The Errol Flynn film They Died with Their Boots On tells the story of Custer but is highly romanticized. Kafka incorporated both the life of author Franz Kafka and the surreal aspects of his fiction. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was based on game show host Chuck Barris' widely debunked yet popular memoir of the same name, in which he claimed to be a CIA agent. Some biopics purposely stretch the truth. Banks (2013), and Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014). Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Ben Kingsley, Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., Brad Pitt, Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, and Eddie Redmayne all gained new-found respect as dramatic actors after starring in biopics: Beatty and Dunaway as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi in Gandhi (1982), Depp as Ed Wood in Ed Wood (1994), Carrey as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon (1999), Downey as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin (1992), Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray (2004), Thompson and Hanks as P. Film representations īecause the figures portrayed are actual people, whose actions and characteristics are known to the public (or at least historically documented), biopic roles are considered some of the most demanding of actors and actresses. Also, some objected to the casting of Jennifer Lopez in Selena because she is a New York City native of Puerto Rican descent while Selena was Mexican American. Egyptian critics criticized the casting of Louis Gossett Jr., an African American actor, as Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in the 1983 TV miniseries Sadat. The casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror was objected to because of the American Wayne being cast as the Mongol warlord. Anthony Hopkins felt that he should not have played Richard Nixon in Nixon because of a lack of resemblance between the two. Casting is often a balance between similarity in looks and ability to portray the characteristics of the person. The Hurricane is not a documentary but a parable." Casting Ĭasting can be controversial for biographical films. Roger Ebert defended The Hurricane and distortions in biographical films in general, stating "those who seek the truth about a man from the film of his life might as well seek it from his loving grandmother. Christopher Robé has also written on the gender norms that underlie the biopic in his article, "Taking Hollywood Back" in the 2009 issue of Cinema Journal. Each chapter reviews key films linked by profession and concludes with further viewing list. Ellen Cheshire's Bio-Pics: a life in pictures (2014) examines UK/US films from the 1990s and 2000s. Bingham also addresses the male biopic and the female biopic as distinct genres from each other, the former generally dealing with great accomplishments, the latter generally dealing with female victimization. On the other hand, Bingham's 2010 study Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre shows how it perpetuates as a codified genre using many of the same tropes used in the studio era that has followed a similar trajectory as that shown by Rick Altman in his study, Film/Genre. Custen, in Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History (1992), regards the genre as having died with the Hollywood studio era, and in particular, Darryl F. Bingham of Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. Custen of the College of Staten Island and Dennis P. Context Chapaev, a 1934 biopic of Russian war hero Vasily Chapayev.īiopic scholars include George F. They differ from docudrama films and historical drama films in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a single person's life story or at least the most historically important years of their lives. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. A biographical film or biopic ( / ˈ b aɪ oʊ ˌ p ɪ k/) is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people.
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