The Re-creation of History Through Film

History is complex.  There is no sole truth to any particular historical event; however, those unpopular narratives of history are often forgotten.  Film takes these forgotten histories and adds a creative element that portrays a bigger message about the present.  Inglourious Basterds and Midnight in Paris create wishful histories within these films that not only tackle invention but also tackle a wishful, retrospective perspective of the nostalgic viewer.  Historical films recreate this wishful history in order to create a false nostalgia that reveals our feelings about the present.

Film takes the open, free opportunity associated with creativity in order to present history on the big screen.  Film has the ability to “animate the past, to reconstruct the great events of history through the performance of the actor and the evocation of atmosphere and milieu” (Rosenstone 11). Take Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.  On the surface, this film is about the Nazis and Jews during the Holocaust of World War II.  This film introduces itself as a sort of written book with its opening line of “Chapter One.”  Tarantino decided to present the film in this form, which presents the film as a narrative or a story.  What changes this representation is the following text, “Once upon a time…”

Opening Title to Inglourious Basterds. “Once Upon A Time…” suggests a fairytale

This completely juxtaposes the feeling that this is in anyway related to written history’s “factual” text.   The use of “Once upon a time” presents how this story will be presented: as more of a story than a documentary approach. While Inglourious Basterds does present the film as a “fairy tale,” both films introduce historical figures as a reference to the history era or time period.

 

Hilter is presented as a historical figure in Inglourious Basterds. He is used in this film as a way to hold a historical event as well as tell a story that an audience can connect to.

In a way, these historical figures help these films to reanimate the past.  For example, by including Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris, the viewers can interact with a past and an iconic literary figure in a way beyond the written text surrounding that history.

The real Ernest Hemingway. This photo would most likely be in a history book with a description of what he was like.

The Ernest Hemingway as portrayed by Corey Stoll. The represents the highest of stereotypes written about Hemingway.

The old saying that history is the story of the victor suggests that perspectives can change the history that is widely known.  In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen uses stereotypes of these artists in order to present their characters within the film.  For example, the Fitzgeralds fall into every word that is written about them, according to Gill at least.  Allen creates Zelda Fitzgerald (Allison Pill) as the jumpy, exciting, drunk party girl that the history books write her as.

Also, Allen presents Zelda as the force that is holding F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) back from truly great writing.  What challenges this film is the fact that this film is portrayed by actors of the present.  In essence, all the literary figures could be portrayed as their polar opposites in the film.  Film has the opportunity to present alternate sides to popular history that can present new information about the history that is known.

Film invention has been the biggest issue studied by historians, as well as their biggest argument against the medium.  These inventions are made in order to give separate interpretations of historical events. For example, Inglourious Basterds represents a film that is completely invented and a wishful interpretation of World War II.

While the history of World War II is widely known, the result of the war might not be what the people wanted.  Tarantino uses Inglourious Basterds to present that wishful, retrospective history.  For example, the “basterds” are an invented group of bandits that roam freely through France targeting Nazis and executing them.

Even though the group is fictitious, the idea of Jewish Americans wanting to march into France to avenge the persecuted Jews is a retrospective feeling felt by those Jews who wished they could have been there to be brave and kill Nazis and avenge the European Jews.  This wishful history is most greatly presented in the scene where Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) makes a deal with Lt. Aldo Raine and “the Little Man” in the end of the film.

Colonel Hans Landa attempts to make a deal with the basterds to which he says “what will the history books read?”

As the Colonel first presents his deal, Lt. Raine is skeptical, and shows his skepticism by facial expressions and an anecdotal Tennessee story.  His largest argument is the feeling of “what looks to good to be true, usually is.”  The colonel refutes this by examining history, “what shall the history books read.”  By involving history books, the film is self-reflexive by pointing out that the history books read a different story than is seen in this film.

In Midnight in Paris, Gill and Adrianna both believe they were born too late and are nostalgic for a time before their own.  In Inglourious Basterds, the film is nostalgic for a different result to a historical event.

This final fire scene represents what we might wished had happened to all the Nazi leaders during WWII.

However, both these films present alternate histories as well as incorporate invention to tell the story.  This can lead to a sense of false nostalgia for the viewer to an event that they have only experience indirectly through history books or history on screen. In Midnight in Paris, prior to Gill’s time-travel, he dwells heavily upon the ‘20s as if he lived there and knows that this time period is significantly better than the present.  However, Gill has only experienced and formed this opinion by reading about Paris in the 1920s in books.  This is an example of nostalgia through an indirect experience.  Once Gill finally time-travels to his favorite time period, he finally gets his direct experience and indulges in his nostalgia for the era.

Gill and Adrianna travel even further back in time and Gill decides that this is not an era he wants to live in. He urges Adrianna that this is not the place to be because the 1920s is.

While Gill has overcome the false nostalgia by directly experiencing these events, the audience of the film can now connect and remember this past without experiencing it. By creating these figures in image form, the audience can feel as if they now know the figures for what they were through the visual representation. The problem is that this is a film created in the present or long after the historical figures lived.  “In reality, the viewers are ‘not there,” and can never be.  The filmic re-enactment provides not a direct access to ‘how things were’ but rather a guide to how the past might be understood” (Bell and McGarry 12).   Likewise, filmmakers have creative freedom over their films. 

 

Animalistic Representation in Dogtooth

When the father goes to the dog training facility, it is understood that the father has surrendered his dog in order to get professional training.  This behavior is very contrary to the father’s personality.  The father, up to this point, has had a hand in controlling almost every other character in this movie.  However, the father apparently can’t manage to control or train his own dog.  This leads to the problematic cat scenario.  Cats are notorious for being uncontrollable.  They run around doing as they please beyond the desires of people or their owners.  Perhaps, the father fears cats because he knows he can’t control them.  And this might create flaw in the father because he desperately feats what he cannot control.  Just as Mark Fisher explains in his piece, “Dogtooth: The Family Syndrome,” “the inside can be frightening (pet cats become dangerous predators), but it’s meaning is established in advance” (Fisher 27).  This means that anything that might be harmful from the inside is explained away to a simple, less dangerous manner.  So, the very decision to create cats as dangerous predators to humans was preconceived by the father and the mother.  And it is possible that the father decided his feelings early on about the cat and other uncontrollable things precisely because they are uncontrollable. 

Gender Hybridity in Bend It Like Beckham

Here’s a paragraph out of my first film response paper:

“

Berghahn speaks about a matter coined under Hollinger about “chosen and voluntary affiliations” (Berghahn 246).  Berghahn stressed that this type of affiliation allows for the “formation of new identities” (Berghahn 246).  I agree with her completely because the coming of age film centralizes on change and movement into a new sense of identity or self.  By choosing to leave the traditional boundaries of gender, gender norms lose their power.  No longer do these female characters have to conform to wearing a dress and cooking as identifiers.  Female characters can easily embody a masculinity as well as femininity to their personality in order to define their identity.  Jess Bhamra, a British-Indian young woman, lives amongst the constraints of her tradition-centric mother.  She defies her mother by laying roughly with the boys during soccer matches and even by ignoring her mother’s wishes to be a more domesticated woman.  While it is obvious that Jess struggles with themes of family, wrong versus right, and culture, Jess is within a gender identity that seeks a healthy medium.  Jess wants to play soccer and live her life her way.  However, Jess also wants to please her family and their traditions.  She battles with her personal desires and the needs of her family.  Within this battle, Jess finds herself fighting and moving between the two camps.  This constant moving seeks stability, but that stability would mean either upsetting her family or living a life she does not want.  The film handles this commercially by allowing Jess to choose her path of soccer in America but also with the permission and blessing of her father.  I believe this is more of a neutral solution whereas the hybrid theme of the film is more realistic.  Gender norms would not allow Jess to leave her family, but her father’s permission leaves Jess continually in a position of patriarchal submission.  Without her patriarch, Jess would not be given the opportunity to explore her dream of soccer.  This idea, however, diminishes the idea of gender hybridity. “

Discussion Comment

Prompt #2:

To date in this class, the most interesting article/film combination was back in week 2.  Pan’s Labyrinth worked perfectly with Robert Rosenstone’s To See the Past.  The article raised ideas and questions about the use of history on film.  It had not occurred to me to question not only the authenticity of the history presented in films but the justification of its use.  Rosenstone explains history on film as the “edit[ing] together footage of actual historical moments to create a sense of the past ‘as it really was’.”  This notion is common in the history film, but the viewer also assumes this is how all history films are supposed to be.  The audience and myself believe this is what happened during that particular historical event.  What is most interesting is how Rosenstone points out this editing is also how these “moments looked through the lens of a camera from a particular point of view.”  This is interesting because it means that trying to learn history through film should come with a grain of salt as editing, in a sense, is manipulation.

Pan’s Labyrinth works with this article as the evidence of history in a film.  The film deals with the Spanish Civil War.  Before watching this film, I knew virtually nothing about the Spanish Civil War and the amount of destruction Francisco Franco created.  I believed that everything I watched in Pan’s Labyrinth was a true depiction of the pain the rebels suffered from Franco’s wrath.  However, with the ideas from the article, I can now watch this film with a critical eye that knows this film was not filmed during the time of the Spanish Civil War, which means that the narrative was created after the fact.  Also, the film is fictional and somewhat meant to entertain a commercial audience which means the director has discretion about what history to include and what history not to include.

Discussion question: When historical films are made, why would directors and filmmakers choose to use some moments of history while leaving others out?

First Post

This is my first post.