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HISTORY ON FILM/FILM ON HISTORY
by
ROSENSTONE, ROBERT A.
Examines what history films convey about the past and how they convey it. This book examines: films made in different political systems and climates; the dramatic feature, the Biofilm, the documentary and the Innovative drama; the filmmaker as historian; and, how a group of works devoted to a single topic can engage the larger discourse.
Stock: In Stock, Delivery: Standard 2-3 Days (inc BFPO), £2.65
Format: Paperback
Published: 16/02/2006
Publisher: PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED
ISBN: 0582505844
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Reviewed By: |
History Today Magazine |
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Date: |
01/09/2006 |
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There can be little doubt that most people today derive their information about the past and their general sense of history not from a memory of school studies, or from reading scholarly works but from what they see on film and television. So it is timely that a prominent American historian has taken a critical look at history on film. And Robert Rosenstone tries in a positive, non-adversarial way to look at the relationship between history on the screen and history on the page.
The core of Rosenstone’s argument is that History with a capital ‘H’ does not have to be a written text produced, to quote Hayden White, in the form of the nineteenth- century novel. Rosenstone argues that this form of academic history is only one way in which readers or viewers can engage with historical ideas, or have a discourse with the past. He argues that there is not just one kind of truth – factual accuracy – but that there are many types of truths, including emotional truth and metaphorical truth and that film is far better at evoking these than the writings of conventional historians.
Some historians, he accepts, do not just operate within a linear, scientific tradition given over to the pursuit of factual accuracy. Some already explore different ways of portraying the past by writing in a more self-reflexive style, or by looking for multiple voices in producing a historical mosaic. Simon Schama is one of these – as is Rosenstone himself. But it is this, Rosenstone powerfully argues, that film does far better.
Most historians only ever judge films by how accurate they are and, of course, inevitably find them wanting. Rosenstone seeks to find a conceptual framework in which to value film not simply as works that need to have each moment verified, but rather as pieces of history which overall have something meaningful and important to say about the past.
Rosenstone is well suited to this task. He has scripted a documentary and acted as consultant to a major Hollywood epic (Reds) and he is at his best when he puts historical films under a critical microscope. His section on Eisenstein’s October is a wonderful appeal to understand symbolic or metaphoric accounts of the past. All history is about constructing the past and whether this is done on the page or through the consciousness of the historian/filmmaker, both can be valid and useful.
And in a brilliant analysis of six films of Oliver Stone (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Nixon, Salvador and Heaven and Earth) Rosenstone argues that Stone should be considered as an important historian of America of the late twentieth century, that his films create a kind of ‘collective historical argument about contemporary America’.
There are a few things that worry me about Rosenstone’s fascinating and provocative book. Firstly, it’s a great shame that most of the films he chooses to analyse or deconstruct in detail are at least twenty years old. With so much history on film and television in the last few years, it’s disappointing that he doesn’t debate more recent examples – Band of Brothers (2003) rather than Shoah (1985), Munich (2005) rather than Reds (1982). Secondly, although he has a chapter on documentary it’s far less convincing than his reading of feature films. Television is the principal visual medium of today and although Rosenstone repeatedly pays lip service to its importance, there is no real analysis of the many criticisms that are frequently aired about Television History – why is it so obsessed with the Second World War, or with conflict and violence? As a practitioner in this field, I would have welcomed Rosenstone’s thoughts on history on the small screen. Maybe a follow-up volume?
But more than anything, he seems to have difficulty in accepting that so much popular history is based on narrative. Whether it’s in a television documentary, or a visit to a museum, people enjoy being taken on a journey and told a story. Narrative is a basic human need, it’s almost like it’s somewhere in our DNA. That’s why so much popular history appeals so widely.
But this is an important book that should be read and discussed. It asks valuable questions about what do we want from the past? Why do we want to know it? Is it to learn by example, or to feel what others may have felt or experienced in a different situation? It is good to be told that we should judge historians not just by the accuracy of their data but by the aptness of their metaphors. And in an increasingly visual-orientated world this might be the way history will increasingly come to be judged by most people.
Taylor Downing is the author of Battlestations (Pen & Sword, 2000).
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