PatW
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> I've never accepted "well, nobody knows whether
> it's right or not" as an excuse for tossing
> authenticity out the window. For several years, I
> was a Revolutionary War/War of American
> Independence re-enactor. The orginization I
> belonged to, the Brigade of the American
> Revolution was and is extremely particular about
> getting it right. Our philosphy was, "Maybe the
> people who come to see us don't know, but WE DO!"
>
>
> PatW

For my MA in Museum Studies I did my dissertation on military re-enactment. Surveys of the public consistently showed that a need for authenticity was one of the most important considerations. They DON'T know what's correct, which is WHY they expect things to be as accurate as possible.

I'll grant you, movies and re-enactments are two seperate things. But when a movie is being made out to be historically accurate (and when the director is criticising the accuracy of another movie), that's when your real problems begin.

Here Mostow on 'Das Boot':

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"Look, "Das Boot" is a great movie. The only thing about "Das Boot" -- the fundamental untruth of that movie -- is that it tried to portray its submariners as guys who were just trying to mind their own business, as patriotic sailors, when suddenly Hitler came to power and they were reluctantly stuck fighting for the Nazi flag. In fact, that was anything but the case. These guys were all volunteers who got into the war well after Hitler came to power and were ardent Nazis. There was a heavy propaganda program in Germany that gave going into submarines special prestige and imbued these guys with the sense that they were really fighting for the F?and the fatherland.

These guys were gung-ho and pro-Nazi, and to portray otherwise is basically a complete revision of history. Clearly, near the end of the war, morale was ebbing. But I've spoken to some of our guys who captured these guys at sea, and I asked them what they were like. And they said, "They were real Nazis; they were just like out of the movies. They were blond and blue-eyed and arrogant and thought that their capture was a temporary setback, and that Hitler would come along and blow us back into the ocean."
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And on 'U-571':

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"I did a ton of research. Then I trimmed down to the coolest stuff, taken from the pages of history..."
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[archive.salon.com]

Contrast with with a distinguished British naval intelligence officer I once saw interviewed, who had interviewed countless Kriegsmarine personnel during the War, yet insisted that not one of them was a Nazi. (Kingdom of Heaven' is another major example of an error-riddled historical movie publicised as accurate - these things seem to be increasingly common).

The Great Viewing Public believe what they see. The 'Radio Times' (the main TV and Radio listings magazine in the UK) has a horrible habit of referring to historical movies as "history lessons" in its reviews. They assume, and there's no reason to suppose the majority of the general public are any different, that what is on screen is accurate. But even movies which are (as I understand it) meticiculously researched, such as 'Tora! Tora! Tora!', make errors.

Besides which, 'U-571' is - IMO, of course - a poor movie in scripting and acting, regardless of the subject matter.