Writing history in film

• Introduction: Facing the Skepticism of Historians
• p. 1

• Chapter 1
• Historiography: Stories of a Particular Kind
• p. 23

• Historical Objectivity and the Historian's Subjectivity
• p. 25

• Fictional Stories and Historical Narratives
• p. 27

• Four Essential Questions about the Nature of Historic Narrative
• p. 32

• Is There a Special Character to the Narrative Statement in History?
• p. 32

• Can History Be Distinguished from Fiction from the Position of the Reader?
• p. 35

• Can Historical Narrative Be Distinguished from Other Narrative Forms on the Basis of the Materials It Uses?
• p. 38

• Can We Distinguish History from Fiction on the Basis of the Role of the Imagination?
• p. 41

• Chapter 2
• Signifying History: What Are Factual Narratives?
• p. 45

• Theories of Fiction, Theories of Nonfiction
• p. 47

• The Practice of Nonfiction
• p. 60

• Signifying History in Film
• p. 67

• Case Study: Constructing the King's Body in Roberto Rossellini's The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966)
• p. 80

• The Question of Pragmatics
• p. 81

• The Question of Mimesis
• p. 84

• The Vehicle of Expression
• p. 91

• Chapter 3
• The Historical Character
• p. 97

• The Problematic of Historical Film and the Imaginary
• p. 97

• Narratological Approaches to Character
• p. 99

• Historiographical Approaches to Character
• p. 103

• Techniques of Representing Historical Actors
• p. 106

• Case Study: A History to Save the Republic-Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise (1938)
• p. 109

• Case Study: Standing for the Revolution-Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba (1964)
• p. 122

• Chapter 4
• Refiguring History in Film
• p. 133

• The Reality of the Past and Historical Narration
• p. 133

• Three Modes for Understanding Historical Mimesis
• p. 134

• Under the Sign of the Same
• p. 135

• Under the Sign of the Other
• p. 136

• Under the Sign of the Analogous
• p. 138

• The Rhetoric of Prefiguration
• p. 138

• Prefiguration in the Historical Film
• p. 141

• Case Study; Weapons of Irony in Esther Shub's The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927)
• p. 147

• Case Study: The Degradation of Tragedy in Theo Angelopoulos's The Traveling Players (1974-1975)
• p. 154

• Chapter 5
• Film: A Place of Memory
• p. 165

• Film as an Instrument of Public Memory
• p. 165

• Defining Collective Memory
• p. 168

• Recovering the Psychological Dimension of History
• p. 173

• Case Study: Losses of Memory-Ken Burns's The Civil War (1990)
• p. 179

• Case Study: Compelling Memory in Rithy Panh's S21-The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003)
• p. 186

• Endnotes
• p. 197

• Select Bibliography
• p. 205

• Index
• p. 211