This Was Your Life: The Year of the Biopic

Much more than modern writing, which grew more fragmented and experimental in the early years of the last century, movies were the heir to nineteenth-century traditions of storytelling. Whether exploring matters of fact or fiction, movies, like the novels that preceded them, have always been interested in the arc of individual lives, the intricate unfolding of relationships and careers, and the tensions between our inner feelings and the face we put on for the world at large. The nineteenth century was a great era for novels and biographies but an iron discretion kept them in separate spheres.