Historical Film

Abstract

From the advent of cinema to the present day, history has been brought to life on screen in many striking ways that have advanced motion picture technology and forged new relationships between viewers and the historical past. Historical films offer a privileged site for scholars of cinema, media, history, and many other disciplines to interrogate a nation’s relationship with the past. How cinema engages with the past, whether recent or distant, provides interesting case studies for how successive generations renegotiate cultural memory and understandings of how the past shapes the present. Historical films can bring into relief hidden or competing histories that either challenge or compliment prevailing narratives and authoritative accounts of the past, asking the viewer to consider the present as being shaped by multiple histories, rather than by one history. Historical films also suggest new ways of understanding the past, and, as a consequence, they also present new ways of understanding the present. Lastly, historical films can perform thought experiments about the past, deliberately departing from the historical print record in order to pose a different set of questions about a nation’s relationship with history. As such, historical films have garnered a tremendous level of scholarly interest, covering a broad range of research foci and subjects that are very useful in expanding discourses on national identity and historical memory. This article seeks to provide academics with ample resources and theoretical frameworks for conducting research on historical films or incorporating aspects of historical film studies into other disciplines. Starting with a general overview and scholarly approaches to historical films, the seminal works of Hayden White, Robert Rosenstone, and Vivian Sobchack are considered alongside newer approaches and scholarly journals, offering the scholar with an array of methodologies for bridging film studies to other fields. The article then examines in greater detail texts and studies concerned with a variety of questions and subissues pertaining to historical film studies—first with how film engages with memory (historical, cultural, personal, and national), then how historical films either interrogate or compound notions of national identity, and then how these ideas are explored in a variety of national and regional contexts. Next, the article turns toward the issues that stem from the scholarly approaches: how historical films can be used as a teaching tool, issues of genre and subgenre taxonomy, and how films themselves act as moments in history. Lastly, the article considers notions of authorship in historical cinema. Since many historical films are helmed by world-renowned filmmakers, the article ends with a section that explores repeated directorial engagements with history as a strong component of auteur cinema.