1st Edition

British Historical Cinema

By Claire Monk, Amy Sargeant Copyright 2002
    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    284 Pages
    by Routledge

    Films recreating or addressing 'the past' - recent or distant, actual or imagined - have been a mainstay of British cinema since the silent era. From Elizabeth to Carry On Up The Khyber, and from the heritage-film debate to issues of authenticity and questions of genre, British Historical Cinema explores the ways in which British films have represented the past on screen, the issues they raise and the debates they have provoked. Discussing films from biopics to literary adaptations, and from depictions of Britain's colonial past to the re-imagining of recent decades in retro films such as Velvet Goldmine, a range of contributors ask whose history is being represented, from whose perspective, and why.

    Do we need another hero? Ecce Homo and Nelson (1919) - Amy Sargeant 3. Death or glory? The Great War in British Film - Alan Burton 4. Secrets and lies: black histories and British historical films - Stephen Bourne 5. 'If the world does not please you, you can change it': The History of Mr Polly (1949) and The Card (1952) - Tim O'Sullivan 6. Cinema, monarchy and the making of heritage: A Queen is Crowned (1953) - James Chapman 7. Camping on the borders: history, identity and Britishness in the Carry On costume parodies, 1963-74 - Nicholas J. Cull 8. Monkey feathers: defending Zulu (1964) - Sheldon Hall 9. Ireland, the past and British cinema: Ryan's Daughter (1970) - Fidelma Farley 10. Imperial migrations: reading the Raj cinema of the 1980s - T. Muraleedharan 11. Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989) : genre and interpretation - James Quinn and Jane Kingsley-Smith 12. The British heritage-film debate revisited - Claire Monk 13. The content and the form: invoking 'pastness' in three recent retro films - Amy Sargeant 14. Taking liberties with the monarch: the royal bio-pic in the 1990s - Kara McKechnie

    Biography

    Claire Monk is Lecturer in Media Studies at DeMontfort University. Amy Sargeant is Lecturer in History of Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck College, University of London.