Schindler’s List. Goodfellas. The Fighter. These movies stand out as cinematic masterpieces, topping many film critics’ and aficionados’ best-of lists. But what makes pictures like these three even more special than their older cinematic peers, like Citizen Kane and The Godfather, is that they’re actually inspired by real people and events. Granted, basing a flick on a true story isn’t all it takes to make it remarkable. (You won’t see Patch Adams on any AFI list.) But finding out just how true to real life some of the best movies made in the past twenty years actually are makes them all the more impressive and inspiring.
Schindler’s List
When Steven Spielberg released this movie in 1993, it immediately reached the height of critical acclaim, going on to win several Oscars, Golden Globes, and other awards. The story of Oskar Schindler, an industrialist who ran factories in Germany during World War II, almost seems too compelling to be true. He came to Kraków in hopes of profiting from the war, and he indeed did business with the Nazis and hired Jewish workers, simply because he could pay them less. When violence against the Jews intensified, he tried to protect his employees. By using bribery and persuasion, among other tactics, he kept hundreds of people from dying in concentration camps. To date, two of Schindler’s lists of protected Jewish workers have been found and archived.
One part of the story the movie doesn’t delve into as much is the role of Schindler’s wife, Emilie, who helped her husband in his efforts. She reportedly said in an interview with a German television station in 1999, “And what about me? I saved many Jews, too.”
Goodfellas
No one makes a gangster movie like Martin Scorsese, and, arguably, no one has made a gangster movie as good as his 1990 film. It’s based on the book Wiseguy, which tells the true story of three men who rose quickly through the ranks of the Mafia and fell just as dramatically. The focus of both the book and the movie is Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta), who started out as a mobster alongside hit man Tommy DeSimone (Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito) in New York.
The author of Wiseguy, crime writer Nicholas Pileggi, worked with Scorsese on the screenplay, sharing the copious data, FBI surveillance tapes, and input from Hill that he’d collected. His first big heist, in 1967, is featured in the movie, as is a later, infamous Lufthansa robbery at JFK airport, which earned Hill and his cohorts millions of dollars in cash and jewels. Later, Hill ratted out head honchos, such as Jimmy Burke (Robert De Niro in Goodfellas), to avoid being murdered or going back to prison.
