the last quarter of The Thiry Years War , for conveying the complete desolation and despair wreaked on Germany and the quagmire this conflict became for Europe its hard to beat.
Nothing really compares to it in English (there are as I understand it some very good Eastern European movies dealing with this time period).