Abstract

The contributors to Retrovisions consider what happens to history in the movies. Focusing on films and texts from the 1950s to the 1990s, the contributors argue that the past has always come to us by way of previous texts and culturally bounded aesthetic categories, and that history films - to the despair of historians - have always taken a 'postmodern' approach to their subject, seeing the past as a dynamic resource for exciting stories and poetic, morally uplifting untruths. Why do certain decades appeal at certain times? And what does the renewal of interest in narrative history reveal about our culture at the start of the new millennium?

The authors address the variety of ways in which history can be used, refashioned and made over to reflect current concerns - and how history films from the past can be reinterrogated to learn what they tell us about their own times. The films discussed include Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Love, Culloden, The Avengers, Titus, and several adaptations of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, including Cruel Intentions.