Professional Documents
Culture Documents
[The historian must have] the power to embody ghosts, to put flesh and blood
on dry bones, to make dead men living before our eyes.1
Theodore Roosevelt, 1913
Artists certainly have the rightand possibly the obligationto step in and
reinterpret the history of our times.2
Oliver Stone, 1991
believed in the American dream, was reluctant at first, but he finally agreed to make
the best damned documentary films ever made.3 The result was the Why We Fight
series, seven films that told the story of the war up to that point in time: Prelude to
1
Theodore Roosevelt, History as Literature and Other Essays (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1913),
16.
2
Oliver Stone, Who Is Rewriting History? The New York Times, December 20, 1991, A35.
3
John Dower, War Without Mercy (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 15. On the making of the films see David
Culbert, Why We Fight: Social Engineering for a Democratic Society at War, Film and Radio Propa-
ganda in World War II, ed. By K. R. M. Short (London: Croom Helm, 1983), 173191.
125
War, The Nazis Strike, Divide and Conquer, The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Russia,
The Battle of China, and War Comes to America.
The series was successful beyond General Marshalls wildest hopes. Capra used
animated Disney maps, witty narration, and miles of graphic war footageoften
captured from the enemyto appeal to the emotions of his audience. The series was
based on a strategy of truth: Let the enemy, said Capra, prove to our soldiers the
enormity of his causeand the justness of ours.4 The films were so good that they
were shown in public theaters as well as on military bases, and they ultimately were
distributed worldwide, with translations in Russian, French, Chinese, and Spanish.
The power of the films is most poignantly conveyed by Alfred Kazin, a son of Russian
immigrants, who described the affect of seeing The Battle of Russia at an army camp
in southern Illinois in 1944. It was a physical shock, recounted Kazin thirty-five
years later, walking out of the theater in the gray dripping twilight, watching the men
plodding back to their barracks in the last slant of light, to realize how drained I was,
how much I had been worked over, appealed to. In the end, as so often happened to
us after a terrific American movie, we were stupefied.5
Kazins experience in 1944 captures perfectly the power of film both to inform
and move us deeply. History, as we have seen, is a discipline primarily based on the
written word, and in Kazins day, history on film was something of a novelty. Not so
today. Increasingly people are turning to movies and television for their entertainment
and information, and often what people think they know about history is as likely to
have been learned from films and television as from books. This is not altogether a
bad thing, given the growing body of respectable historical video and film produced
in recent years (e.g., Ken Burnss series on the Civil War). However, it is not entirely
a good thing either.
Whether the trend is welcome or not is immaterial. History films are here to stay,
and history instructors have recognized this by incorporating a variety of films and
videos into their classes.6 And, as they continue to do so, the debate over the legiti-
macy of history on film becomes more passionate and, of course, relevant. Traditional
historians regularly point out the myriad deficiencies of such films, for there are many
things that written history can do that films cannot. On the other hand, film has its
own set of advantages. One historian goes so far as to argue that rather than being
defective versions of written history, history films constitute a valid alternative to
books and articles. However we think of it, says Robert Rosenstone, we must admit
that film gives us a new sort of history, what we might call history as vision. . . . Film
changes the rules of the game and creates its own sort of truth, creates a multilevel
Copyright 2010 Harlan Davidson, Inc.
past that has so little to do with language, that it is difficult to describe adequately in
words.7 Oliver Stone, the controversial director of a number of history films would
agree: artists certainly have the rightand possibly the obligationto step in and
reinterpret the history of our times.
Few historians would go as far as Rosenstone on this point, but with the ubiquity
of film histories on television and in local movie theaters, students of history need
4
Dower, War Without Mercy, 16.
5
Culbert, Why We Fight, Propaganda, 18586.
6
The term history films is used by historian Robert Rosenstone to denote all works that consciously try
to recreate the past, whether documentary or dramatic films. History on Film/Film on History (Harlow,
England: Pearson Education Ltd., 2006), 3.
7
Rosenstone, History on Film, 160.
to become as adept at reading and analyzing history films as they are at evaluating
the more traditional written historical accounts. In this chapter we will provide a
brief introduction to the critical analysis of film documentaries as well as more main-
stream Hollywood-type dramatic films. (Although there are technical and perceptual
differences between videotape and film, we include both media in our references to
film.) Although space limitations prevent us from doing more than scratching the
surface of this immense topic, interested readers will find more detailed guidance in
the sources listed in the footnotes of this chapter.8
Films vary widely in character, and historians use films in quite distinctive ways.
Before viewing and analyzing a film, it is important to understand the type of film
you are viewing. To begin it is important to distinguish between film as record, film
as representation, and film as cultural artifact.
Film as Record
On the most basic level, film can provide a visual record of an event. Taped foot-
age on the nightly news, amateur videos/films of important events (e.g., Abraham
Zapruders Super-8 film of the Kennedy assassination, the myriad video clips found
on the Internet, some of them recorded by cellphones), and the raw footage taken by
documentary filmmakers can provide the historian with an invaluable visual record
of the personalities and events that have shaped our lives. At this level, film is the
equivalent of a primary sourcethe raw material out of which historians construct
their accounts of the past.
Nonetheless, even when dealing with actuality footage, historians must not let
down their guard, for cameras can indeed lie. First, every piece of film is shot from a
specific location, showing some things but not others. Therefore, the historian must
always consider what wasnt in the viewfinder. Furthermore, it is a rare piece of film
that hasnt been edited (cut) to fit time constraints, eliminate unwanted material, or
conform to a censors mandate.9 Taped television interviews are often edited down
from hours of footage to the few minutes that are actually broadcast. In the 1930s
and 1940s there was a tacit agreement among news professionals not to show that
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was confined to a wheelchair due to an earlier
bout with polio. When FDRs disability was filmed, that footage was edited out before
the newsreels were released to the public.10 Finally, visual evidence can be (and has
8
The amount of scholarship devoted to history in films and television programs is growing exponentially,
Copyright 2010 Harlan Davidson, Inc.
and a single chapter in a book such as this can do no more than provide a few flimsy guideposts for those
who want to think more seriously about the merits and drawbacks of moving-image history. In addition
to the Rosenstone book noted above, students and instructors could benefit from reading some of the
essays published in John E. OConnor, Image as Artifact: The Historical Analysis of Film and Television
(Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co., 1990), and in Steven Mintz and Randy Roberts, eds.,
Hollywoods America: United States History Through Its Films (St. James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1993).
For instructors a place to begin would be John OConnor and Martin A. Jackson, Teaching History with
Film (Washington, DC: AHA, 1974).
9
Even in countries that value freedom of the press, there are societal and institutional constraints that
have the end result of limiting and coloring what is presented to the public in the mainstream media. For
an analysis of the ability of political and economic elites to manage the media, see Daniel Hellinger and
Dennis Judd, The Democratic Facade, 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA.: Wadsworth Publishing Co.: 1994), Chapter
3, Political Elites and the Media.
10
Robert E. Herzstein, News Film and Documentary as Sources for Factual Information, in OConnor,
Image as Artifact, 180.
Lyman H. Howe was a traveling showman who promoted high-class moving pictures in the late nine-
teenth century. This 1898 poster shows an audience watching a filmed infantry attack from the Spanish-
American War. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, (LC-DIG-ppmsca-05941).
been) falsified. The advent of digital computer technology has made this easier to
do today than ever before.
11
Historical films have become so popular that various historical journals now feature regular film review
sections. The historical accuracy of over seventy such films is discussed by a variety of historians, in
Mark Carnes, ed., Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995).
Robert Brent Toplin provides an in-depth analysis of eight films about American history in History by
Hollywood (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1996). A book to be used with care, but worth consulting at the
beginning of a film-based project is Joseph Roquemore, History Goes to the Movies: A Viewers Guide to
the Best (and Some of the Worst) Historical Films Ever Made (New York: Broadway Books, 1999). Roque-
more seems concerned primarily with the literal accuracy of historical dramas, and he often pans films
that actually have some broader historical meritse.g., The Crucible (1996), Michael Collins (1996), and
Oliver Stones immensely controversial JFK (1991).
source, all films, whether made to educate or entertain, are primary sources when
used as evidence for the cultural conditions and attitudes of the societies that made
and viewed the films. For example, D. W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation (1915), which
portrays the postCivil War South and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, would be a sec-
ondary source if we were interested in how it represented the Reconstruction period
of American history. It would be a primary source, however, if we were viewing it a
cultural artifact useful for measuring Americans attitudes in 1915 toward race rela-
tions and the Reconstruction period.
Additionally, it is much more difficult to check on a films use of source materials than
it is to evaluate the evidence used in a piece of written history. The source citations
in history books can be checked for accuracy and contextual legitimacy, but the rela-
tionship between content and sources in a film is often difficult to discover. How, for
instance, can we find out whether the film footage and interviews in a documentary
do justice to the original uncut footage and interviews? How do we discover where
writers of dramatic films get their facts and interpretations? Often the answer is, we
cant. For the most part, we must use existing written histories to test the credibility
of historical films.
Content
Analysis of content is still the heart of the historical enterprise and applies to both the
written word and to film. Every documentary or film drama has a distinctive point
of view and often, especially in the case of documentaries, contains an identifiable
thesis. Once you identify the point of view and thesis, consider the following: Is the
reconstruction accurate? What does the filmmaker want the audience to think about
the events being presented? What does the filmmaker want the audience to feel? Are
the films conclusions defensible in the light of what is already known about the event
in question? You should also ask yourself how particular techniqueslighting, use
of camera position, sound, color, editinghave contributed to the overall message
of the film. (See the insert on film language.)
Dramatic films pose challenges all their own. Like history books they are historical
reconstructions. However, the historians primary responsibility is to the evidence,
whereas the filmmakers priorities are artistic and financial. Television productions
and films must be artistically coherent and entertaining in order to score well in the
Nielsen Ratings or succeed at the box office. As historians James Davidson and Mark
Lytle comment:
For filmmakers, far different principles of construction are paramount. They involve questions
Copyright 2010 Harlan Davidson, Inc.
of drama, not fidelity to the evidence. Does the screenplay move along quickly enough? Do the
characters develop sufficiently? Does the plot provide enough suspense? These matters domi-
nate the making of a film even when that oft-repeated claim flashes across the screen: Based on
a True Story.16
15
The triad of Content, Production, and Reception is based on a number of the essays in OConnors
Image as Artifact.
16
Davidson and Lytle, After the Fact, 4th ed., Vol. II, 368. The chapter on History and Myth in the Films
of Vietnam, provides an excellent introduction to the analysis of historical films.
Clearly, then, filmmakers exercise a great deal of artistic license in their quest to
make entertaining films. There is no way to make a fully accurate film about even
the simplest historical episode. (The same, of course, is true of written history!) But
it would be a major mistake to judge historical films strictly by the criterion of literal
accuracy. This is so because films (like good historical novels) can communicate two
kinds of truthliteral truth and a larger, human, truth that we still recognize as good
history. The Civil War film Glory (1989) provides a good example. Glory dramatizes
the experiences of Col. Robert Gould Shaws 54th Massachusetts African American
regiment and its assault on Fort Wagner in 1863. Although Shaw was a real person,
the soldiers are fictional composites and there are many fictional elements in the
film. For instance, in the film most of the black troops are portrayed as former slaves,
a blatant factual inaccuracy. In fact, most of the African American soldiers at Fort
Wagner were free Blacks. Yet, since most of the African Americans who volunteered
for the Union army as a whole were ex-slaves, we would argue that the film fairly
represents that larger historical truth. As Civil War historian James McPherson has
written: Not only is [Glory] the first feature film to treat the role of Black soldiers
in the American Civil War, but it is also one of the most powerful and historically
accurate movies ever made about that war.17
A final word about content: though it is important to determine the accuracy
of historical films, even inaccuracies can tell us something about a societys cultural
myths. As one commentator wrote, historians who tried to list the historical inac-
17
Quoted in Rosenstone, History on Film, 40. For an extended discussion of Glory see pages 3946.
The storming of Fort Wagner, the climactic episode in the film Glory. (Kurz and Allison print, ca. 1890).
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, (LC-DIG-pga-01949).
curacies in Birth of a Nation would be ignoring the fact that their job should not
involve bestowing marks for accuracy but describing how men living at a certain
time understood their own history.18 While we think it is important to consider
the accuracy of a film, we agree that even misrepresentations of history can provide
invaluable insights into the minds of those who originally made and viewed a film.
Conclusion
History films are here to stay. The danger is not that we find it enjoyable to watch the
magical images, but that we do so casually and uncritically. When the lights go down
Copyright 2010 Harlan Davidson, Inc.
it is too easy to turn off the brain and wait to be entertained. But what we see on
the screen must be analyzed, discussed, and challenged if we are to avoid becoming
passive receptacles for whatever messages are broadcast in our direction. The critical
skills discussed in this book must be used to examine all serious ideas, whatever the
medium of their transmission.
18
Daniel Leab, The Moving Image as Interpreter of History, in OConnor, Image as Artifact, 89.
19
This discussion of Platoon is based largely on Davidson and Lytle, After the Fact, 4th ed., 38892.
For a more in-depth discussion see Monaco, How to Read a Film, Ch. III, The Language of Film: Signs and Syntax, or
20
OConnor, Image as Artifact, Ch. V, An Introduction to Visual Language for Historians and History Teachers.
EXERCISE
Films can be a component of any segment of a history course. There are no specific
exercises for this chapter, but we suggest that you think of classroom films as some-
thing more than mere entertainment. You can use the categories below to analyze
films used as part of a traditional history course.
Film Analysis:
Analysis of Content
Thesis (documentary) or Central Historical Message (drama):
Major Points:
Context
Information about director/producers/writers:
What does the film reveal about the period in which it was made?
Visual Analysis
(Here you should note those elements of film language that contributed significantly
to the overall message or impact of the filmediting, sound, camera placement,
set, costumes, etc. Refer to the insert on film language on page 134.)
Editing (montage):
Copyright 2010 Harlan Davidson, Inc.
Sound:
Overall Conclusions
How does the film hold up as a piece of history?