History
on the Screen
(1953)
The representation of past characters and events on the cinema screen has been a matter of controversy since the film was first considered to have aesthetic quality. Although the earliest film subjects were of real life, or contemporary characters in actual surroundings, such as the Lumiere films, fantasy quickly attracted the pioneers, such as Melies.
The re-enactment of history, to which film-makers soon turned, was almost certainly due to theatrical influence, and it had its beginnings, not illogically, in France, Italy, Denmark and England. 'Napoleon and Josephine, Jane Shore, Ben Hur and The Fall of Troy are typical of their period, fashioned by the theatrical wardrobe and replicated by the scenic artist.
Hollywood only took up the 'costume' drama after Europeans, with their long stage traditions, had made it commercially attractive. But it is worth noting that Mr. Adolph Zukor's attempt in 1912 to emulate the French and to present established theatre actors in historical plays, entitled Famous Plays and Famous Players, was abortive. The public preferred Westerns and the Slapstick.
From the time of Quo Vadis? in 1912 to the Quo Vadis? of today, the entertainment cinema has exploited almost every period of history along the familiar methods of a Baroness Orczy or Rafael Sabatini; they seldom reached the level of a Stanley Weyman or Maurice Hewlett. Although exhaustive research is always publicized as being put into these films, few indeed have ever succeeded in capturing the period atmosphere of the past. Cloak-and-sword melodrama may well have its place in escape entertainment, as do science-fiction and the Western, but it is useless as a method for the serious teaching of history.
In Europe, however, notably in the 'twenties during the silent cinema, attempts were made with great accuracy to re- create the history of the past. The German Anne Boleyn, Cesare Borgia and Loves of Pharaoh were a great deal more authentic than their Hollywood counterparts. The several films made of Frederick the Great (circa 1923} actually used original costumes, furniture and settings, but the result no matter how accurate was sadly lifeless. Dreyer, the Danish director, tried a synthesis of authentic and contemporary costume (rather like the vogue for playing Shakespeare in modern dress) in La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928), probably coming nearer to interpreting the atmosphere of Joan's trial through stylized design than the spectacular French production The Marvellous Life of Jeanne d'Arc (1927).
In France, the past was a very favourite subject, ranging from the elaborate staging of Le Miracle des Loups (1926), much of it filmed at reconstructed Carcassonne, and Abel Gance's monumental recreation of Napoleon (1927), with its triptych screen, to the light-hearted La Kermesse Heroi'que (1935), memorable for its fine style and convincing atmosphere. The Russians, also, produced in the 'thirties such historical sagas as Peter the Great (1937) and Ivan the Terrible (1944), with immense care for accuracy of period which, allowing for ideological interpretation, made the past to a degree credible and acceptable on the screen.
Apart from the fact that all such attempts to recreate history in film terms depended on restaging, they all had the drawback that they were, for the most part, very expensive to produce, except where State backing was forthcoming. Accuracy in costume and setting demands time; it also demands a school of actors who have been trained to wear costume as if it belonged to them, an attribute especially possessed by Continental actors. There is hardly one American actor who can wear period costume with conviction, except in the cloak-and-dagger genre where accuracy is mostly sacrificed to romanticism. Most English actors, too, wear costume as if on their way to the Chelsea Arts Ball.
There is, however, a totally different approach to history on the screen depending on the medium's ability to record actuality and not restaging of the past. History on the screen began when the first movie camera filmed the world in front of its lens from the late 'nineties up till today, the term Living History makes sense.
In many countries, cameramen often amateurs began filming actual events, sometimes for the topical newsreels that began to be commercially made around 1910, sometimes on travel expeditions (e.g. the well-known work of Capt. Herbert Ponting), sometimes as amateur historians (e.g. Ing. Toscano, who filmed most of Mexico's events and main personalities from the revolution of 1910 up till after World War I). Fascinating use of some of this early footage was made by Nicole Vedres in Paris 1900, and in the post-war German film In Those Days, while the Pathe Documentary Unit in England has partially explored its newsreel vaults for several Scrapbooks, somewhat blighted by a facetious commentator.
Louis de Rochement's The Golden Tears ( 1950) attempted an impression of the 'twenties drawn from actuality sources; while Gilbert Seldes and Fred Ullmann contrived This Is America (1933), based on Frederick Lewis Allen's well-known informal social history of the United States, Only Yesterday.
Unfortunately, the newsreels from which most of these compilation films have drawn their material have too often been regarded as casual entertainment and too seldom as an accurate mirror of contemporary events. To quote a trade-paper in 1945: "The news obligation of the newsreel is happily trivial. If the newsreels had to cover the news, they would be full of charts on taxes and reports on crop reports. No one goes to the theatre to get the news"
Such a view, commonly held by the trade, is belied by the fact that both the American March of Time and the British This Modern Age either headed or were runners-up in the annually-held popularity polls for short films when these editorialized reels were in existence. It is also a proved fact that today (1953) the BBC-TV newsreel commands the largest viewing audience of all programmes. Despite the casualness of the newsreel attitude, there is nevertheless a mass of footage stored in the newsreel vaults in the world's capitals which must have considerable historical value if it can be selected and presented with sociological pur pose.
We can study at very nearly first-hand the revealing gestures and expressions of eminent men and women now dead, of crowds at public gatherings that took place over fifty years ago. And so often it is now not the main characters in these events that catch our eye the monarchs and emperors and premiers so much as the odd people in the crowd who at the time were of no interest to the photographer because of his familiarity with them. It is possible through such compilations of old footage to look backwards as no previous generation could on the living and animated face of yesterday.
That Queen Victoria was indeed a 'very little woman' we know to be a fact: there is a shot of her riding through Dublin about 1900 to prove it. An interesting and perhaps educationally important experiment in the teaching of history by film or rather perhaps the historical approach might be made by taking a given year in the last half-century and selecting authentic film material to express its social and economic, as well as its cultural and political characteristics. Obviously, the feasibility of preparing such a film of Living History, hitherto untried, depends wholly on the nature of what film footage is available. Before any given year in the past fifty can be selected, a survey must be made of what material exists and can be duplicated for educational use.
The National Film Archive in Britain would, it is safe to foresee, cooperate willingly by loan of footage where copyright and preservation conditions permit, and a study of its catalogue should be a first step. At the same time, an inquiry as to the ex tent and nature of what exists in old actuality film might be circulated through the International Federation of Film Archives, of which there are now, it is understood, some eighteen member countries.
For example, the Museum of Modern Art Film Library possesses From Czar to Lenin, compiled by Herman Axelbank in 1936 from material he procured in Russia and containing some remarkable footage of old Russia before 1914, including intimate scenes of the Royal Family.
A film has recently appeared in Mexico called Memoirs of a Mexican which is a fascinating film record of the revolutionary period of that country's history from 1910 to 1925. There must be other such original material, if a search be made. An attempt might also be made to find out what films exist that may have been taken by early amateurs, clearly prior to the use of 16mm. stock.
The Royal Photographic Society and the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers might aid here. An approach to the newsreel companies should be made, stressing the educational and non-commercial nature of such an experiment:
Pathe would reveal most fascinating early material because it is the oldest of the present newsreels. The Imperial War Museum still has the film collection of World War I, including some interesting civilian material. The three Services archives should not be overlooked. In the United States, the National Archives in Washington have an immense selection of preserved film. The Cinematheque Frangaise has information about private collections of old film. And so on.
Paul Rotha, MEMORANDUM FOR THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL AIDS, London, March, 1953.
© Derek McLellan 2007,on editing or revisions if any.
The representation of past characters and events on the cinema screen has been a matter of controversy since the film was first considered to have aesthetic quality. Although the earliest film subjects were of real life, or contemporary characters in actual surroundings, such as the Lumiere films, fantasy quickly attracted the pioneers, such as Melies.
The re-enactment of history, to which film-makers soon turned, was almost certainly due to theatrical influence, and it had its beginnings, not illogically, in France, Italy, Denmark and England. 'Napoleon and Josephine, Jane Shore, Ben Hur and The Fall of Troy are typical of their period, fashioned by the theatrical wardrobe and replicated by the scenic artist.
Hollywood only took up the 'costume' drama after Europeans, with their long stage traditions, had made it commercially attractive. But it is worth noting that Mr. Adolph Zukor's attempt in 1912 to emulate the French and to present established theatre actors in historical plays, entitled Famous Plays and Famous Players, was abortive. The public preferred Westerns and the Slapstick.
From the time of Quo Vadis? in 1912 to the Quo Vadis? of today, the entertainment cinema has exploited almost every period of history along the familiar methods of a Baroness Orczy or Rafael Sabatini; they seldom reached the level of a Stanley Weyman or Maurice Hewlett. Although exhaustive research is always publicized as being put into these films, few indeed have ever succeeded in capturing the period atmosphere of the past. Cloak-and-sword melodrama may well have its place in escape entertainment, as do science-fiction and the Western, but it is useless as a method for the serious teaching of history.
In Europe, however, notably in the 'twenties during the silent cinema, attempts were made with great accuracy to re- create the history of the past. The German Anne Boleyn, Cesare Borgia and Loves of Pharaoh were a great deal more authentic than their Hollywood counterparts. The several films made of Frederick the Great (circa 1923} actually used original costumes, furniture and settings, but the result no matter how accurate was sadly lifeless. Dreyer, the Danish director, tried a synthesis of authentic and contemporary costume (rather like the vogue for playing Shakespeare in modern dress) in La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928), probably coming nearer to interpreting the atmosphere of Joan's trial through stylized design than the spectacular French production The Marvellous Life of Jeanne d'Arc (1927).
In France, the past was a very favourite subject, ranging from the elaborate staging of Le Miracle des Loups (1926), much of it filmed at reconstructed Carcassonne, and Abel Gance's monumental recreation of Napoleon (1927), with its triptych screen, to the light-hearted La Kermesse Heroi'que (1935), memorable for its fine style and convincing atmosphere. The Russians, also, produced in the 'thirties such historical sagas as Peter the Great (1937) and Ivan the Terrible (1944), with immense care for accuracy of period which, allowing for ideological interpretation, made the past to a degree credible and acceptable on the screen.
Apart from the fact that all such attempts to recreate history in film terms depended on restaging, they all had the drawback that they were, for the most part, very expensive to produce, except where State backing was forthcoming. Accuracy in costume and setting demands time; it also demands a school of actors who have been trained to wear costume as if it belonged to them, an attribute especially possessed by Continental actors. There is hardly one American actor who can wear period costume with conviction, except in the cloak-and-dagger genre where accuracy is mostly sacrificed to romanticism. Most English actors, too, wear costume as if on their way to the Chelsea Arts Ball.
There is, however, a totally different approach to history on the screen depending on the medium's ability to record actuality and not restaging of the past. History on the screen began when the first movie camera filmed the world in front of its lens from the late 'nineties up till today, the term Living History makes sense.
In many countries, cameramen often amateurs began filming actual events, sometimes for the topical newsreels that began to be commercially made around 1910, sometimes on travel expeditions (e.g. the well-known work of Capt. Herbert Ponting), sometimes as amateur historians (e.g. Ing. Toscano, who filmed most of Mexico's events and main personalities from the revolution of 1910 up till after World War I). Fascinating use of some of this early footage was made by Nicole Vedres in Paris 1900, and in the post-war German film In Those Days, while the Pathe Documentary Unit in England has partially explored its newsreel vaults for several Scrapbooks, somewhat blighted by a facetious commentator.
Louis de Rochement's The Golden Tears ( 1950) attempted an impression of the 'twenties drawn from actuality sources; while Gilbert Seldes and Fred Ullmann contrived This Is America (1933), based on Frederick Lewis Allen's well-known informal social history of the United States, Only Yesterday.
Unfortunately, the newsreels from which most of these compilation films have drawn their material have too often been regarded as casual entertainment and too seldom as an accurate mirror of contemporary events. To quote a trade-paper in 1945: "The news obligation of the newsreel is happily trivial. If the newsreels had to cover the news, they would be full of charts on taxes and reports on crop reports. No one goes to the theatre to get the news"
Such a view, commonly held by the trade, is belied by the fact that both the American March of Time and the British This Modern Age either headed or were runners-up in the annually-held popularity polls for short films when these editorialized reels were in existence. It is also a proved fact that today (1953) the BBC-TV newsreel commands the largest viewing audience of all programmes. Despite the casualness of the newsreel attitude, there is nevertheless a mass of footage stored in the newsreel vaults in the world's capitals which must have considerable historical value if it can be selected and presented with sociological pur pose.
We can study at very nearly first-hand the revealing gestures and expressions of eminent men and women now dead, of crowds at public gatherings that took place over fifty years ago. And so often it is now not the main characters in these events that catch our eye the monarchs and emperors and premiers so much as the odd people in the crowd who at the time were of no interest to the photographer because of his familiarity with them. It is possible through such compilations of old footage to look backwards as no previous generation could on the living and animated face of yesterday.
That Queen Victoria was indeed a 'very little woman' we know to be a fact: there is a shot of her riding through Dublin about 1900 to prove it. An interesting and perhaps educationally important experiment in the teaching of history by film or rather perhaps the historical approach might be made by taking a given year in the last half-century and selecting authentic film material to express its social and economic, as well as its cultural and political characteristics. Obviously, the feasibility of preparing such a film of Living History, hitherto untried, depends wholly on the nature of what film footage is available. Before any given year in the past fifty can be selected, a survey must be made of what material exists and can be duplicated for educational use.
The National Film Archive in Britain would, it is safe to foresee, cooperate willingly by loan of footage where copyright and preservation conditions permit, and a study of its catalogue should be a first step. At the same time, an inquiry as to the ex tent and nature of what exists in old actuality film might be circulated through the International Federation of Film Archives, of which there are now, it is understood, some eighteen member countries.
For example, the Museum of Modern Art Film Library possesses From Czar to Lenin, compiled by Herman Axelbank in 1936 from material he procured in Russia and containing some remarkable footage of old Russia before 1914, including intimate scenes of the Royal Family.
A film has recently appeared in Mexico called Memoirs of a Mexican which is a fascinating film record of the revolutionary period of that country's history from 1910 to 1925. There must be other such original material, if a search be made. An attempt might also be made to find out what films exist that may have been taken by early amateurs, clearly prior to the use of 16mm. stock.
The Royal Photographic Society and the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers might aid here. An approach to the newsreel companies should be made, stressing the educational and non-commercial nature of such an experiment:
Pathe would reveal most fascinating early material because it is the oldest of the present newsreels. The Imperial War Museum still has the film collection of World War I, including some interesting civilian material. The three Services archives should not be overlooked. In the United States, the National Archives in Washington have an immense selection of preserved film. The Cinematheque Frangaise has information about private collections of old film. And so on.
Paul Rotha, MEMORANDUM FOR THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL AIDS, London, March, 1953.
© Derek McLellan 2007,on editing or revisions if any.
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