Lincoln exclusively focuses on Lincoln’s days as a young lawyer in Illinois, working on a murder case.Īside from historical figures, early biopics would also feature celebrities of the day. Unlike most movies about US Presidents, Young Mr.

Lincoln (1939) is probably the most well known and revered, having been directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Lincoln. Many of these films were criticized for fabricating and romanticizing the history and facts of Custer’s life.Ībraham Lincoln also got his fair share of many, many biopics before 1950. For Custer, these include Custer’s Last Fight (1912), The Plainsman (19), Santa Fe Trail (1940), and They Died with Their Boots On (1941).

George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln are two historical figures, alive around the same time, who managed to get several biopics in cinema’s early years. Some of the first films ever made were biopics, often focusing on historical figures such as Peter the Great, Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte, and even Jesus of Nazareth. It may surprise some to learn that biographical movies have always been popular. Biopic Early Days The emergence of biopics After all, movies are not real life, and if someone really wanted to know the facts of an individual’s life, they could look up a written biography. This is nothing new, as artworks and plays have stretched the truth in some way for the sake of the art itself. More often than not, though, biopics fudge the truth for the sake of making a better movie. So if you make a biopic about someone who is still alive, you will absolutely get told about how right or wrong your biographical film is. 20th century biopics about 20th century individuals are often caught embellishing the facts for the sake of making the subject look better or worse than they really were.

Sparticus moment definition