Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (Cultureamerica)

Rating:
Summary: loose and baggy collection of remarks on historical films
Review: Three and a half stars, really. The book gives some guidelines for what the author sees as the distinctive genre of "cinematic history" (his term--not very well defined--for a movie dealing with an historical event). He then argues by example about good and bad cinematic history, regularly invoking the genre requirements and the pressure to entertain that he sees as necessarily constraining factors in the creation of historical films. With the exception of a chapter-long discussion of a 1970s PBS docudrama, for which the author served as an historical consultant, none of the analyses are very extended. This seems a shame, as he is apt to see interesting things in the films that he does discuss. As the title implies, the attitude of the author is generally quite permissive about liberties taken by filmmakers. I think what he calls history, I'd call myth. Movies are mythic in their portrayal of the past. They have more in common with a short story, or even a poem, than they do with a history text. The implicit conception of the audience isn't very flattering, but probably accurate enough: most viewers won't pay attention to stories that don't conform to a critical mass of Hollywood techniques. The author tells historians, with some justification, to lighten up, but he does his best work in exposing the errors, sloppy thinking and general fallaciousness of academic film criticism over the past 30 years. The writing style is lucid and even lively at times, though he has an annoying habit of stringing long series of questions together, often without systematic effort to address those questions. Browse for the good sections, then dig in to those. On the level of extended argument, the book suffers somewhat (with the exception of the portion in which he takes on the film studies professoriate); but for bright insights, and intelligent moments, it stands up as an enjoyable read.