Movies In History: Once again, getting things right in time and place

Earlier this past week I posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Movies In History: Wind River: I often dread watching modern movies set in Wyoming (I tend to give the older ones a pass) as they get things so wrong.  And, of course, as...

What, you may ask, does this have to to with history?

Well, dagnabit, it's my blog and I can post on what I want to.  So there. 

Well, beyond that, perhaps a bit more than we think, although I will frankly admit that posting that item in the Movies In History category is stretching it, a lot.

But here's my point.

Movies about contemporary times attempt to portray a story in time and place, just like movies set in the past do.  Some do it well, and others not so much.

In either event, those films become a record in people's mind as to what things were like, whether they realize it or not.  Errors, great and small,  preserved in films; people and dinosaurs lived at the same time. . . Frontiersmen of the 1860s were carrying cartridge arms as a rule. . . . cowboys wore Levis. . . everyone in the 1970s was under 30 years old, hip, cool, and into bikinis. . . . all Vietnam veterans are crazed killers. . . no wait, all Vietnam veterans for forsaken heroes. . . . and so on, tend to get stuck there.  Perhaps ironically its often later more accurate films that get things straightened out. McCall is still carrying a cap and ball revolver in the 1870s?  Everyone in Lonesome Dove is wearing wool trousers?  You get the point.

So, on a film such as Wind River, a depiction matters in various ways, again great and small, as all such depictions do.

If you are from the Rocky Mountain West, and have watched the films set here, as a rule you will have been laughing, or crying, in the isles over wacky inaccurate portrayals of the region.  Really off the mark settings and portrayals are too darned numerous to mention. A few real off the mark examples would suffice, such as the bizarre portrayal of the modern prairie in Bad Lands which actually held that you could see city lights in Montana and Cheyenne Wyoming from the prairie simultaneously.  Or the goofball weird accents featured in portrayals like The Laramie Project (golly shucks alive Mablejean, ahh just dooon't knew what to make of it alllll, sakes alive).  Or the I'm moving to Wyoming and quitting my minimum wage job and buying a ranch (as if).

To see a film that is set in the region in contemporary times and doesn't blow it is frankly amazing.

Which does leave me wondering about so many portrayals of here and there in the past in different settings.   That gross exaggerations are taking in such musty classics as Sergeant York are obvious, but what else really misses the mark?