“Here I Stand I Can Do No Other”: Martin Luther in German and American Biopics

The immediacy and perceived truth of the visual image, as well as film and television's ability to propel viewers back into the past, place the genre of the historical film in a special category. War films-including antiwar films-have established the prevailing public image of war in the twentieth century. For American audiences, the dominant image of trench warfare in World War I has been provided by feature films such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory. The image of combat in the Second World War has been shaped by films like Sands of Iwo Jima and The Longest Day. And despite claims for the alleged impact of widespread television coverage of the Vietnam War, it is actually films such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon which have provided the most powerful images of what is seen as the of that much disputed conflict. But to what degree does history written lightning, as Woodrow Wilson allegedly said, represent the reality of the past? To what extent is visual history an oversimplification, or even a distortion of the past? Exploring the relationship between moving images and the society and culture in which they were produced and received, World War II, Film, and History addresses the power these images have had in determining our perception and memories of war. Examining how the public memory of war in the twentieth century has often been created more by a manufactured past than a remembered one, a leading group of historians discusses films dating from the early 1930s through the early 1990s, created by filmmakers the world over, from the United States and Germany to Japan and the former Soviet Union. For example, Freda Freiberg explains how the inter-racial melodramatic Japanese feature film China Nights, in which a manly and protective Japanese naval officer falls in love with a beautiful young Chinese street waif and molds her into a cultured, submissive wife, proved enormously popular with wartime Japanese and helped justify the invasion of China in the minds of many Japanese viewers. Peter Paret assesses the historical accuracy of Kolberg as a depiction of an unsuccessful siege of that German city by a French Army in 1807, and explores how the film, released by Hitler's regime in January 1945, explicitly called for civilian sacrifice and last-ditch resistance. Stephen Ambrose contrasts what we know about the historical reality of the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, with the 1962 release of The Longest Day, in which the major climactic moment in the film never happened at Normandy. Alice Kessler-Harris examines The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, a 1982 film documentary about women defense workers on the American home front in World War II, emphasizing the degree to which the documentary's engaging main characters and its message of the need for fair and equal treatment for women resonates with many contemporary viewers. And Clement Alexander Price contrasts Men of Bronze, William Miles's fine documentary about black American soldiers who fought in France in World War I, with Liberators, the controversial documentary by Miles and Nina Rosenblum which incorrectly claimed that African-American troops liberated Holocaust survivors at Dachau in World War II. In today's visually-oriented world, powerful images, even images of images, are circulated in an eternal cycle, gaining increased acceptance through repetition. History becomes an endless loop, in which repeated images validate and reconfirm each other. Based on archival materials, many of which have become only recently available, World War II, Film, and History offers an informative and a disturbing look at the complex relationship between national myths and filmic memory, as well as the dangers of visual images being transformed into reality.

Windows of Historical Contexts | Gallagher Edward J. Gallagher Lehigh University ejgl@lehigh.edu Windows of Historical Contexts Donald R. Stevens, ed. Based on a True Story: Latin American History at the Movies. Scholarly Resources, 1997. (243 pages; $35) Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Sergio Rivera Ayala find in the quincentennial 1492 (USA, 1992) is, with little exception, familiarly mainstream. Columbus is the safe and traditional "Renaissance Rambo" who protects the Indians. On the other hand, though, Aguirre (Germany, 1972), in the director's own words, is not about real happenings or people at all, which propels Thomas H. Holloway to print the famous mutinous 1561 letter and propose his own representation of Aguirre as loyal soldier betrayed by "the system." In regard to the relation between fact and fiction, for instance, James Schofield Saeger blisters the depiction of the Guarani war in The Mission (USA, 1986) for displaying an outlived paternalistic perspective in which the Guarani are no more than "cultural ciphers." On the other hand, Robert M. Levine finds that Pixote (Brazil, 1980) tells the truth about abandoned children during Brazil's transition to democracy — so truly, in fact, that the film's title actor, a real slum child, was later killed just like his film character. Some films explain history, and some need history to explain them. Susan E. Ramirez finds that /, the Worst ofAll (Argentina, 1990), for instance, closely follows Octavio Paz's biography of proto-feminist Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. And Barbara A. Tenenbaum finds that the lack of a standard immigration experience and the consequent propensity to embrace the indigenous past explain why Mexicans understand important elements of Like Water for Chocolate (Mexico, 1992) — like the heroine's suicide ("How Mexican an ending!") — that mystify North Americans. Some films reveal a hidden history. Films like Tïie Other Francisco (1975) and The Last Supper (1976), for instance, are the result of concerted efforts after the 1959 revolution to revise Cuban history. The focus here is slave rebellion, which "contains the seeds of Cuban nationalism." John Mraz finds Francisco the more important film because it tells its story in both a Gone with the Wind style and a documentary one, forcing us to reflect on how history is written. Mark D. Szuchman shows that The Official Story (1985) and Miss - article continues on page 88 turies (Camila, The Other Francisco), ana six about the 20th century (Lucia, Gabriela, Like Water for Chocolate, Miss Mary, The Official Story, Pixote). Three films — /, tiie Worst ofAll, Camila, Miss Mary— are by one director, Maria Luisa Bemberg. Historian Stevens provides an introductory essay that plays off D. W. Griffith's blithe prophecy that film would render the reading of history obsolete, and he rehearses the chilly relationship between historian and film, ending up squarely (there are "possibilities and perils" to cinematic history), if melancholily (we "plodding empiricists " still have something to say), in the middle ("Neither book writing nor filmmaking provides a perfect window on the past"). It is not surprising, then, that neither Stevens nor his contributors pursue any grand polemic in the body of the work. There is no big generalization about film and history wrestling for acceptance here and no attempt to sweep together all Latin American cinematic history. What there is, refreshingly, is simply "a series of windows" — case studies of historical contexts for individual films with handy, annotated supplemental resources for further study. The windows yield a variety of perspectives on cinematic history. In regard to portraying historical figures, for instance, on the one hand the image of Columbus that Vol. 30.1 (March, 2000) | 89 Shull I Films of the Fifties Michael S. Shull Frederick Community College/The Washington Center ShullMS@aol.com Films of the Fifties Alan C. Fetrow. Feature Films, 1950-1959: A United States Filmography. McFarland, 1999. (718 pages; $72.50) Feature Films, 1950-1959, a Filmography ofAmerican Movies, is the third such enterprise by Alan G. Fetrow. His first two efforts, also published by McFarland, dealt with Hollywood's Sound Films, 1927-1939 (1992) and Feature Films, 1940-1949 (1994). With regards to Fetrow's earlier books, it is highly recommended by this reviewer that scholars engaged in serious...

The subject of this article is the comparative analysis of the role of historical figures and related national myths in the process of reconstituting the national imagery. The establishment of the Republic in Portugal led to a reformulation of the social imagery, which became apparent through “re-enchantment” (G. Durand), an outbreak of cultural activity informed by national mythology. The shift in the attitude towards myths during that period is vivid in literary texts dedicated to the main political fi gures, such as Sidónio Pais. In À memória do Presidente-Rei Sidónio Pais (In memory of President-King Sidónio Pais) from 1920, Fernando Pessoa applies the sebastianist myth so as to achieve the messianization of a historical fi gure. The use of Sebastianism with the objective of a renovation of national imagery culminates in Mensagem (The Message, 1934), the climax of a process of mythifi cation of the Portuguese reality. In Poland, a similar crucial historical moment is the restoration of the national and democratic state in 1918, associated with the fi gure of Józef Piłsudski. General Piłsudski is a symbolic fi gure of independence and a protagonist of the poetic volumes Karmazynowy poemat (Carmin Poem) by Jan Lechoń, from 1920, and Wolność tragiczna (Tragic Liberty) by Kazimierz Wierzyński, from 1936. These works struggle to break free from the literary myths of the Polish Romantic era. The poems, highly intertextual and dialogical, are an attempt to demythify reality, which makes the role of national myths in Poland different than in Portugal. In the Portuguese context, the myths, though applied emblematically and incorporated in the Sorelian strategy, serve a purpose of national renovation, while in Poland, they are considered the main obstacle to the rebirth of national culture.

Painting Out Pop

Reviewed by: Studies in Medievalism XXIX: Politics and Medievalism (Studies) ed. by Karl Fugelso Kevin J. Harty Fugelso, Karl, ed., Studies in Medievalism XXIX: Politics and Medievalism (Studies), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2020; hardback; pp. 242; 21 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$99.99; ISBN 9781843845560; eBook US$24.99; ISBN 9781787448957. The most recent volume of Studies in Medievalism offers five shorter essays on contemporary political uses of medievalism and nine longer essays on other appearances of medievalism across multiple genres. Esther Liberman Cuenca explores how failed American vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin appropriated the vilely anti-Semitic charge of blood libel from the Middle Ages to characterize herself as a victim. Sean Griffin looks at the ways both Vladimir Putin and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church have manipulated the medieval life and legend of Saint 'Equal-of-the-Apostles' Prince Vladimir to justify continued Russian aggression toward Ukraine. A third misreading of the Middle Ages, Daniel Wollenberg argues, informs the embrace of the 732 Battle of Tours not only by the white supremacist Australian terrorist who murdered fifty-one people in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, but also by those who would excuse the actions of the Trump administration at the United States– Mexico border. Linkage between Brexit and the medieval is hardly surprising, as the argument to stay or to leave is inevitably tied to what the terms 'Britain' and 'England' have meant now and in the past. Two essays in this volume discuss this linkage in very different ways. Borrowing vocabulary from Patrick J. Geary's The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton University [End Page 219] Press, 2002), Andrew B. R. Elliott sees the argument over Brexit as an extension of a pan-European crisis of identity that was part of the fallout from the end of the Cold War. The defenders of Brexit do not so much celebrate their nation as instead summon up an imagined medievalist notion of 'us' versus 'them' in order to vanquish those now deemed enemies of the people. Christopher Jensen sees Brexit as backdrop for Joe Cornish's 2019 film The Kid Who Would Be King; the problem with Jensen's reading of the film is that its final admonition borders on the Pollyanna-esque. Patrick Stewart's Merlin tells the central characters that children have an abundance of inherent goodness and nobility and that the future is theirs. The film is not exactly a cutting-edge commentary for our times. Nor is Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), which Mary Behrman takes to task for erasing the Welsh elements from the Arthurian legend. Behrman may give Ritchie too much credit, though, given the dismal critical reception that his film received. Political uses of medievalism can be found across a variety of genres, as the remaining essays in this volume show. Ali Frauman finds, not surprisingly, that the internet can be both a blessing and a curse, especially when Alternative Right online fora distort the medieval to support their beliefs by filtering discrimination towards one historically oppressed group through an ostensible celebration of another. Laura E. Cochrane argues how medievalism and political polemic inform an 1880 portrait of the child-emperor Honorius by Jean-Paul Laurens. M. J. Toswell lays the groundwork for a reconsideration of the importance that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow played in establishing American medievalism. Victoria Yuskaitis and Laura Varnam address the influence of another historical figure, Julian of Norwich, on medievalism's legacy, though in decidedly different ways. Yuskaitis argues for an archaeological investigation of the remains of Julian's cell and belongings as a means to explicate her writings and those of her colleagues. Varnam looks for evidence of Julian in an entirely different place, the Harry Potter series, which she argues subtly promotes a Julian notion of pity. The relationship between medievalist texts and maps informs Anna Fore Waymack and John Wyatt Greenlee's discussion of the functions of fantasy maps in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, and the authors of other fantasy medievalisms. Usha Vishnuvajjala finds evidence of manipulation of the medieval...

The subject of the article is a film of a Bashkir film director -"Glass Passenger" by Bulat Yusupov. The author of the article carries out an archetypal, semiotic and hermeneutic analysis of the cinematographic text. The first one is the study of mythological elements within the film. It will show us the presence in the work of elements of the national myth and their connection with the literary archetypes of Jung. The second, semiotic, takes place under the conditions of isolating signs from relationships within the whole structure that defines a film work as a kind of a media text. And the third, hermeneutic, is based on the traditions of cinema interpretation in the intertextual interaction of all literary texts. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the systematic, comprehensive study of the Bashkir cinema, in comparison with the samples of the world artistic culture; in identifying the key features of an individual film that has not previously been subjected to detailed scientific study. The film refers the viewer to the images of Bashkir mythology. The analysis carried out reveals in the media text the trends in the creation of feature films in Bashkortostan.

The Melodramatic Nation: Integration and Polarization in the Argentine Cinema of the 1930s

Some say that telling the story of the Holocaust is impossible, yet, artists have told the story thousands of time since the end of World War II in novels, dramas, paintings, music, sculpture, and film. Over the past seven decades, hundreds of documentaries, narrative shorts and features, and television miniseries have confronted the horrors of the past, creating an easily recognized iconography of persecution and genocide. While it can be argued that film and television have a tendency to trivialize, using the artifacts of popular culture – film and literature – artists keep the past alive, ensuring that victims are not forgotten and the tragedy of the Holocaust is not repeated. The Historical Dictionary of Holocaust Cinema examines the history of how the Holocaust is presented in film, including documentaries, feature films, and television productions. It contains a chronology of events needed to give the films and their reception a historical context, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography of more than 600 titles, and over 100 cross-referenced dictionary entries on films, directors, and historical figures. Foreign language films and experimental films are included, as well as canonical films. This book is a must for anyone interested in the scope of films on the Holocaust and also for scholars interested in investigating ideas for future research.

The Historical Dictionary of Holocaust Cinema examines the history of how the Holocaust is presented in film, including documentaries, feature films, and television productions. It contains a chronology of events needed to give the films and their reception a historical context, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography of more than 600 titles, and over 100 cross-referenced dictionary entries on films, directors, and historical figures. Foreign language films and experimental films are included, as well as canonical films. This book is a must for anyone interested in the scope of films on the Holocaust and also for scholars interested in investigating ideas for future research.

This essay focuses on two recent British feature films that have documented parts of the history of the African diaspora. Each focusing on a single black historical figure, the films 12 Years a Slave (2013, directed by Steve McQueen) and Belle (2013, directed by Amma Asante) are notable for their black directors and their portrayals of eighteenth and nineteenth-century British and American black slave histories. However, the films’ approaches to the representation of black women vary considerably. “Negro Girl (meager)” explores the problematics of portraying black female agency in these feature films and argues for continued vigilance in the deployment of a black feminist vision.

This article focuses on the historical figure of the leader of the second uprising of the colonized Prussians against the Teutonic Order, Herkus Monte, who is presented here primarily as a literary figure. The increasing interest in Prussian history changed the written media, so that the order chronicle of the 13th century later turned into literary works, primarily historical novels and historical dramas in Germany. Because of the geographical proximity and linguistic relationship, the Lithuanians feel a strong affinity for the Prussians and their heroes. In the following, we analyze literary works by Lithuanian authors on the basis of which a feature film and an opera were created.

Tradition had it that the rectangular Romanesque hall with a central column in the royal and later archiepiscopal palace on Castle Hill in Esztergom was the birthplace of King Saint Stephen, although it was already clear in the 19th century that this part of the building dated from after the 11th century. Nevertheless, in view of the salient role of the castle in the cult of Saint Stephen, the prince primate and archbishop of Esztergom (1867–1891) János Simor (1813–1891) had the Romanesque room converted into a chapel in 1873–74, a thousand years after the birth of the state and church founder king. The reconstruction was planned by József Lippert, the chief architect of the prince primate who planned in this capacity, among other things, the transformation of the interior of the cathedral and the construction of its vestibule, the primate’s palace, and the purist reconstruction of Pozsony cathedral. The transformation of the hall with the central column included a new aperture, walling up of a niche, erection of an altar, and embellishing of the walls and vault with neo-Romanesque frescoes imitating the Byzantine style painted by the brothers Karl and Franz Xaver Jobst (fig. 3). The completed chapel became a neo-Romanesque Gesamtkunswerk down to the smallest detail, a venue of cult and memory.The decisive part of the painted decoration was the cycle of the salient episodes in St Stephen’s life on the vault arches: 1. Apparition of St Stephen protomartyr to Sarolt, wife of prince Géza (fig. 7). 2. The baptism of Vajk (fig. 11). 3. Bishop Astrick shows the crown brought from Rome to St Stephen (fig. 15). 6. Offering of the country to God (fig. 23). The paper reviews the iconographic antecedents of the scenes and the respective source texts, mentioning so-far unpublished works (figs. 13, 22). In addition to several other findings, it could be concluded that unlike in the period from the 17th to the mid-19th century when the depictions of King St Stephen were imbued with currently topical political implications, the images of the Esztergom cycle are free from such readings. The painters of the frescoes ordered by archbishop Simor mainly used recognized schemes and panels aligning themselves with the iconographic tradition, and therefore the novelty of the decoration which contemporary accounts emphasized must have been their neo-Byzantine style. A few decades later, however, this style must have appeared obsolete, nor did it have followers in its time, either. Apart from the demonstration of iconographic motifs, the direct models of the scenes cannot be determined even for such an extremely rare theme as Sarolt’s dream. That is at the same time proof of the invention of the painters and that is what ranges their work among the important achievements of post-Compromise painting: the ingenious use of motifs of mostly familiar scenes (identified by captions as well) and their arrangement in a new composition in the chosen or required style, with the prudent use of the semi-circular shape of the picture field when need be. It is important to note that no other picture cycle was created of St Stephen’s life in the second half of the 19th century. Moreover, some of the scenes have demonstrable linkage to stations in the life path of archbishop Simor, which must have influenced the finalization of the programme.During the archaeological excavations and reconstruction on Castle Hill in 1934–1938 the historicist elements of the hall with a central column were removed (fig. 4). Until how, research thought the painted decoration by the Jobst brothers had perished and were only known in reproduction. However, it must have been removed by Mauro Pellicioli or an assistant of his who had been invited to Hungary from Milan by Tibor Gerevich. I chanced upon the removed frescoes in a remote storeroom of Esztergom cathedral in 2011 with Veronika Nagy.

Adapted from the Lissa Evans novel Their Finest Hour and a Half, Their Finest (Lone Scherfig, 2016) is a fictional film based loosely on historical figures and circumstances, as it tells the story of the production of a feature film by the UK Ministry of Information (MOI) in 1940. What, Their Finest quietly asks, is real? What is fake? And what does it matter, if you are at the movies? Joy is real. Tears are real. And other things, too: the tea I sip, the arm of my companion next to me, the chattering women in the row below, the sighing man who has come to the movies alone. The light is real. The darkness, too. Hastie thinks through the implications of a female author of the original monograph, the female director of the current film, and the fictional composite female character Catrin Cole, the screenwriter in the film. The whole of Catrin Cole did and didn't exist before Their Finest. “Catrin Cole” is not a historical figure, hidden or otherwise. She is a composite of fact and fiction, the pieces stitched together to make a whole person. As asserted by producer Stephen Woolley, who initiated the project, Their Finest drew upon the lives of many women writers for the Film Division of the MOI, particularly that of Diana Morgan, the one woman in the Ealing Studios writers’ room.

The article «Eurocentrism as the source of Y. Kosach’s outlook» investigates the problem of Occident and Ori- ent in Y. Kosach’s literary-critical legacy. The concepts of «Europe» and «West» in the writer’s apprehension are considered in details. The conceptualization of epochs and historical figures in the context of culture, politics and history is traced. The main attention is paid to the problem of the affinity of Ukrainian and Western European cultures, the basis of which is the common feature – the synthesis of experiment and tradition, what matches Ukrainian nation as a European nation with the millennial state past. The problem of eternal connection of Ukraine with the West’s tradition is seen as the main axis around which Kosach concentrated all other problems. At the same time, attention is also focused on the unifying features of the Ukrainian writ- ers’ style, which Kosach distinguishes for analysis, meaning not the «form of content», but the «style of content». Similarly, in the close connection with the problem of the occidentality of Ukrainian culture, the problem of the «Ukrainian mission of the defense of Western Civilization» and the painful problems connected not only with Ukrainian history but also with the Ukrainian character, the Ukrainian way of thinking are considered. The author emphasizes that as a result of a poetic research, the artist created the myth-poetic conception of Ukrainian state existence, imagining Ukraine as «Imperium Ucrainum», «Third Rome», convinced that empires do not die, continuing to live in myths, capturing the thoughts of contemporaries, becoming a ground on which the former might and glory of the state are reviving. Аccording to Kosach, just writers perform the function of development and dissemination of national myths in society – repeatedly in the history of mankind the works of literature played the role of a vector of direction of public tastes. Thus, «Aeneid» by Virgil became the cornerstone of the imperial ideological concept by Octavian Augustus, and «An- dromaque» by Racine led the political ground for the legitimate rule of Louis XIV from the rulers of Troy. Much attention is paid to Kosach’s criticism of «Polish mythology» by A. Mickiewicz and H. Sienkievicz; dependence between «Polish mythology» and creation of own Kosach’s mythology is established in the literary essay «On the guard of the nation». The article emphasizes the relevance and far-sightedness of Y. Kosach’s views through the conception of such an old-new concept as «information warfare».

La Malinche, the mistress of Spanish conquistador Hernn Corts, has evolved from a historical figure into Mexican national myth that connotes all the negative aspects of womans sexuality in Mexican and Mexican-American Culture. Sandra Cisneros in her Never Marry A Mexican reinterpretsLa Malinchein a more positive light and points out how women sexuality can be the site for women empowerment.By drawing on insights from feminist theories on motherhood, marriage, and incest taboo, this study identifies the way Cisneros revises the negative image of La Malinche as a dupe, passive and submissive mistress. This study identifies that Cisneros has created a strong protagonist character named Clemencia, who exerts her subjectivity and claims for her sexual agency totransgress patriarchal construction of woman passive sexuality, imposition of maternal identity as asexual mother and taboo on incestuous relationship. Cisneross La Malinche is no longer depicted as the victim duped by the patriarchy, but as the survivor who is able to preserve her sense of herself in the dominating patriarchal world.DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2015.180103