This site is intended to help people use movies to understand history, or rather, understand the real history that has been covered in the Hollywood version. Many people do not have fond memories of their history courses in high school; so much of their view of the past is shaped by what they see on the screen. Even people who are genuinely interested in history usually have too much a social life to wade through the hundreds of books necessary to understand what really happened. Therefore, I am reading these books in order to provide brief summaries of the historical background to movies, organize movies into historical eras such as WWII, American Revolution or the Crusades, and brief biographical sketches of the actors and directors who make the movies. I have no illusions about being either infallible or impartial, therefore I include mini-reviews of books about history, actors and directors so that you can learn more about each subject if you are interested.

Despite Hollywood’s flexible attitude towards history, the studios have done an admirable job of mining history for ready-made stories of adventure and romance that only require a little tweaking to add a happy ending. As a result, it is possible to study pretty much any period of history. All of this means that History on Film has an abundance of material to choose from and over time the site will attempt to cover as broad a range of "historical" films as possible.