Monday, April 21, 2014

Cinderella Man vs. Historical Accuracy

Cinderella Man was a decently accurate movie about the lifestyle and struggles of people during the Great Depression. The movie had shown that Braddock, a once wealthy boxer who had won his share of bouts, was now struggling to keep his family afloat after losing a majority of his money in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Even though the movie did present some historical inaccuracies such as the age of the children during the time of the events taken place, it still had been a mostly historical film. The scenes shown in the film showed that sometimes workers didn't get work for shifts that would vary as the days went by. It also showed that the “Hoovervilles” were sometimes within the city rather than on the outskirts and that it was filled with people that were at unrest once they started to wake up from the shock of the Crash. Another example of the historical accuracy of the film was when the writer put a Jewish star on Baer's shorts, which is what he had fought with even though the start wasn't as noticeable in the film as it was during that time. This movie also showed how rough it was on the house wife and the working man when the city would come to their house and shut off their power, their heat, or stop delivering them milk when they needed it most.
The inaccuracies though are few to count from, other than the ages of the children and the somewhat use of a Brooklyn accent, which was used but not as thickly as Jim Braddock.  The attire and conditions of the time period seem to be accurate and the slang used in the ‘20s was used in the movie making it even more accurate. The director of the film really appreciated the true story behind this event in history but he knew he couldn't make as much money as he could had he gone with the complete, undying truth, he knew he had to improvise the story in  to get his point across but to still earn money, because like Jim Braddock, he had a family to support as well.

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