Historians vs.
Filmmakers
Since Griffith's era, cinema and historiography have been rivals. Like many rivalries, this one obscures some striking
similarities between the two. From the beginnings of the cinema, filmmakers have shown a fascination for historical events.
And despite constantly carping about the inaccuracy of most historical films, many historians are secretly fans of the genre.
Griffith's mythical library-uncannily like today's computer-filled classroom-promised to realize what both film and history have
long declared as their goal: to present the past as it really was.
Film, it must be admitted, probably has the upper hand in achieving this goal. Film's ability to serve up living images of past
events gives it an advantage over most history books. Most feature films invite their viewers to identify with the characters
and scenes depicted on screen; watching Akira Kurosawa 's Seven Samurai (1954) leaves one with a visceral and nearly
indelible sense of what a Japanese village must have looked like, and a feeling as well for some of the ideas about status that
came to structure early modern Japan. The gruesome opening scenes of Shhei Imamura 's Black Rain (1989), likewise,
drive home the horrors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in a way that few written accounts can. Even a fantasy likeShall
We Dance (Masayuki Suo, 1997) can offer a glimpse into everyday Japanese life, its quirks and frustrations, that is both
captivating and informative.
These examples suggest one very common way of putting film to use in a classroom. Films serve here as a stand-in for
reality; their function is to recreate another place or time, ideally in a way that will both inform and entertain. Japanese
history is in fact well served in this respect. The jidaigeki, or period film, is a well-respected and well-established genre. Just
about every period of Japanese history can be "viewed" by means of film.
Using film in the classroom does, however, raise some questions. How true is the depiction? How can one separate out what
is accurate from the parts that provide a misleading picture of life during a particular era? How, moreover, is one to judge,
given that there is very little available in English that might help one make these sorts of distinctions? Hayao
Miyazaki'sPrincess Mononoke (1997), for example, contains some wonderfully accurate images of medieval life (the market
town, the lepers in Eboshi's "Irontown," the film's depictions of women are all taken from medieval picture scrolls). Yet these
touches are likely to be lost amidst the much more vivid depictions of gods and monsters.
Unfortunately, certain elements of history lend themselves more readily to film than others. Battles, assassinations, the
events of political history-their inherent drama means that they are more easily recreated than the material that makes the
basis of social or cultural history. It is inherently more difficult to put daily life, mores, gender, or ideas on film because they
are much less likely to be eventful and dramatic.
Historians' ideas, moreover, about what is required in a faithful reproduction of the past are frequently at variance with those
of filmmakers. Historians' preoccupation with context, cause, and explanation means that they scrutinize films for their ability
to address "broader questions," to explain social movements or a society's foibles.
Filmmakers tend to see the injunction to present the past accurately in terms of costume and set design and often go to
extraordinary lengths to get these details correct. Kenji Mizoguchi, for example, insisted that his set and costume designers
use authentic materials-true antiques, actual armor. (His designers used to lie to him: "Of course that chest (or kimono or
teapot) is real," they would assure him. Mizoguchi, it turns out, could not really tell the difference between genuine and fake
articles.) Most historians, by contrast, do not care about details like clothing, and unimpressed by filmmakers' claims that
they are accurately depicting the past. Historians tend, it seems, to be much more interested in how well a film conveys the
feel of the past: a vague notion, certainly, but one that usually has to do with how well a film depicts the ways people in the
past thought and felt, how well it captures why they might have acted as they did. Because historians and filmmakers have
different ideas about what constitutes faithful depiction, they tend to fall into endless, and largely fruitless debates. As a
result, we do not get any closer to thinking constructively about how film might actually be used to reflect on history.
[Link]
2014.01.30
