History on Film/Film on History

History on Film/Film on History demonstrates how films can be analyzed as historical sources. It offers undergraduates an introduction to some of the first issues involved with studying historical films.

Rosenstone argues that to leave history films out of the discussion of the meaning of the past is to ignore a major factor in our understanding of past events. He examines what history films convey about the past and how they convey it, demonstrating the need to learn how to read and understand this new visual world.

This new edition places this 'classic' text in the context of work done elsewhere in the field over the ten years since this book first published, and help to renew the title for a new generation of undergraduates.

Contents

Preface to the series ix

Acknowledgements xi

Publisher’s acknowledgements xiii

Chapter 1: History on film 1

Chapter 2: To see the past 11

Chapter 3: Mainstream drama 32

Chapter 4: Innovative drama 50

Chapter 5: Documentary 70

Chapter 6: Telling lives 89

Chapter 7: Film maker/historian 111

Chapter 8: Engaging the discourse 134

Chapter 9: Film on history 154

Guide to key reading 165

Bibliography 172

Index 179

· A new introduction places the work in the context of current critical debate

· Introduces the varieties, types, and traditions of historical films made in Hollywood, Europe, and the rest of the world

· Examines the responses of historians and other public critics (reviewers, teachers, politicians, historical actors) to the way particular historical events have been presented on the screen

· Discusses and explains the codes and conventions by which (some) filmmakers have created a meaningful historical discourse on the screen

· Provides practical guidance on how such methods can be applied to the analysis of other historical films

Professor Robert A. Rosenstone of the California Institute of Technology is a leading scholar in the growing field of history and film. To this topic he brings experience as both an honoured historian and a participant in several major film projects. His award winning biography of John Reed, Romantic Revolutionary (1975), was used as the basis of Warren Beatty's multiple Academy Award winner, Reds, on which Rosenstone served as historical consultant. He is author of several works of history, including Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (1995) Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (1969) and Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Japan (1988). He is editor of Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (1995) and Experiments in Rethinking History (2004). He is the Founding Editor of Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice.