Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies – Books
Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies
FFC rating: 9/10
edited by Mark C. Carnes
by Bill Chambers Steven Spielberg’s nineteenth-century-set Amistad was criticized in the pages of Roger Ebert’s “Movie Answer Man” for its characters’ use of the greeting “Hello,” an uncommon conversation-starter until well after the introduction of the telephone. Experts are wont to nitpick such details, and the collection Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies has provided a panel of them a forum for their criticisms of so-called fact-based motion pictures. For trivia buffs like myself, who learn as much from what a movie gets wrong as from what it gets right, the book is page after fascinating page of Hollywood getting caught taking liberties great and small.