<<Back Home    <<Back to Movie Reviews

Seabiscuit

  • Time Period: 1910s - 1940s
  • Location: California, Mexico
  • Released: 2003

Overview:

I love seeing historically accurate movies. This is the kind of attention to detail that all movies should have. This movie shows what can be done when you're willing to hire experts and pay attention to what they say. Dreamworks does historical films better than the rest -- and do you want to know why? Because they have a team of full-time staffers working there.

What was Right

  1. The movie shows scores of people listening mesmerized by Seabiscuit to the stories of Seabiscuit on the radio. This was entirely accurate. Approximately 30 million people tuned in to listen to the story of the underdog-made-good story of Seabiscuit.
  2. The costumes of upper-class people were spot-on.
  3. The depression scenes were brilliantly staged. It was as if they re-created photographs by Dorthea Lange.

What was Wrong

Really, there isn't much wrong with this movie, but I did catch a few things that weren't quite right, compared to the real events and characters.

  1. In an early scene (approx. 1910s to early 20s) the first wife of Mr. Holmes is wearing red nail polish at a dinner party. Nail polish was originally invented around 3000 BC and was used by both the Chinese and Egyptian dynastic monarchs. The Chinese formula for nailpolish included beeswax, while Nefertiti's mummy was found with henna-stained nails. Modern-ish nail polish wasn't available until the mid-1920s; a trickle-down from automobile paint innovations. In 1925, a nail polish color was widely available: it was a sheer rosy red color. Additionally, the nails were polished differently than they are today. The movie stars received the half moon manicure, a manicure that left the moon of the nail unpolished. By 1927, products were available that produced the look of what we now term the french manicure. Moreover, etiquette required that proper ladies didn't choose gaudy colors like color shown in the movie. In the 1930s Revlon and Max Factor made advances in nail polish consistency and pigments. Bright red nailpolish finally got really popular around 1940 when Rita Hayworth made long, right red, fully polished, rounded nails popular.
  2. Seabiscuit really did need companion animals to calm his nerves. In the movie, they show a labrador retriever as the companion animal. Actually, Seabiscuit had a more unconventional animal companion: at one point he was accompanied by a monkey; another companion was a terrier dog.
  3. The movie also twisted reality a bit with regard to Red Pollard's boxing career. Actually, he started and finished his boxing prior to jockeying.