Saturday, May 14, 2011

Film and History (Take One)

(This post began with an attempt to recycle a film project from a course I designed for history majors at a state university in the late 1990s. I wanted to call that course "Doing History" but after colleagues nixed that title it was added to the roster as "Theory and Practice of History." While the film project was a major component, it was interwoven with other skill sets–such as finding resources in the library and online, presenting items in a bibliography, and the evaluation and interpretation of primary sources.)

INTRODUCTION


It’s that time of year again, movie time in classrooms across America, when teachers as well as students need to unwind after high-stakes exams (AP World History, AP European History, state-mandated exams) or just need an end-of year filler, or a last-week-of-class reward for good behavior. Certainly, it’s possible to show a feature film, perhaps over two or more class periods, for BOTH fun AND the advancement of critical thinking.

If, as suspected, many teenagers learn history from the movies, any time spent in class that gets those critical thinking cells juiced up is time well-spent. Not frivolous at all. The alternative is letting them just slurp it up, passively imbibing history, without really tasting any of the nuances that rise to the surface if we stir it up by raising questions.

What is the value of showing historical feature films? Where should we direct our critical engagement when view such films? Are film-makers also history-makers? To what extent does a critique of a film as a film (as a work produced in that medium) influence our ability to evaluate it as a depiction of history? For social studies and history teachers those questions swirl around issues of historical "quality"–which is a better (because it is broader) concept than "accuracy" (think quality in the Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance sense).

Whenever a teacher decides to show a film with an historical setting or pivoting around an historical event or person, the selection of the film itself is a process, involving questions and answers. Since the underwriting of feature films turns on profits rather than pedagogy, it is up to the individual teacher to discover in it a didactic purpose (1). The next step is devising an activity that will turn mere viewing into an exercise in historical thinking. It really comes down to this: Is this film good or good enough as history, given the class time that will be consumed by showing it? Is it "good to think with" (the favorite query of the late Claude Levi-Strauss)? I’d also ask myself: Is this really the kind of history I want to promote in my classroom?

Let’s remember, too, that even professors of world history are not (for the most part!) experts in all the national or regional fields at the base of that humongous endeavor. We also learn history from movies, as Robert Rosenstone reminds us:
  • How many professional historians, when it comes to fields outside their areas of expertise learn about the past from film? How many Americanists, for example know the great Indian leader primarily from Gandhi? Or how many Europeanists the American Civil War from Glory, or Gone with the Wind? Or how many Asianists early modern France from The Return of Martin Guerre? (2)
As an Africanist who’s had to do a lot of stretching over the years, I know how right-on this statement is. Thus, we too need to think hard about "film and history" issues, for our own benefit, not just that of our students. And for those who prepare future teachers, it is even more imperative. Inevitably, as teachers they will be finding their own "pedagogical purposes" at the movies.

Here I will present a few thoughts about these issues, a first installment (as the title of my post suggests). These are yours for the taking (or not), to apply to the showing of an end-of-year film now or to consider when adding a film or film excerpt) to next year’s lesson plans or integrating a film into a semester-long syllabus as a special project.

Every feature film is part of history, a primary source for the era of its production and, especially in the case of block-busters, for understanding the history of popular culture. Of course, it is a milestone (or a millstone) in the historical trajectory of film-making itself (a sub-field of both history and film studies) and critical thinking about almost any film of any genre is enhanced by trying to figure out how it is communicating its messages (3). This includes knowledge of technical aspects of film-making, such as ways of manipulating the lighting, and the limiting/expanding capabilities of the hardware available at any particular time (4).

When we speaking of "historical films," we are usually thinking about an inclusive category, but these films fall into two principal types: historical fiction films and historical drama films. A historical fiction film has settings and contexts that are realistic–grounded in what we know about the time and place--but the main characters are fictitious (though historical figures may appear in cameo roles). In these films the "historical setting is intrinsic to the story and meaning of the work" and that’s where audiences will perceive its historical intent (5). A historical drama film depicts, in its main characters and plot, real persons and events and therefore we expect a degree of fidelity to what is well-documented in the historical record. In practice, however, what distinguishes these types is breaking down as, increasingly, the dramatic strategy of "placing fictional characters next to historical characters in settings alternately documentable and wholly invented" (6).

In the film project from which this post is derived, the films selected for critique and analysis were historical drama films. For that reason this post will focus on historical drama though much of it may apply more generally to any films with a historical setting.

What has always bothered me about cinematic representations of historical events is their ability to imprint a particular understanding of what was really happening." This is because what we see on the screen is so vivid, so easily recalled even years later. An informant told Mark Carnes, "What has endured in my imagination all of these years are the movie’s vivid pictures." Carnes goes on to discuss psychological studies linking visual perception and memory. Today’s advances in neuroscience offer more than confirmation– they offer clearer explanations of how this occurs in the brain (7).

The power of visual images is such that even a very critically-minded historian cannot easily escape from viewing the past as they predispose us to see it. Like Philippa Levine, I’m "film-suspicious." She’s right: aesthetics, compression, simplification–all of these "visual seductions of film can have a reductive effect, and perhaps especially in historical films" (8). Now more than ever--since we inhabit a post-literate world, a highly visual world-- being suspicious is simply being prudent. Let’s be up front about the power of images to linger in our memory, to pre-shape our historical imaginations, and to interfere with attempts to use documented history to adjust what we think we know about the past.

Take any film about an actual event, a process (series of linked events and their contexts) or a life embedded in events or in the slower changes of an era. Such a film is a always a representation of history–however flawed it may be--and as a representation it is but one view of that history. Like any view, it will be incomplete and never a perfect reproduction nor even a perfect mirror. If the goal is nurturing an ability to imagine and, perhaps, to sort out multiple views of past events, then, as Robert Rosenstone points out, we need to explain how the history produced by film-makers is different from that produced by conventional historians, whose medium is text (accompanied by tables, graphs, charts, maps, scattered few illustrations).

If a historical drama film is history–but history in a different medium, that means its conventions will be those of film and "history on film will always violate the norms of written history"(9). Rosenstone calls attention to a set of fictional devices, conventions involving "Compression, Condensation, Alteration, and Metaphor." (Since I don’t have time here to explain these well-enough, let me just recommend reading the full article–as well as other work by Rosenstone, whose scholarship has shaped the "film and history" discourse since the 1980s.)

Rosenstone also makes what is potentially a very useful distinction between the "false" invention of Mississippi Burning and the "true" invention of Glory (10). The false inventions in Mississippi Burning are perpetrated by what it omits: "This story simply excludes too much we already know about Mississippi Freedom Summer and their rather belated actions of the FBI to solve the murder of there three civil rights workers." The true inventions in Glory include an undocumented incident that is "one of many ways the film has of pointing to the kinds of Northern racism that black soldiers faced" and even in its other simplifications "it proposes nothing that clashes with the ‘truth’ of the Fifty-fourth Regiment." It is here that teachers and students need to apply their critical thinking skills, first to find what is invented, and then to judge it according to the historical record, knowledge, and discourse at hand. Does an invention elicit a message that is "true" or "false"?

While I’m not completely at ease with every point Rosenstone makes (because I’m still too much of an empiricist), I do think his approach merits our attention. Better to see historical film and history as complementary than to insist upon an absolute standard of accuracy (unattainable in any medium). The humanities are moving forward inexorably into a digital age, with the digital humanities gaining prominence, we need to be open to many forms of history even though, at the same time, we will point out both their strengths and weaknesses (11).

Class Discussion of the Issues

I couldn’t resist including a few quotations that should elicit (provoke?) discussion. They are presented here for use as a hand-out. For citations see "Quotations" in the Notes section (below).

QUOTATIONS ABOUT BIG ISSUES
  
1) LOUIS MENAND: "Since Steven Spielberg made the turn toward seriousness with Schindler’s List, he has been working in a kind of no man’s land between entertainment and art. Big Hollywood entertainments on large historical subjects have almost always been manipulative, and show little evidence of embarrassment about that fact. The filmmakers want to stir audiences because audiences want to be stirred. They come to cheer, to weep, to go out for popcorn. ... The overt moral sentiment is always merely flattering: it is what audiences want to be told to thin, because it is what they already do think. They didn’t come for an argument."

2) ROBERT A. ROSENSTONE: "[A] film is a film, not a book or a lecture. Not an argument or a represenation on a page but a work that creates a world for us in a visual and aural medium (though film can also incorporate the written word). Were history simply a matter of getting information across, we culd all go back to writing chronicles. But we don’t. We write narratives–moral narratives–in which the demands of written languge and genre inflect the kinds of things we can say about the past."
 
3) NATALIE ZEMON DAVIS: "Historical films should let the past be the past. The play of imagination in picturing resistance to slavery can follow the rules of evidence when possible, and the spirit of the evidence when details are lacking... wishing away the harsh and strange spots in the past, softening or remodeling them like the familiar present" can only make building a desired future harder.

4) RICHARD BERNSTEIN: "When artists, intentionally or not, distort the known facts to get an effect, either political or commercial, they are on the wrong side of the line between poetic truth and historical falsification. Artists who present as fact things that never happened, who refuse to allow the truth to interfere with a good story, are betraying their art and history as well."


Class Discussion of a Particular Historical Drama Film

My advice, for any given film, is to consider aesthetics first since all of its aesthetic angles contribute to its story-telling success or failure. If the acting isn’t so good, if the scenery and props are dull or inappropriate, if the cinematography lousy, the overall impression will be that the film is a "dud" and whatever history it is allegedly conveying won’t come through very well either. In short, critical engagement begins with attention to aesthetics.

If the film works as a film, the next step is to open up the classroom conversation to ruminations about its themes and messages. Yes, I did say ruminations, because we want students to chew on their thoughts for a while. Give the audience (the class) an opportunity to share some of their "gut" reactions and let them chew on each others’ thoughts.  Consider asking these questions:

  • What is history being represented in this film?
  • What is the film really about? Perhaps we can’t really say, or maybe it wasn’t intended to have a deeper meaning?
  • Are there major and minor themes (just as there are major and minor characters)?
  • Is there a clear overall message? Or many small messages?
  • Will the diversity of life experiences among people in the audience elicit different responses? Different responses because people perceive different messages? Or different responses to essentially the same messages?
  • How does the film reflect the conventions of the film medium? For example, where is there "compression" of the time frame?
  • Are there elements of the plot that don’t seem quite right?
  • Is what happens historically plausible? But isn’t reality sometimes stranger than fiction?
  • How might we go about assessing the history conveyed in this particular film?
  • What’s in the historical record? What knowledge do we have of the events and people depicted?
  • What historical discourse and debates are relevant?
  • Are there examples of "true" invention? Of "false" invention? Are these consequential enough to justify a "true" or "false" label for the film as a work of history?
  • Are we dealing here with highly contested history? If so, is bias we can identify bias? Is it biased to the point of being propagandistic? Could it be used as propaganda? Perhaps there is evidence that it has?
From this kind of brainstorming students will develop a whole range of hypotheses about the quality of the film and its value as a representation of history. These hypotheses will provide ample avenues for individual research and the writing of critical essays or other projects.

THE FILM PROJECT

It was with many of the issues discussed above that I decided to integrate a film project into the "Theory and Practice of History" course. The purpose of that project was to give each student an opportunity to critique a particular film, approach it as an apprentice historian.

As preparation we read and discussed in class two short articles and one longer one, all three still very suitable material. But if you use them, I recommend updating your own prep notes with comparable examples from more recent films, especially those that students may have seen or at least heard about.

We started with Richard Bernstein’s "Can Movies Teach History?" (1989). Bernstein raises many of the same issues that Rosenstone does, but in a more accessible format. Acknowledging that filmmakers, like novelists, engage in "poetic license," he asks two "does it matter" questions:
  • Does it matter if the details are wrong if the underlying meaning of events is accurate? Or, conversely, does it matter if the details are correct if the underlying truths remain twisted and unsubstantiated?
He goes on to identify Fat Man and Little Boy as a prime example of "a work where a strongly felt point of view has guided the film makers in deciding what historical facts to show and how to show them." Both Joffe’s and Paul Newman’s anti-nuclear views were widely known, so it was relatively easy for Bernstein to expose the film’s ideological twist. In the end he comes down much harder on falsification than Rosenstone (see #4 in the "Quotations About Big Issues" section).

Mark Carnes’s column, "Beyond Words" (1996) was distributed to students and brought into the discussion as students began working on their projects. Like typical students, they were concerned with the accuracy of the details (and I did expect them to attend to these). Yet, Carnes tackles this issue by making a distinction between the authenticity of a film’s material culture (costumes, buildings, vehicles, props of all kinds) from the historical accuracy of the plot. He also addresses the "stickiness" of a movie’s vivid imagery (as discussed above). If you assign this article, you’ll probably want to shorten it by by omitting the account of how Warner Brothers restricted access to still photographs that Carnes wanted to include in Past Imperfect (though this is fascinating if you’re interested in copyright issues).

The Eric Foner and John Sayles conversation (1995) served many purposes. It begins by contrasting films that are "star vehicles" with those an "ensemble of actors" (where the focus is on the team). From his perspective as a historian Foner thinks that the "ensemble situations" of Sayles’s films make them stronger. A good example is Matewan, though Sayles admits he altered facts, simplified, reduced the number of points of view--while trying to remain "true to the larger picture." This is a rich and provocative piece, sure to elicit many comments in class. My margins of my original copy are filled with questions that intended to toss out and tie into the assigned film project.

Getting Started: Questions to Ask about the Film

I stressed that after viewing the film, perhaps for the very first time, students should jot down their impressions. To make sure that they had a firm grasp of the film’s content I suggested that they make notes, using the following questions (#1-6) as a guide. Beyond that, they were advised to make a list of specific questions that, when answered, would clear up any confusion they might have about the setting/s and structure of the film.

Today students can find online resources (such as the film’s web site or Internet Movie Database) to draw up a cast of characters, to make an outline of the plot, and to create other "crib sheets" that will save time so that more effort can be put into their research and analysis. I’d also suggest that students look for published versions of the screenplay (where these exist) but warn them not to assume that these are transcripts of the final version of the film.

I explained that while the initial screening would give students a holistic sense of the film, they should view it a second with larger issues in mind (questions #7-9) and keep at, rewinding and re-viewing scenes as needed, until they were satisfied.

1) What is the setting of the film?

2) Who are its main characters? Are these historical figures?

3) Do historical figures appear in the film in minor roles? (Applies to historical fiction films)

4) Summarize the film’s plot. Work up a timeline of the action. Are there flashbacks? Is there foreshadowing?

5) What is the central (climatic) event? Is this a historical or fictional event?

6) What is the film’s theme?

7) What do you think is the director’s point of view? What is the director’s ideological perspective?

8) What artistic techniques are most apparent?

9) What strikes you as possibly or probably inaccurate, distorted or biased?

10) What specific research do you need to do to assess this film?

Project Options

Students were given a choice of projects: a critical essay, a multimedia presentation (with script), a written proposal for a "remake" of the film, or a study guide. This last option was available only if no published study guide existed. I was open to other project ideas (though no one came up with any).

Each project had to utilize primary source material as a basis for evaluating the film, determining how it represented or misrepresented the past. Students were instructed to integrate references to primary material into their essays, multimedia presenations, "remake" proposals, or study guides.

All projects had to include a bibliography of primary and secondary sources and a separate select bibliography of all the film reviews consulted. Copies of these reviews had to be put in the project folder so I could easily check when evaluating the projects. This requirement was to put in place to encourage originality and deter plagiarism.

Students could choose from a list of 15 films (nearly all available in the college library or at the two video outlets in town) but these choices had to be approved on a first-come, first-served basis. Thus, in a class of 20-some students there were no more than two students per film.

Results

All the students worked very hard on this project. Certain tasks (finding reviews, working up bibliographies) were carried out as exercises during the course of the semester. Each student handed in a project proposal and the approval process included individual session/s during office hours. The results were all satisfactory, some better than others, a few showing a great deal of creativity.

Most students opted to write critical essays and some of these were quite long, reflecting theirauthors attention to detail and/or deep engagement with the issues. No student choose to do a multimedia presentation but today I suspect that this might be the most popular option (a PowerPoint, a hypertext "essay" with embedded images of film clips, or a video) as students are so much more familiar with the software and technology. A few future teachers produced study guides. Only a couple took the "re-write" route.

Let me share two projects that demonstrated exceptional engagement with the assignment.

One was a critical essay by a student who had spent a year in Germany as an exchange student. He selected the film Europa, Europe and took the time to read the memoir so that he could compare it with the film. He discovered how closely the film followed the events in the book, finding only a few discrepancies, mostly resulting from the compression of events.

The other project was the most creative of the lot, a script for a re-make of the film Cry Freedom. Taking seriously critiques of the film that had pointed out how its focus on the white reporter prevented it from telling a fuller version of the Biko’s story, he produced scenarios for what was essentially an alternative film. He drew his material from online texts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This student, who was returning to school after dropping out for a year or two, had revealed to me that he was often frustrated by significant learning disabilities. He thrived doing a project where he could spread the wings of his innate creativity. It was a pleasure to read.

ONLINE REFERENCE RESOURCES

This post’s Resources sections are by no means exhaustive. Watch for updates in my "Film and History" series.

Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdt.com/
  • Basic information about almost any film: director, producer, actors
  • Trailers (sometimes suited to a "pedagogical purpose")
  • Links to news about the film or related films

"100 Films Views by Historians". AHA Blog:
http://blog.historians.org/resources/1316/100-films-reviewed-by-historians.
  • Very useful list of the "Masters and the Movies" columns in AHA Perspectives . Beginning in September 2007, it continues to the present. Scroll down past the blank part of the page to arrive at the chart.
  • Links to 17 short articles and their introductions (see these for information about author, commentary by the editor). Also a link for each film to the Internet Movie Database.
  • See, for example, Ron Briley on The Battle of Algiers (widely used in AP World History classes): http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2010/1010/1010fil.2.cfm

"Film and Media." AHA Perspectives (search page): http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/search.cfm
  • Search "film" to bring these up (mixed in with other relevant articles, including those from "Masters and the Movies"). Take the time to scroll through and sample these because the films and the issues raised are still relevant.
  • Carnes (1996), listed below, was part of this series.

Browse the listings (titles, dates, very basic info) at the Internet History Sourcebooks Project site: No commentary on usefulness, mostly older films.

History in the Movies: http://www.stfrancis.edu/content/historyinthemovies/
  • Web site of Cathy Schultz, a history professor at the University of St. Francis, who writes a newspaper column about historical films. See long list of films on left side, titles of recent columns on the right.
  • Links to resources for teaching
"List of Historical Drama Films." Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_drama_film
  • Includes many older and many foreign films (mostly European), dealing with European and Western or Western-colonized settings.
"List of Historical Drama Films of Asia." Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_drama_films_of_Asia
  • East and Central Asia, India; organized by country (except for "Indochinese History").
History on Filmhttp://www.historyonfilm.com/links.htm.  Links to many sites with reviews and commentary.


World History in Film: http://worldhistoryinfilm.com/
  • Assembled by high school and college World History instructors. A place to browse but comments about each film are very short.
  • Click "General Resources" for History or Hollywood AP Project (downloadable). It appears that no resources posted for individual films.
  • Site needs more external links (one is Wikipedia, "List of Historical Drama Films").
  • Consider helping these folks out–by contributing comments and resources.
Teach with Movies: http://www.teachwithmovies.org/world-history-2.html#26a
  • Another place to browsing, but listings are mostly Hollywood or US productions. (This site, though often linked to, is not all that useful.)
  • Instructional materials available only by subscription and samples are provided not especially relevant to World History). 
ALSO GOOD FOR BROWSING: Schultz and von Tunzelmann’s columns (see next section).


RESOURCES: EXPLORING THE TOPIC 

Film and History (a major journal, based at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh): http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory/
  • Check out current/back issues for reviews of books about film and cultural history, film and political history, visual representation, the history of various film genres.
  • Click on "Resources" for a long list of related web sites.
  • Under "Resources" check out the "Instructional Assisstance" section for online theory and pedagogy articles and sites.
  • Also under "Resources" a list of recently reviewed films.
Anderson, Steve. "History TV and Popular Memory." In Gary R. Edgerton and Peter C. Rollins, eds., Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001). URL: http://iml.usc.edu/remix/anderson/publication/5.AndersonHistoryTV.pdf

Bernstein, Richard. "Can Movies Teach History?" New York Times (November 26, 1989): http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/movies/can-movies-teach-history.html?scp=1&sq=richard%20bernstein%20can%20movies%20teach%20history&st=cse

Carnes, Mark C., ed. Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995.
  • This compendium of 75 fairly short essays (mostly by historians prominent in their fields) about classic, big-screen films is still an essential references for history teachers.  Select essays to use as case studies for class discussion.
  • A place to start for students doing papers or projects on a particular film, but emphaze that they will need to search online for additional reviews and more recent commentary.
Carnes, Mark C., ed. "A Conversation between Eric Foner and John Sayles." In Past Imperfect (see above).

Carnes, Mark C. "Beyond Words; Reviewing Moving Pictures." AHA Perspectives (May/June 1996): http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1996/9605/9605FIL.CFM

Grossman, Jim. "Historians and The Conspirator: Using Film to Ask Big Questions." AHA Blog (April 13, 2011): http://blog.historians.org/executive-director/1311/historians-and-the-conspirator-using-film-to-ask-big-questions

Landy, Marcia. The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001.  (Consult parts of this book at Google Books.)

Levine, Philippa. "The Trouble with Film." AHA Perspectives (Marh 2010): http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2010/1003/1003fil2.cfm

Rosen, Philip. Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: Unversity of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Rosenstone, Robert A.  Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
  • See table of contents online at Harvard UP site (includes chapter of Oliver Stone’s JFK and on Reds).
  • Includes "History in Images/History in Words" but access this important essay online
Rosenstone, Robert A. "History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film." American Historical Review 93 (December 1988): 1173-1185. URL: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/classics/rr0499/rrrr6a.htm

Rosentstone. Robert A. "The Historical Film as Real History." Film-Historia 5 91995): 5-23. URL: http://www.publicacions.ub.es/bibliotecaDigital/cinema/filmhistoria/Art._Rosenstone.doc.pdf

Stoddard, Jeremy D. and Alan S. Marcus. "More Than "Showing What Happened": Exploring the Potential of Teaching History with Film." The High School Journal 93/2 (January–February 2010): 83-90. Online at Project MUSE®.
  • Based on ten years of data and research, with a focus on how "to equip students with the ability to view historical representation critically." Authors stress the importance of having "a clear purpose for selecting a film."
Toplin, Robert Brent. Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood.  Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002.
  • Toplin’s long interest in "film and history" issues makes this a book worth consulting. For several years he edited the "Media and the Masters" column in the AHA Perspectives (see "100 Films Reviewd by Historians").
  • See Rosenstone’s somewhat critical review in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37 (Summer 2006):159-160.
Reel History.  Historian Alex von Tunzelmann’s column in the Guardianhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/film/series/reelhistory.  Historian Alex von Tunzelmann’s column in the Guardian:
Check out Cathy Schultz’s columns at History in the Movies (above) for discussions of specific films that also deal with larger issues.


OTHER RESOURCES 

PROJECT: "Scripting the Past: Exploring Women's History Through Film." Edsitement (September 27, 2010):
  • A "learn-by-doing" project" in which students craft/write screenplays for a documentary.
  • Includes a research component: what kinds of information do they need to create a biographical documentary? 
  • Adapt this project by asking students to compose a scenario or write of a screenplay for a historical drama feature film about the life of a historical figure. Students this project would find it useful to consult several essays about biographical films in Past Imperfect.
Byers, Richard. "Reel Germans": Teaching German (And World) History with Film." World History Connected 7 (February 2010): http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/7.1/byers.html

  • Includes an "FILM ANALYSIS FORM" to guide students writing film reviews (Appendix B).
  • Also helpful, "Classical Hollywood Style / Institutional Mode of Representation (IMR)" (Appendix C).
  • General and specialized bibliography (Appendix D).
Gallagher, Gary W. "Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: Hollywood and the Civil War Since Glory." AHA Perspectives (May 2008): http://historians.org/perspectives/issues/2008/0805fil2.cfm
 
Njeri Ngugi. "Presenting and (Mis)representing History in Fiction Film: Semb ne's Camp de Thiaroye and Attenborough's Cry Freedom." Journal of African Cultural Studies (2003): 57-68.
  • Two films of great relevance to teachers of World History. Not online but try to obtain from university library or interlibrary loan.
  • Njeri considers how two directors, "taking on the dual role of director and historian," are in actuality seeking "to 'control' history, that is, they depict their vision of a particular set of historical facts - in the hope of persuading their audience that this is the 'true' or 'correct' representation of what occurred."
  • Also, for analysis of the implications of using film to depict a story (rather than a textual account), making the argument that "it is in the product of this selection and representation that the ideology of the directors may be discerned as it is they who select which facts to present and the light in which they shall be cast." (Quoting from the abstract).
Notes

1) See Jeremy D. Stoddard and Alan S. Marcus (2010) in Resources.

2) Robert A. Rosenstone, "The Historical Film as Real History," (1995), PDF, p.1 (see Resources).

3) Natalie Zemon Davis, "The Author’s Response," AHA Perspectives (September 2001): http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2001/0109/0109fil4.cfm. She points out that film studies scholars rarely consider how communication works in specifically historical films, with the notable exception of Philip Rosen (see Resources).

4) For example, see Mark Carnes (1996) on how the message of All the President’s Men was conveyed by what could only be intentionally produced lighting effects (see Resources).

5) Rosenstone (see note 2), PDF, p.2. His examples: Molly Maguires, The Black Robe.

6) Rosenstone (see note 2), PDF, p.2. His prime example is Glory (a film he discusses later in the article but also examines in detail in other essays).

7) See Carnes (1996) but this discussion needs updating. I have a whole file of neuroscience clippings to support this point. In my own research on oral traditions I’ve explored how visual imagery enhanced the transmission of stories about the remote past (so this is a special concern of mine).

8) Levine, "The Trouble with Film" (2010) in Resources.

9) Rosenstone (see note 2), PDF, p. 7.

10) For this paragraph and its quotations see Rosenstone (note 2), PDF, pp. 9-11. Actually, I disagree with how he justifies a key alteration in Glory, the film’s implying that most of the 54th’s soldiers were ex-slaves. They were most free men and to imply otherwise is to marginalize their place in history. I intend to take this up in a post on film and representations of slavery and the Civil War. In the meantime, see Blight (2001), Gallagher (2008), and Grossman (2011), all listed in Resources.

11) See, for example, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, "The Humanities, Done Digitally," The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 13, 2011): B26.

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