Walker Bragg
5/1/15
I pledge
Historical accuracy
of Cinderella Man
The movie Cinderella Man is a great movie telling the fantastic rags to
riches story of the fighter James J. Braddock as he struggles to take care of
this family in the great depression. Some people might say that this movie is
only a boxing movie but I believe that this move shows a lot of insight on what
life was like living in the great depression.
It appears that the director, Ron Howard,
went to great lengths to keep the historical accuracy of this film as close to
real life as possible. At points this movie seemed to even go out of its way to
add historical information into the film. The whole character of Mike, Braddock’s
friend, was added to the movie to provide a different look at the people in the
great depression. Many of the historical points in this movie were provided by
Mike such as the Hooverville, working on the docks, showing how low even business
men fell during the great depression, and many other emotional problems that
people had in the great depression.
Much of James Braddock’s own life shown
in the movie was just to give incite on what his and others life was like
living in the Great Depression. Even when the movie showed us James’ life in
the 1920s and how good it was. The majority of the movie was showing peoples’
lives and how they were living and how James Braddock’s boxing had affected
their lives. Such things like when Braddock’s son stole the meat from the
butcher and how they could not afford milk or when the man came to turn off the
power and he said he had to because he really needed his job. All of these
things were showing what peoples’ lives were like in the great depression.
Through most of the film, Ron Howard,
stayed historically accurate, but one character was portrayed completely wrong.
The character Max Bear was played out to be the evil villain in the movie who
just wanted to kill people in the ring. While it is true that two of Max bears
fight led to fetal head injuries, Max Bear was a bad guy as the movie portrayed
him. Max Bear was known to have become very distraught and sad after those
fights and strongly regretted the accident. Max even donated the money from one
of his fights to the family of one of the dead fighters. Another aspect of Max
bear’s character that was changed was Star of David that Max wore on his
shorts. Ron Howard kept the star in the movie, but significantly reduced the
size and changed the color to make it not as prominent. This was probably done
as a stylistic decision or to not make the “villain” have any redeemable qualities,
since Max wore the star to protest the mistreatment of Jews in Europe before
World War 2.The Cinderella Man was not just a great movie but also had great
historical insight into the lives of people living in the Great Depression.
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