From Publishers Weekly
A history professor at Princeton University, Natalie Zemon Davis (The Return of Martin Guerre; Women on the Margins) is also a seasoned critic of historical film. With Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision, she discusses how movies represent history differently than books do. Can narrative films achieve the accuracy and authenticity that writers can? "Can there be lively cinematic equivalents to what prose histories try to accomplish in prefaces, bibliographies, and notes and through their modifying and qualifying words 'perhaps,' 'maybe,' and 'we are uncertain about'?" In order to answer these questions, Davis looks at a handful of films that have attempted to capture themes of slavery, struggle and rebellion (Spartacus, Burn!, The Last Supper, Amistad and Beloved) and analyzes the devices they've used to convey history, as they understand and wish to express it. It is her hope that "with patience, imagination, and experimentation, historical narration through film could become both more dramatic and more faithful to the sources from the past." (Harvard Univ., $22.95 176p ISBN 0-674-00444-2; Sept.) Given that Shakespeare is one of the world's most famous interpreters of history, it seems fitting that the 14 academics whose essays form Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Si?cle believe that the recent surge of Shakespearean films (Shakespeare in Love, Hamlet, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet) reflects modern man's association of millennium-sized issues with the Bard himself. Edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray (respectively, a reader and a lecturer in English at Queen's University of Belfast), the volume tackles such topics as advancing technology, families at risk and cultural intolerance. Included among the provocative pieces is a gem of an interview with Kenneth Branagh. (St. Martin's, $42 272p ISBN 0-312-23148-2; Aug.)
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Davis, a historian with a concentration on people outside traditional power centers, explores the treatment of slaves on film from a historical perspective. She analyzes five films:
Spartacus as an example of resistance and survival,
Burn and
The Last Supper as reflective of ceremony and revolt, and the more contemporary films
Amistad and
Beloved as witnesses of trauma. In each topic area, Davis sets up the complex interplay between historically supportable fiction and imagination. Clearly, each of these films reflects strong foundations rooted in historical research. Yet the various film applications merit different responses. As in much of "history," much in films is unknown. That is due to the filmmakers inclination to embellish through speculation and imagination; but the historical alterations that take place, Davis advocates, should be acknowledged to film viewers so that they may distinguish between historical fact and fiction. This short work should be very informative for those interested in an analysis of the historical treatment of slaves in American films.
Vernon FordCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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