A true representation of history in film is almost impossible to achieve, this is due to the limitations of source materials the filmmakers who create the films have. In the modern day, photographs and video footage of historical events are available but these resources don’t depict everything which has happened. Emotion and what happens in historical events are two of the main things that these resources do not depict, what happens in event and human emotion can only be experienced by either people who are involved in the historical event or by the person who is being portrayed. Even then the event experienced can be falsely accounted for due to time in terms of memory or quite simply human error. Another main problem with historical depiction in film is that many films, especially Hollywood films, have one main goal, to create profits. This is achieved by the entertainment value of a film, if a film is entertaining an audience will follow, which leads to the film creating revenue. One of the main arguments raised about historical films is that they distort the past. Many Hollywood films have to use certain techniques and convention to ensure that it makes revenue, these conventions lead to filmmakers adding more to history via film such as love interests, more appealing action sequences and changing the look of the events to make them more aesthetically pleasing. Hollywood, Historical war films which depict rivalries between nations have been affected by this method with has led to the films not being an honest representation of history. This essay will discuss how historical representation in the films Braveheart, Pearl Harbor and Lincoln has been falsely and honestly depicted to create a more narratively and visually entertai...
... middle of paper ...
... to the extent Daniel Day Lewis (Abraham Lincoln) goes to too understand the role he is playing. An argument that historians raise about certain historical films is that they distort the true of history by adding traits such as romance and exaggerated battle scenes. To rule out historical films completely by exerting that they distort history completely is irrational seeing as the two behaviours historians use to understand why historical figure behave is almost exactly the same behaviours a method actor uses to portray their historical character on screen.
Works Cited
Rosenstone, R.A, "The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age," in The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, edited by Marcia Landy, (New Brunswick,New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001): 50-66.
Guynn, W (2006). Writing History in Film. New York: Routledge. 134-135p.
Films are necessary in our time period because the human eye can articulate the message intended through sight allowing visual imagination to occur. In the book, world 2 by Max Brooks, he creates a character by the name Roy Elliot who was a former movie director. Roy Elliot manages to make a movie titled “Victory at Avalon: The Battle of the Five Colleges” and some how it goes viral. Similarly, Frank Capra’s film, “Why we Fight” expresses a sense of understanding the meaning of wars. Films do not inevitably portray truth because they display what the film director views as important and beneficial for people to know.
In today's day and age, it's rare to see famous historical events and societal disasters not be picked apart by film directors and then transformed into a box office hit. What these films do is put a visual perspective on these events, sometimes leaving viewers speculating if whatever was depicted is in fact entirely true. I have never felt that feeling more than after I finished watching Oliver Stone’s JFK.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
...s at that time who have come of age. Perhaps no film in recent history has captured more attention and generated more controversial debate. This film resonates the feeling and question that common people had about the JFK assassination in the 60s. As a result, the debate about the validity of JFK extended much further into the war-torn cultural landscape of America in the 1990s than most observers noted. The JFK was a telling incident demonstrating the larger cultural conflict over values and meaning in America and the competition to define national identity. The whole affair demonstrated how effective a motion picture can be as a transmitter of knowledge, history, and culture. As a result, the debate about the validity of JFK extended much further into the war-torn cultural landscape of America in the 1990s than most observers have noted.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Fyne, Robert. The Hollywood propaganda of World War II. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994. Print.
One could easily dismiss movies as superficial, unnecessarily violent spectacles, although such a viewpoint is distressingly pessimistic and myopic. In a given year, several films are released which have long-lasting effects on large numbers of individuals. These pictures speak
...ctual roles, or adding in exciting events that revise the storyline. These changes are beneficial to producers because they engage a large audience and generate massive profits. In contrast, they do not always have a positive effect on viewers. Although they are entertaining which is an important aspect of theatre culture, they also are often misguiding. Many spectators take movies at face value, without considering that they may not exactly qualify as primary source material. Even when an historical event is fabricated to teach or enhance a moral message, it still doesn’t compensate for bending the truth. Moviegoer’s may have a positive experience and gain some skewed historical perspective, perhaps better than what they knew before the movie, but they loose out on the truth and therefore, a genuine understanding of the historical event, and its significance.
Filmic technique plays a vital role in the way an audience looks at a character or society in a whole. Lee Tamahori’s film “Once were warriors” uses filmic technique in the crafting of the characters, the roles they adopt and the society they live in.
...al events. Some events that happened in the film, didn't actually happen in history. Especially the whole romantic theme, though the scenes with romance helped develop the plot of the film, and to elaborate on the film's themes and message. Although the film seems to be mostly inaccurate, it still held some historical accuracy.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Since the beginning of film, technology has played an important role in the evolution of the medium. Film, much more so than literature, relies on the ever-changing nature of technological development to stay relevant. In 1980 when Seymour Chatman wrote “What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (And Vice Versa),” there were no such thing as DVD players and the VCR was a newly introduced, and thus non-perfected, product. Today when viewing a film, one has the luxury of returning to previous scenes immediately and effortlessly in order to further soak in and contemplate filmic choices. In his essay, Chatman focuses too heavily on narrative drive and, in saying that film cannot describe, does not give full merit to the idea of returning to and repeating a film for purpose of textual analysis.
To begin with, this paper was written with the intent to provide a full analysis on the movie Black Hawk Down. Over the course of the following paragraphs, I will establish a base as to why I think this movie is important to history, as wells as provide an in-depth overview of the narrative, and the translation of the story into a film. Since there are many different characteristics that make up a great film, the following text will provide what I think to be the strongest elements of the narrative, mise-en-scene, character development, and overall reception of the audience.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.