The Role of Cinema Within History

Article written by Alex Griffiths. Edited and Researched by Liam Brake.

Back in 2010 during my first year of university, my flatmates and I once spent an evening watching Quentin Tarantino’s most recent work, Inglorious Basterds. For those who are unaware of the plot, the movie is situated in wartime France, where Brad Pitt and his fellow Jewish-American soldiers attempt to single-handedly take on the Nazi leadership.

The climax of the movie (spoiler alert), set in a cinema, sees the soldiers burst into the theatre – conveniently full of German officers – and dramatically gun down Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels amongst others. This was all to the backdrop of a cinema erupting in flames.

It was at this point that a flatmate (who shall remain anonymous) turned to me and said, ‘Is that really how Hitler died?’

Granted this moment of blissful ignorance does not represent the thought processes of the majority of cinema-viewers. But what this anecdote is intended to demonstrate, in a roundabout way, is how television and film has a great influence on how historical events are remembered within the public consciousness.

For many, movies prove to be their first point of reference when reflecting back to an event or time period. This for some historians can prove to be a contentious issue. Do film writers and directors have a duty to accurately represent the past? How much poetic licence should they be allowed to wield? And just how much of an impact does this have on the public?

Recent releases from Hollywood have accentuated this debate. The Impossible, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, tells the true story of a family’s traumatic experience of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Nominated for Academy Awards and Golden Globes, it has on the whole been received positively by the film industry.

Yet others have been quick to criticise it for its portrayal of the disaster. Based around the emotions of a western family, the chosen narrative – with an ultimately happy ending – sees the suffering local population sidelined. For many the wider context of the disaster, in that over 230,000 were killed across fourteen different countries, is not fully recognised.

A successful piece of cinema? Yes. An accurate portrayal of events? Debateable.

Another recent release to divide opinion is Zero Dark Thirty, a dramatisation of the United States’ manhunt for Osama Bin Laden. Once again, the movie proved to be a success at the Box Office, earning 5 Academy Award and 4 Golden Glove nominations.

Yet this has also been subject to critical scrutiny, being condemned by some for its apparent condoning of torture and being given improper access to protected files. Originally scheduled for release in October of 2012, Republicans in the White House saw it as a piece of pro-Obama propaganda ahead of the November Presidential election, and successfully campaigned to delay release until January 2013.

The power of TV and cinema ability to shape historical perceptions is not something that sits easily within academic circles – some have suggested it begins to ‘dumb down’ the discipline. Cinema, as well as historical documentaries, has the potential to reach millions more people than a book on the same subject ever will.

As a historian studying the subject to a high level, you become aware that no period in history has a linear narrative; no sole motive has ever explained a leader’s decision to go to war; no historical argument is entirely correct, and debate will always exist. A historian can delve into these issues in ways that the on-screen format does not allow the pubic to do, which only allowing time for a fleeting snapshot, before moving swiftly on.

Yet in an industry overridden by the need to entertainment, where should the line be drawn? Big Hollywood blockbusters are, after all, primarily concerned with box office takings ahead of a historical grounding. And it would be historical snobbery to expect otherwise.

Take, for example, any movie concerning the Vietnam War. A recent publication by historian Meredith Lair has discussed how, at any one point, only one in ten soldiers were situated on the front line, in the infamous ‘search and destroy’ missions that brought them into contact with the guerrilla soldiers of the Vietcong. Yet a feature-length movie that saw the soldiers on ‘R & R’ would prove difficult to turn into a successful piece of cinema. We Were Soldiers, Platoon, and Rambo (…sort of) all embellish the soldiers experience into the popular narrative. Who are we to detract them from their role as entertainers?

Modern day cinema therefore sees a requirement for film makers to collaborate with historians, in order to get an understanding of their chosen era, so as to ensure they do not miss the point entirely.

If Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds was perhaps too farfetched to ever be considered factual, his latest work, Django Unchained, places itself at the centre of a complex issue: slavery. Tarantino himself has said that his motivation for making the movie was to “give black Americans a western hero”. Within the outlandish shooting scenes and comical one-liners, his depiction of some of the master-slave relationships is spot on; this was particularly the case with the fascinating relationship between plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo Di Caprio) and slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).

Thus Tarantino pays due diligence to academic understanding of Antebellum America, striking the balance between history and entertainment.

The examples discussed here merely touch the surface of what can be a complicated relationship. It is not clear exactly where the boundary should lie between providing an accurate representation of a period, and the duty to satisfy the audience’s need for engaging cinema.

What is clear is that history on television and film is very much ‘history in the public eye’, and is the major influence behind public memory. For this reason it is crucial for those in the industry to have an appreciation of the responsibility their role entails.

Films listed in this article

Inglorious Basterds- 2009, Quentin Tarantino

The Impossible- 2012, Juan Antonio Bayona

Zero Dark Thirty- 2012, Kathryn Bigelow

We Were Soldiers- 2002, Randall Wallace

Platoon- 1986, Oliver Stone

First Blood (Rambo)- 1982, Ted Kotcheff

Django Unchained- 2012, Quentin Tarantino

Interesting points

– Although perhaps superficial, there are many items that Tarantino has included in his Django Unchained that would not have been available to a contemporary character in his film set in 1858.

– Dynamite was not invented until 1867, while the film features it on several occasions and is set in 1858.

– The winner of the wrestling scene is given a beer with an “ez-cap” bottle cap which apparently did not exist until around 1872.

– Dr. Schultz says the word ‘Malarkey’, the word didn’t come into use until 1929.

– The salon has a beer tap- not invented till the early 20th century.

– Django wears sunglasses, only introduced to the US in 1929.

– Belt loops can clearly be seen on the Australians pants but were not invented until 1922.

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