French film Joyeux Noel tells the story of the World War I Christmas truce from the point of view of French, British, and German soldiers. It is a touching film about an informal truce that took place on the Western Front on Christmas Day in 1914.
The story may be hard to believe, but it is completely true. The characters in the film may be fictional, but everything else is based on fact. The film was even shot in three languages, French, English, and German.
A Night to Remember
The sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the most famous tragedies in human history. Its most famous modern depictions are James Cameron’s "Titanic" and Roy Ward Baker’s "A Night to Remember."
"A Night to Remember," focuses more on the people of different classes who were on the ocean liner and how they struggled through the night to survive the disaster. The film portrays events in a gritty and realistic manner through the eyes of the ship’s second officer.
Goodfellas
Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese picked up the book Wiseguy, a non-fiction novel on the life of mafia mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill, by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi and immediately knew he wanted to make a movie out of it.
Scorsese co-wrote the screenplay with Pileggi and they based everything that took place on Pileggi’s news reports and the famous Lufthansa airline heist in 1978. They tried to change the book as little as possible, but only make the adjustments necessary so that it would work on the big screen.
The Pianist
The Pianist was based on an autobiographical book of the same name, written by Polish-Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman. The book was lauded for its incredibly touching tale of how Szpilman had survived the horrors of the Holocaust.
The film was directed by the controversial figure, Roman Polanski, who was deeply passionate about the project due to his own escape from the Krakow Ghetto in the Second World War. Polanski managed to find shelter in a farmer’s barn and stayed there until the end of the war.
127 Hours
Mountain climber Aron Ralston was canyoneering alone in the Utah desert when he became trapped by a boulder and was forced to cut off his arm in order to survive. He told his story in a book that he wrote, and that book inspired the film "127 Hours."
Ralston gave the film high praise for its accuracy. The only scene that he felt differed from what happened was when he showed two hikers a hidden pool when in reality he gave them climbing tips. Of the rest of the film, Ralson said it was “so factually accurate it is as close to a documentary as you can get and still be a drama.”