Western Civ Since 1600

History 107 at the College of Wooster

film

The War in Moving Images

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The Battle of the Somme has become a symbol of the destructive power of the First World War. The offensive, begun on the first of July, 1916, was to be the Big Push that would end the war. Instead it was a bloodbath. Some 20,000 British soldiers died on the first day. By the fall, some 1.5 million soldiers could be counted among the dead and the wounded.

That is not the impression that you would take away from the British documentary, “The Battle of the Somme,” which was shot in the days before and during the early offensive. The film does show the casualties of war, though much of the ugliest violence was censored. The filmmakers – and the British Topical Committee for War Films  which sponsored the production – wanted to help build support for the war through film.

And so they did. While the battle in northern France continued, cinema goers in London could get their own taste of war. The film was an enormous success with critics – who saw it as a tribute to the heroism of war – and audiences alike.

This short clip gives you some sense for the film’s content.

“Burn” and Free Trade Imperialism

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We’ve given some close attention to the “new imperialism” of the late nineteenth century, which is typically dated from the 1880s (the  Berlin Conference of 1884 was an important turning point) down to the First World War. I mentioned in passing the “free trade imperialism” of the nineteenth century. It’s worthy of some attention. It refers, above all, to the relationship between Britain and the world in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars until the 1870s. In these decades, Britain managed a system of free-trade that served its national interests — dominating colonies and free states with an economic form of imperialism.

“Burn” (Quemada), the 1969 film from Gillo Pontecorvo, offers a pointed critique of the whole idea. It is at once an indictment of British 19th c. colonialism and a powerful critique of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Marlon Brando stars as Walker, the British official who first spurs the slaves of Quemada, a fictional island in the Caribbean, to revolt against their Portuguese masters and put in place … a new government dominated by rich planters. See his speech on the advantages of prostitution to marriage, which he offers the plantation owners as a guide to why free laborers should be preferred to slaves…

Week 2 – History on Film

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A few generations of scholars have now demonstrated just how loose the relationship between history and history on film usually is. Grand historical dramas are meant, first of all, to entertain. But a good historical film has a lot of power: to bring the past to life, to give us as sense for the texture of the past, to raise important questions of fact and interpretation.

Take a look at Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I considering the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots. It does reveal the challenge to authority that Elizabeth endured. And why not a quick look at Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth for a dramatic picture of the Spanish-English conflict of the early 17th c.

For a portrait of the religious wars that tore France apart in the 1560s and 70s, see this trailer from “Queen Margot,” based upon the very fictionalized 19th c. novel of Alexandre Dumas. The imagery is stunning.

I held up Michel de Montaigne as a heroic figure of the 16th c, the literary pioneer of the “Essay,” a man who questioned human pretense and certainty before he questioned the ways of others. Kenneth Clark gives a nice portrait of the man and his ideas in his BBC series “Civilisation.”

Finally, for a portrait of Spanish obscurantism, you might take a look at the Spanish Inquisition. The Emperor of Spain – from the 15th c. – used the special power granted by the Pope to root out heresy in Spain. You’ll see an account of the principal features of the Spanish Inquisition here and here.