How do Hollywood filmmakers construct and interpret American history? Is film's visual historical language inherently different from the traditions of written history? This definitive collection of essays by leading scholars probes the theoretical and historical contexts of films made about the American past - from the silent era to the present.
Exploring issues deeply connected with historical filmmaking, from historiography to censorship, to race, gender, and sexuality, the book discusses a wide range of films and genres- including classics such as The Virginian, Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane. This collection is essential reading for anyone interested in studying, or researching American history and film.
Includes essays by Susan Courtney, David Culbert, Nicholas J. Cull, Vera Dika, David Eldridge, Vittorio Hösle, Marcia Landy, Mark W. Roche, Robert Rosenstone, Ian Scott, Robert Sklar, J.E. Smyth, and Warren I. Susman.
Introduction; J.E.Smyth
Film and History: Artefact and Experience; W.Susman
Film History, Reconstruction and Southern Legendary History in The Birth of a Nation (1915); D.Culbert
The Hollywood Western, the Movement-Image and Making History; M.Landy
Ripping the Portieres at the Seams: Lessons from A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) on Gone with the Wind (1939); S.Courtney
Hollywood About Hollywood: Genre as Historiography; R.Sklar
Some Like it Hot (1959) and The Virtues of Not Taking History Too Seriously; D.Eldridge
Vico's Age of Heroes and the Age of Men in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); M.Roche & V.Hösle
Anatomy of a Shipwreck: Warner Bros., The White House and the Celluloid Sinking of PT 109 (1963); N.J.Cull
The Long Road of Women's Memory: Fred Zinnemann's Julia (1977); J.E.Smyth
Inventing Historical Truth on the Silver Screen; R.Rosenstone
'This is not America; this is Los Angeles': Crime, Space and History in the City of Angels; I.Scott
Between Nostalgia and Regret: Strategies of Historical Disruption from Douglas Sirk to Mad Men; V.Dika
Further Reading.
