Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (review)

Appropriately for the subject matter, the sections of this book are named after the parts of the filmmaking process. Llewellyn-Jones starts the book with a short preface about himself and his interest in the topic, titled “Movie Trailer.” He lays out the purpose and the value of his monograph in his introduction, “The Opening Credits.” We are introduced to the concept of the screen epic through the film Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Norma Desmond’s film within the film, Salome. Also in the preface, Llewellyn-Jones explains the main purpose of his book: to show classicists a new way to write about film. This is what makes this book most valuable. He uses different types of evidence (press releases, production stills, interviews, advertisements) to explore how the ancient world was put on screen instead of analyzing the text of a film. Thus, the book is a template for how to write about film. Llewellyn-Jones also introduces the concept of “camp” aesthetics (bad on purpose) but does not fully explore the relationship of camp to epic until the end of the book. Furthermore, this book addresses only Hollywood films made from 1916 through the mid-1960s, a period known as the Golden Age of Hollywood, the zenith of the screen epic. After about 1965, Hollywood stopped production of epic films partially because they were no longer as profitable as they had once been and partially because the studio system was going through dramatic changes. This period of time is perfect for the scope of this book because it was the time when the screen epic was a Hollywood institution.

Chapter 1, “See! See! See!,” details how films were marketed, including many images of promotional material and advertisements. Llewellyn-Jones explains how the architecture of the theater functions as advertisement, the process of making trailers, and some of the tactics used to sell films. He ends the chapter focusing on how director Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959) (a director of particular interest to Llewellyn-Jones) and his extensive “research” into the eras of his films was also a tool in the films’ marketing strategy. This chapter focuses heavily on DeMille to the exclusion of other prominent directors like William Wyler (1902–81), but Llewellyn-Jones justifies this decision because few directors had as great an influence on the epic genre as DeMille. This is an appropriate approach, but some discussion of other directors would have made for a more robust exploration of the topic.

Chapter 2, “Illusion Makers,” explains how set design and basic effects work. Again, the focus is on DeMille and how art influenced the mise-en-scène (the arrangement of the elements of the design) and the composition of his shots (how the figures are placed in the frame of the camera) as well as further exploring the research process. The concentration on DeMille means that religious epics receive a lot of attention in this chapter. Llewellyn-Jones spends a great deal of this section on how expensive epics are (in sections titled “Sets as Embellishment” and “Spending Money and Cutting Costs”) and the problems associated with designing a set that appeals to the modern standards of life but also conforms to the audiences’ preconceived notions of past eras. The chapter concludes with some of the technological innovations involved in the making of screen epics such as new film processes and the introduction of color film. This is the least innovative of the chapters. The discussion of set design does not add a great deal more to the discourse in film reception than scholars such as Jon Solomon and Martin Winkler have done in previous decades.¹ To expand the conversation, however, would require more in depth analysis of specific films and that is not what this book sets out to do. This chapter functions well as an introduction on the topic.

Chapter 3, “Designer History,” is all about costume...