European History in Text and Film: Community and Identity in France, 1550-1945

During the past decade as students posed serious questions about history gleaned from films, I created a course, "European History in Text and Film: Community and Identity in France, 1550–1945," to address the way events recorded in history texts are presented in history films and, conversely, the way visual accounts affect print ones. ¹ These are the objectives: to study French history—structures and events—in a widened cognitive arena; to understand professional conventions that guide efforts to reconstruct the past in texts and in films; to recall the critical skills for judging written history (the usual task); and to think through (in parallel terms) those for judging filmed history. All told, the objectives are to bring historical knowledge to bear, along with methodology, in deciding whether or not a text or a film—in overall conception and execution—tells a story about the past that maintains historical integrity. Why films, skeptics ask? Because history film dramas, fiction film dramas, and documentary films not only entertain huge audiences but also teach them about past events in a dynamic way, vie for public attention daily, and demand considered response. ²

For teaching this type of history course—complex in cognitive areas tapped—some practical suggestions are in order. The course should be tightly focused on a specific theme or themes; participants should be conversant with elements of visual literacy in order to "read" a film; and some criteria for judging the ways books and films present history should be set forth. In league with the general theme of my course, "Community and Identity," five historical events (actions taken by people in time) are studied in texts and films; and the historical structures, or contexts, interlaced with those events (governments, institutions, laws, beliefs, ideas in place over time) are presented in lectures. ³ In history courses where texts normally are assigned, we track the "relations of practice" between structures and events, root "social sites" in historical contexts, ⁴ and look for persuasive arguments based on relevant evidence, plausible interpretations of that evidence, and logical conclusions drawn from sources thus interpreted. ⁵ But in history courses where texts and films are paired—combining reading (with source materials included) and viewing (without such materials)—the norms for critical historical inquiry, when applied to films, must be judiciously modified without sacrificing historical integrity.

Pairing Texts and Films

At the outset, I address the professional conventions that guide the work of historians and filmmakers. Conventions vary, as do narrative methods and goals, and critiques of works in both genres require informed judgments. In the history text format, individual historians (allotted maximum time) write history narratives that reconstruct past events. Drawing pertinent information from time-bound sources, they interpret that evidence in historical context, isolate general patterns (political, social, legal, intellectual, geographical), and in effect reconstitute a sense of the material terrain of the past where people once negotiated life choices. The urge to invent held in check by the sources, historians employ imagination, reasoning, and equivocation (qualifiers—perhaps, maybe, might), invest arguments with analytical force, and move to logical conclusions. Across the aisle, professional conventions, just as valid there, differ in some respects.

In the history film format, teams of filmmakers (given limited time) create visual narratives to reconstruct past events. Obtaining information from a variety of sources (some historically grounded, others not), they interpret findings in historical context (or not), integrate life experiences of people in a material setting (state, society, geography), and reconstitute that setting visually. ⁶ The necessity to invent given wide swath, filmmakers employ imagination and reasoning, fictions and inventions and invest stories with dramatic force headed toward a climax. ⁷ Whether through thick description analyzed in one, or thick plot dramatized in the other, both aim at closure to convince an audience. For historians, usually concerned with building...