Introductory description

This year-long survey of the historical film analyses the development and dominance of feature historical filmmaking from the silent era to the age of Netflix. Although weekly topics and individual key films may change from year to year, the module will explore the Hollywood tradition alongside the work of filmmakers from Europe, Asia, and the Global South.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Term 1

1. The Age of Netflix
2. Film & History: Beyond 'Separate But Equal'
3. D.W. Griffith and the Origins of Film Censorship
4. Global Hollywood
5. Soviet Montage
6. Russian Ark
7. The Gender of Film History
8. Working-Class Biopics
9. Film Noir and Brit Noir

Term 2
11. The Western
12. Global West: Karl May and Sergio Leone
13. Empire as a Way of Life: Britain in the 1930s
14. Postcolonial Critique and 'Lawrence of Arabia'
15. The 'Rashomon' Effect
17. Remembering the 'Good War'
18. Resistance, Collaboration, and Conformists
19. Documenting the Holocaust
20. Nostalgia and Postmodernism

Term 3
21. The Streaming Giants and the End of Film
22. Review Session

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of the origins and development of the historical film in Hollywood and other ‘national’ traditions in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, and Russia
• Critically analyse and evaluate classic and ongoing debates within the humanities about the representation and construction of history on screen
• Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, relating to the content and form of history and biography in film, literature, and historiography and the reasons for shifts in discursive emphasis over time
• Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to the historical film

Indicative reading list

• Becker, Carl (1935). Everyman His Own Historian. New York: F. S. Crofts & Co.
• Bordwell, David et al. (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Caton, Steven (1999). Lawrence of Arabia: A Cultural Anthropology.
• Clark, Suzanne (2003). Cold Warriors. University of Souther Illinois Press.
• Des Jardins, Julie (2003). Women and the Historical Profession in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Dika, Vera (2003). Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art & Film. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Elsaesser, Thomas (1996). Fassbinder’s Germany: History Identity Subject. Amsterdam University Press.
• Ferro, Marc (1988). Cinema and History. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
• Grindon, Leger (1994). Shadows on the Past: Studies in the Historical Fiction Film. Temple University Press.
• Gunning, Tom (1998). D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Filmmaking.
• Jameson, Fredric (1990). Signatures of the Visible. London: Routledge.
• Novick, Peter (1988). That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pollock, Griselda and M. Silverman (2011). Concentrationary Cinema. Berghahn.
• Ramirez, Bruno (2014). Inside the Historical Film. McGill-Queen's Press.
• Richards, Jeffrey (1997). Films and British National Identity. Manchester University Press.
• Rosenstone, Robert A. (1995). Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Sklar, Robert and Charles Musser, eds (1997). Resistant Images. Temple University Press.
• Smyth, J. E. (2012). Hollywood and the American Historical Film. Macmillan.
• Tashiro, Charles (1994). Pretty Pictures. University of Texas Press.
• Taylor, Richard (1998). The Eisenstein Reader. BFI.
• Vincendeau, Ginette (2003). Jean-Pierre Melville: An American In Paris. London: BFI.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.