Historical Fictionalized work set in a certain specified time in the past. Historical "fiction" is regarded as fiction because it most typically follows one of two formulas. Most common is the portrayal of an imaginary character interacting with real people or events as a background (Forrest Gump, 1993). Less common is the dramatization of a specific actual event, imagining dialogue and other aspects of the actions of real individuals (Oliver Stone's JFK, 1993, and Nixon, 1995). Accuracy is usually sacrificed to the personalizing or mythicizing of complex political forces, and actual chronology is telescoped and often transposed. Though both Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) are technically speaking historical dramas, the former is included in a special category of historical dramas: the war film. The same is true for films such as Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) and the many other films which have recounted versions of the famous gunfight are, of course included in the western genre. Shakespeare in Love, which deals with a world prior to films and photography, is more typical of the historical romance which includes such films as Gone with the Wind (1939)The Three Musketeers, (1948 ), Tom Jones (1963), Beckett (1964 ), and The Lion in Winter (1968).

The reliance is on the trappings of a period setting (costume, decor, locale) to lend verisimilitude, rather than accurately reproducing the complexity of historical individuals or incidents, which are very often idealized in order to exploit a nostalgic yearning for a past free of the troubles which are part of contemporary life. Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) is an historical drama which exposes the illusory nature of that idealized past and uses the trappings of the genre to draw a contrast between the dream of elegant former times and underlying realities of human nature.