Are films useful in helping us about history?

Answer 1

You have to be very careful if you want to consider films as any kind of source material for historical knowledge. Pay close attention to how the film is presented. Even about well known historical events or eras rarely if ever stick only to the facts as known, without a single moment of embellishment. Film makers are in the business of presenting a certain view of historical events, and will include copious amounts of fictional dialogue, fictional situations and even events, sometimes events out of sequence (for example if for some reason the film's story line is made clearer by doing so), or introducing anachronisms. Anachronisms are any words, phrases or devices that are shown in a scene but that did not exist at the actual time the events in the scene occurred. There are countless examples of anachronism in films, sometimes deliberate and sometimes accidental. They are fun to hunt for and to find.

In Kate Hepburn's great film Lion in Winter, she collapses in despair at one point and says as an aside: "Every family has its ups and downs". This is a common phrase today, but it was not known to Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 1100's. It is an anachronism. Delivered by Hepburn, the line is pure brilliance. I believe the wrapping of Christmas gifts in the same film is also anachronistic.

Even if a film is presented as authentic as humanly possible, you must realize that the words of historical figures were not meticulously recorded in the form of modern screenplays. So films can be brilliant in and of themselves, and they can be useful too. But they do not equal or replace the need for research down to primary sources.