The Haunted Past

Letty -- actually the tragic story of the Crown Prince Rudolf was a favorite subject of a number of European movies in the days of the silents. And, I believe, there have been 'talkie' versions since the Charles Boyer film. I seem to remember a TV special back in the days of live TV drama such as the early Hallmark Hall of Fame. Fred Mustard Stewart uses a number of refernces to Myerling in his (dreadful, IMO) book Ellis Island.

Ellis Island was dreadful? If I watched it, I'm glad I don't remember it.

Interesting, Andrew, that you would spell it "Myerling" because that is how I would have spelled it until I looked it up on the web. What sticks in my mind is something I must have seen about an apparition appearing inside a cell, and the name Mayerling was associated with it. I didn't see the 1968 version with Omar Sharif.

Have you any suggestions about the best historical movie that you have seen that doesn't overly dramatize the event?

I've seen 3 films about the event, all of them "overly dramatized", even if with very different points of view.

Mayerling, by Terence Young, romantic and held to the drapers.
Ludwik, by Lucchino Visconti, very aesthetic, centered in the King's madness.
Private Vices, Public Virtues, by Miklos Janscó, with a very strange, choreographic style, centered on the "orgy" part and in the political conspiracy behind.

Wow! fabaezer, Sounds intriguing. I suppose the real event will be forever shrouded in mystery.

Contradictions:

http://www.austria.org/oldsite/nov95/crime.htm

Great link, Letty.

As for my misspelling of Mayerling, you know about my spelling -- it tends to be fonetik.

Andrew, that's exactly the way I spelled it, so fonik minds and all. I thought the information on the link was fascinating, too.

My favorite historical is (fortunately or unfortunately), the TV miniseries "Peter the Great." Engrossing, informative, sumptuously filmed and historically as correct as they could get it at the time (although some new revelations about the period conflict with some scenerios in the film).

Hardly any films are historically correct but if it's realism one is looking for I'd pick one that impressed me and had something to say about the grand picture of the history and the people who lived then, "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire." It could also be "Spartacus" even with its straying from real history. There are several good books about history and Hollywood, "Past Imperfect" be one of the better volumes with such contributors as Gore Vidal, John Sayles and Paul Fussell. The one that bugs me the most and is interesting because of Mr. Bush's recent statement about revisionist history is John Wayne's "The Alamo." So far off base as to be laughable and just testifies to how the right just loves to rewrite American history clear back to the War of Independence.

Mr. Wizard, I didn't see Peter the Great. I quit watching mini series after Roots and Rich Man Poor man, but I did , as you know, sit through Nicholas and Alexandra. I am still intrigued with the persona of Rasputin. I posted a thread some time ago about The Black Dahila. It seemed so odd and akin to the Scott Peterson case. Are you familiar with that?

The thing about historical films is that watching one of them will tell you a lot more about the period during which the movie was made than it will about the period it purports to represent. (Not to even mention the fact that it will tell you volumes about the people who wrote, directed and produced the thing.) Take Westerns. There have been at least a dozen movies made about Wyatt Earp and the shootout at the OK Corral. It's fascinating to watch how our conception of what happened has altered over the decades of the 20th Century. Even costuming changes to reflect current styles rather than the styles of the period.

John Wayne did it again with "The Green Berets," rewriting the history of the Vietnam war shamelessly.

The gunfight at the OK Corral lasted just seconds and all the films stretch it out, some to ridiculous length.

There was an old Alan Ladd film based upon the case of the Black Dahlia but can't remember the name. Then there's the TV movie with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.:

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0073897

Good grief, Mr. Wizard. I was in love with Alan Ladd as a kid. I do believe the name of the movie was The Black Dahlia. Recently, a homicide detective has written a book claiming that his father was a serial killer and that he is the one who killed that young hollywood hopeful.

Wonder if someone will make a movie of Jessica Lynch?

It was called "The Blue Dahlia" and actually had little to do with the mystery of the Black Dahlia:

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0038369

I was certain there was a movie before the TV movie that loosely interpreted the actual murder mystery but still the title eludes me (no movie called "The Black Dahlia.")

Also a video game called "The Black Dahlia:"

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0172179

GW, Here's a link to the book that I was talking about:

http://pub165.ezboard.com/fcrimeandjustice13552frm51.showMessage?topicID=168.topic

Sheeeeze. That's right, it was The Blue Dahlia. Don't tell me that the long term memory is going also.

I saw that video game. Might be fund to try. Sorta like Clue.

Seems to me Desi Arnez's daughter was in a film about the 50 year old murder.

There's a classic scene in The Green Berets where Wayne is looking at the setting sun. It's supposedly the China Sea and the sun is sinking into the sea. Well, the scene was filmed at Malibu, where the sun does appear to be setting into the sea. But the China Sea is east of the Vietnamese peninsula. Nice trick to get the sun to set in the East!

Merry- You remind me of a scene at the beginning of Black Hawk Down, where the Somali Muslims are depicted bowing east toward the rising sun. That's fine, except Mecca is northwards from Somalia- they should have been bowing north.

Here's a link to the Lucie Arnaz TV movie called "Who Is the Black Dahlia?."

If setting suns were the only inaccuracy or biased characterization of "The Green Berets." The movie is green alright. Not that the artistic license of changing history is not accepted from the movies. I am assuming by realistic that Letty didn't mean particularly because it was factual but because the movie took one back to those times. "Ragtime" is another commendable effort as, of course, the venerable "Bonnie and Clyde." I also love "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" even if Redford/Newman are far better looking than their historical counterparts.

Another we've gone over before that was way off base was "Cromwell," a costume travesty that took one back to some kind of spaced out Pilgrim pageant.