Historical Feature Film

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Historical Feature Film
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Feature Film gt Some (confusing) criteria
historians use in evaluation

• accuracy of detail
• use of original documents
• consulting with a professional historian
• type/nationality/looks of actors
• appropriate music
• poetical and metaphorical use of historical
  details (see Robert Rosenstone quoting Gerda
  Lerner)

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Feature Film gt Context for Article Historical
Film and Postmodernism

• Postmodernism--contradictory term, used to
  denote post-Fordist economy, non-linear
  anti-modernist literature and art, and methods of
  historical research based on textual
  interpretation rather than fact-finding
• Roland Barthes there are no facts, just
  reality effects
• Joan Scott because language is important, we
  have no direct access to our experience - we
  should study instead how people narrate their
  experience
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak subaltern
  (illiterate, subordinate, racially and socially
  oppressed) peoples cannot speak for themselves
  because their language is determined by the
  dominant (educated, elite) culture
• Rosenstones conclusion anachronisms and
  displaced facts are ok, as long as the films
  interpretation rings true as a result

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Feature Film gt Fictions historically true in a
filmic way according to Rosenstone

• Walker conversation between Vanderbilt and
  Walker that never happened
• Born on the Fourth of July events depicted as
  part of Syracuse U. protest really happened at
  other protests at other universities
• A Knights Tale The Wave and other signs of
  contemporary fan behavior

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Feature Film gt Historical film that presents
history more conventionally The Return of
Martin Guerre

• A film about an impostor who takes place of a
  husband who goes to war. The film takes place in
  a 16th-century French village.
• Natalie Zemon Davis, a professional historian of
  France, consulted on the film. Her book was the
  basis for the film.
• But Natalie Zemon Davis was criticized for her
  book anyway, because both the book and the movie
  speculated about the motives behind the wifes
  acceptance of her fake husband--her critic argued
  that Davis produced an unverifiable feminist
  interpretation

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Feature Film gt Historical film that presents
history without anachronism The Return of
Martin Guerre

• A film about an impostor who takes place of a
  husband who goes to war. The film takes place in
  a 16th-century French village.
• Natalie Zemon Davis, a professional historian of
  France, consulted on the film. Her book was the
  basis for the film.
• But Natalie Zemon Davis was criticized for her
  book anyway, because both the book and the movie
  speculated about the motives behind the wifes
  acceptance of her fake husband--her critic argued
  that Davis produced an unverifiable feminist
  interpretation

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Feature Film gt Historical film that aroused
protests of French historians despite its
historical veracity Danton (dir. Andrzei Wajda,
1983)

• A film about the French Revolution, where
  Dantons execution during the Terror is used as a
  metaphor for communist repressions in Eastern
  Europe
• French historians attacked the film as a
  misinterpretation of the history of the French
  Revolution
• But Andrzei Wajda was more interested in
  communism in Poland than in revolutionary France

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Feature Film gt Historical film comedy that does
not try to be factual yet was lauded for
authenticity The Front (dir. Woody Allen, 1976)

• A film about blacklisted screenwriters in 1950s
  United States where Woody Allen plays a gambler
  who submits screenplays written by his
  blacklisted friends.
• Nobody expected a comedy to be realistic
• But Woody Allen used many actors who were
  blacklisted during the 1950s so his film is often
  used by historians teaching McCarthyism

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Film Review Assignment gt Some questions

• What is the films genre? (drama, documentary,
  etc.)
• What is the films audience? (TV viewers,
  general film audience, students)
• What is the films main historical point? (what
  sense of history is it trying to convey
  metaphorically, as per Rosenstones article)
• What evidence does this film use? (relevant to
  both documentary and feature films)
• In what ways is this film successful?
• It what ways does this film fail as history?