Outrageous Excuses 20: Authenticity

Actors, directors and designers come up with all sorts of reasons why they didn't stick to the story or reproduce the accent or the clothes:

I didn't want to do an act of mimicry. (Matthew Modine on acting in the prequel of Stranger Things)

You hire a Welsh actor to play a Welshman but he doesn’t sound Welsh enough so you get him to ham it up. 

Early folksong collectors added major “endings” to modal Scottish tunes.

George IV had Windsor Castle remodelled to look more medieval. 

I was just trying to make what had obviously happened even more clear. (Lady Carrados in Margery Allingham's Coroner's Pidgin tries to explain why she swapped poison bottles and moved the corpse.)

The author returned a very kind letter of thanks for my work and explained that she had deliberately made her heroine attractive to modern readers and if it were historically accurate the book would miss her target audience. (Via FB)

Stephen Knight explains his approach to Great Expectations: When I was asked to adapt the book I didn't take it as an invitation to climb the mountain, but simply to do my own sketch of it... This is more like a dream about a book, a way of using the timeless characters to explore timeless themes. (Such as gay orgies and opium dens...)

Some of it is dramatic licence, absolutely, but there is a truth or a greater truth in every scene. (Star of a play about Princess Diana, November 2023)

In My Fair Lady,  Audrey Hepburn was given a correct hairstyle with a bun at the back (a "Psyche knot") – but the hairdressers added a 50s bouffant on the top. (The BBC's Classic Serials from the 60s were the best-ever adaptations of Victorian novels. Clothes were accurately reproduced – but all female cast members had their hair set on rollers instead of being given the flat, straight hairdos of the time.)

In films and TV dramas set in the 40s and made in the 70s, they just couldn’t bring themselves to give male characters an authentic short-back-and-sides. Rumpole starts in the late 70s, at the tail-end of “men can have long hair now, everything has changed”. As the series progresses, the men’s hair reverts to “as you were”.

In The Imitation Game, a film about wartime computer wiz Alan Turing, the computers were made to look more dramatic: The real codebreaking machine, the Bombe, was housed in a Bakelite box. Production designer Maria Djurkovic and her team researched the working replica that is on display at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England. "Our version of the machine had to look convincing," says Djurkovic. She and director Morten Tyldum decided to reveal the machine's inner workings. They also added more red cables to give the audience the feeling that blood was pumping through its veins. (Tumblr) 

The Crown’s scriptwriter, Peter Morgan, admits: “Sometimes you have to forsake accuracy, but you must never forsake truth.” 

The director of Wild Mountain Thyme suggests people around the world wouldn't understand realistic Irish accents. (2020)

“We’re not slavish to history,” say the makers of a series about Catherine the Great. “I don’t think the real Peter ever consummated the marriage. But that’s not good TV.” (History relates that it took him 14 years.)

A certain popular TV show got permission to film in the stately home museum I used to work in and decided that they'd prefer the historically accurate yellow walls to be painted brown – for reasons? The museum management let them and didn't bother to change the colour back afterwards. (@WildWimminPod)

The costume designer for The Great Gatsby “did a lot of research” on 20s clothes but thought they were “frumpy”, so picked and chose from 20s and 30s styles and modified them to make them tighter. (No costume designer can ever quite bear to make actresses wear cloche hats in the proper way – pulled right down to the nose. See above.)  

The show’s screenwriter, Alex Cary, said he had used artistic licence because in espionage “you never quite know what the truth is, and I took that as a licence to tell a greater truth”. (Daily Telegraph, 2022, on a new film about Kim Philby. He’s winched in a working-class female character who didn’t exist, following a trend, says the Telegraph. She's married to a black doctor and all scenes take place in inspissated gloom because it was awfully dark in the olden days, you know.)

I had to find a voice for the Queen: I didn’t want to do an impression or turn her into a caricature. (Clare Foy, paraphrase. The Crown's costume designer explained how she did a lot of research but the clothes were “reimagined from my research” and weren’t a copy of something historic. OK, so she turned herself into a 50s dress designer, but surely in a historical drama we want an accurate reproduction of everything?) 

Meryl Streep is the mistress of accents, but she had trouble trying to force herself to pronounce “half” like an English speaker – it kept coming out as “haaaaaaaaaaf” instead of “harf”.

Chefs given the task of recreating Titanic’s last meal “include historic hints” and think they are fulfilling their brief. “It was opulent but heavy. It had multiple meat courses and rich sauces so we adapted it a bit for modern taste,” says Titanic Belfast’s head caterer Leo Small. “We included historic hints in every course – such as our toasted barley jus as homage to the cream of barley soup – but we used modern techniques and equipment such as sous-vide ovens, foams and Heston-like touches.” (Times April 5, 2012. So he did not recreate the menu at all. Plus nobody ate their way through the whole menu – you picked and chose.)

The Dig: Key theme from Basil Brown: "The past - it speaks to us". Oh, it has to be about US, not the Anglo-Saxons. People in the present Learning Lessons. The preachy bit. We found some amazing Anglo-Saxon art and Now We Are Better People For It. (@TimONeill007. Apparently the film shows people discovering that the Dark Ages were not so dark after all, plus a lot of marital strife, tremulous romance and cross-class friendship.)

I call this the Titanic Complex. There is a very dramatic real bit of history going on but the film makers think they need to make it more interesting by adding extra drama, like a couple having marital problems, affairs, etc... Blablabla wedding ending, oh drama, pretty young things finding love, handsome chap in uniform, blablabla... some hanky panky... who on earth thought this story needed any of that completely made-up nonsense? (@fakehistoryhunt)

In The King's Speech, therapist Lionel Logue lives in a terraced house and treats the King as a mate, says Ian Jack in The Guardian. In reality, Logue had consulting rooms in Harley Street and lived “in a Victorian villa called Beechgrove on Sydenham Hill. Beechgrove had 25 rooms, five bathrooms, five acres of garden, a tennis court and a cook”. And he said: “The greatest thing in my life, your majesty, is being able to serve you.” But, Jack concludes, “it hardly matters. The film is true to the substance.” He adds: “Logue has consulting rooms in Harley Street and yet his home seems to be a mean terraced house in the East End. The front door opens straight to the pavement, where ragged children play in the fog. The point is to show that Logue's friendship with the man who became King bridged all kinds of divisions: between a ruler and his colonial subject, between privilege and a state close to poverty, between a chippy Australian and a shy prince.” (And speech therapists add that stammers are neurological, not psychological. But are audiences really that dense? Do they need to be preached to quite so obviously?)

I know his depiction is historically inaccurate and the result of centuries of malicious rumour and disbelief that Mozart could die so young but the Salieri in 'Amadeus' is the hero we deserve. (@Oniropolis)

Makers of the film Diana (2013) just couldn't bring themselves to actually copy her hairstyle (visible in thousands of pictures from all angles), and gave the actress a do that is too flat on the top and too long at the back and sides. Perhaps not enough time had passed?

Mozart is challenged to a violin duel and upstaged by a precocious rival. His name? Joseph Bologne, AKA the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, AKA young, gifted and Black. Whether this showdown ever took place is doubtful but it makes for a playful opening to Chevalier, a new film based on the life of the long-overlooked classical composer who was also a champion fencer. (Guardian, April 2023)

At the end the director states, after I thought I was watching a movie that was historically accurate, that he had changed several characters and other aspects to make them more contemporary (meaning: what he thinks the way things ought to have been 100+ years ago, vs reality) re: gender, sexual preference, racial matters, etc. As such, the movie to a degree is fiction; a lie. Which is sad, as it detracts from the ground-breaking path that Colette lived. (kjr03215 on the film Colette, imdb)

I recently learned that no historical drama - not even the ones that put real effort into accuracy - ever gets courtly male clothing quite right for certain time periods, because the things they actually wore look SO ridiculous to modern eyes that it would change the whole story. (Abi Brown via Facebook. Another designer explained she couldn't use authentic male dress of the period because it looked too modern.)

Ben Macintyre in the Times (19 Nov 2023) plays cliché bingo. He calls those who complain about historical inaccuracies in The Crown and Napoleon “pedants and purists”. (Ad hominem.) He claims that “based on a true story” films are more historically accurate than ever before. As for his own books: In each case, the screenwriter took the true story and remade it in a new art form, for a different audience, with close historical guidance. Each was faithful to the essence of the tale, context and period detail... Film-makers are not trying to reflect truth (which is impossible anyway) but rather to create a new, believable emotional reality. The Imitation Game played fast and loose with the Enigma story but led to a massive surge of interest in what really happened at Bletchley Park. (See Lourdes below, also new Agatha Christie "adaptations" that, however unfaithful and crude, "will draw in new readers".)

Was the “swearing, sh*gging, pop music, pretty people, lovely costumes” version of history created by Netflix – which doesn’t have to worry about stuffy advertisers? There is probably an acceptable artistic justification for making a film about Queen Anne with added lesbianism, swearing, rock music and rabbits, but I can't face looking for it.

My objective was not to be an historian, but rather to find a sort of logical truth. (Deborah Davis, writer of a recent series about Marie Antoinette. Her script brings out MA’s mother’s genuine cruelty, eg making her daughter wear braces on her teeth, and obsessing over her “crooked” shoulders.)

See also historical dramas where they get everything right apart from the 60s hairstyles, or the 40s heavy make-up, or the 80s dialogue.

In the 50s, so-called sandals were just shoes with cutouts and piercings because genuine sandals were a "sign" of rebellion and bohemianism.   

Aboriginal people in Australia have never been covered by a flora and fauna act, either under federal or state law. But despite several attempts by various people to set the record straight, the myth continues to circulate, perhaps because, as one academic told Fact Check, it "embodies elements of a deeper truth about discrimination". (Abc.net.au)

So Orwell never said “the working classes smell” – but he was disappointed by them, look at the way he denigrated their reading matter in that piece about Boy’s Own stories. (He was disappointed that the magazines fed the working classes a fantasy of “aristocratic” schools with titled pupils and old grey stones.)

I personally think you have to look back to see forward. My collections were inspired by my early, most powerful memories. I remember the way my mum dressed and how back then young girls dressed like their mums. I've taken shoulder pads and reinterpreted them, rejuvenated them. First of all a few people were a bit shocked to see them again but could see I'd updated them. (Young designer quoted on bbc.com. So it's OK to revive the shoulder pad as long as you "update" them in some way – I wonder what that way was.)

Restaurants claim to be bringing back “real British cheese” and it turns out to be mozzarella. They claim they are reviving “real British food”, but it’s all over chilli jam and rocket because it’s been given a “modern twist” or “fusion elements”.

Or architects building housing “in keeping” with the surroundings by throwing in one “witty reference” to Victorian architecture (that red stripe!). Or those flats by the sea that had portholes because it’s nautical you know, and rocks behind chicken wire to symbolise er er the seabed. The flats were instantly christened the “tin can” and the rocks had to be taken away because they were dangerous.

See also plans to “rebuild the Crystal Palace” by, um, not rebuilding the Crystal Palace but building something new with a couple of “Victorian” details. (It was dropped.)

And interior designers who claim "You don't want to live in a museum!" while ripping out period features.

It all reminds me of the nun who said that people who went to Lourdes and didn't get better "had been healed in a different way". The visions of Fatima may not have been genuine, but they brought many people back to the church. See also the therapists who tell you your psychic integration is really coming on, even though you're no happier. And the people who say a statement is "true in a very real sense" when they mean "it's false". In the 70s feminists even used to say that women might not have org*sms but they "enjoyed s*x in a different way".

Healing is not the complete disappearance of your pain and trauma. Healing is acknowledging that the pain may still exist, but knowing that whatever you've gone through or whatever you're feeling doesn't define you. (Diplomats for Health in Resilient Community @DFHRC. Pass the paracetamol.)

And you can always say your made-up story is "indicative of a wider truth". Or "deeper", if you prefer. Or "where it differs from the letter it remains faithful to the spirit". I think you mean "I'm using this story from the past to say something about oppression, exclusion and relations between the sexes in 2023, because that's the current fad and I'll win prizes". The more authentic the setting, the more the characters have to preach current attitudes.

Let a current designer have the last word.

@hjhaverkamp: Sometimes it's that other elements of the production (lighting) supersede a detail of accuracy. Sometimes you concede on some points to get a win on others, because ultimately the designer is deciding which of a menu of choices tells the story best.

More here, and links to the rest.