Robert Burgoyne,
The Hollywood Historical Film.
Malden MA, Blackwell Publishing, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-1405146036
US$31.95 (pb)
192pp
(Review copy supplied by Blackwell Publishing)

The task of encompassing historical cinema into a singular generic category is a slippery one at best. A seemingly endless series of sub-genres need to be accounted for, from the biopic to the war film, each of which has its own series of generic traits. The commonality, of course, is that these films all attempt to engage with history, either directly or indirectly, and attempt to supply either an account of events or of the broader reality of a historical period itself. Defining the historical film, at least those films within the constraints of the Hollywood system, is the task that Robert Burgoyne sets for himself.

Part of Blackwell Publishing’s ‘New Approaches to Film Genre’ series, the project of Robert Burgoyne’s The Hollywood Historical Film is largely an attempt to define the Hollywood Historical film as a genre in its own right, in order to see if enough consistencies exist across the broad array of films covered under this banner to make such a generic classification productive. I must confess to a certain amount of scepticism as I started reading, since the profitability of such exercises in genre definition have in the past seemed to me to be akin to the obsessive-compulsive record cataloguing of High Fidelity (UK/USA 2000) – time-consuming but ultimately with limited benefit. However, on this particular occasion the motifs that Burgoyne suggests tie Hollywood historical films together yield more significant cultural implications than the syntactic and semantic elements of the western. More than this, they demonstrate a fascinating relationship between American historical identity and the films that Hollywood produces.

Burgoyne argues that there are three areas of consistency in the way that Hollywood Historical films demonstrate a relationship with America’s notion of history. The first lies in the “relationship between historical films and an emerging or changing sense of national identity”. (p. 19) In other words, all historical films, as cultural artefacts, demonstrate the various ways that the United States perceives itself at the time of production. Secondly, these films often elicit new interest in areas of history that might otherwise not have been so significant in the public consciousness. Glory (USA 1989) is provided as an example, its theme of African-American involvement in the American Civil War eliciting a new interest in the form of genealogical projects, exhibitions and artistic endeavours. Finally, Burgoyne points out how the weight of historical subject matter renders the historical film a vehicle of cinematic prestige, often encouraging public response to its accuracies and/or inaccuracies in the search for historical truth. Whilst none of these points are entirely new, their grouping together provides a sound framework for examining the way in which America’s cinematic representations of its past have an impact on cultural memory.

Burgoyne chooses to split the Historical film into five distinct sub-genres – the war film, the epic film, the biographical film, the metahistorical film and the topical historical film. Whilst the first three are self-explanatory, already accepted genres in their own right, the metahistorical and the topical historical films are more experimental categories on Burgoyne’s part. The topical historical film is defined by the direct relevance of its subject matter to recent events. For obvious reasons, Burgoyne selects Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (USA 2006) and United 93 (France/UK/USA 2006), analysing their approach to the disaster of September 11 so soon after the event. Perhaps the most engaging chapter, the examination of films that focus on a still prevalent cultural trauma, yields great rewards and provides a window into just how a nation comes to terms with such an ordeal.

Burgoyne’s account of the metahistorical film also makes for interesting reading, the sub-genre being defined not by the nature of its subject matter but in the way that it approaches history. He describes the metahistorical film as any film that offers “embedded or explicit critiques of the way history is conventionally represented” (p. 46). Flags of our Fathers (USA 2006) and Walker (USA/Mexico/Spain 2006) are two examples that are provided, the former examining the public relations campaign that followed the famed photographing of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima, the later littering an account of William Walker’s invasion of Nicaragua with references to contemporary consumerist culture that render the film a commentary on the present day. Once again, this is work that has been covered before, most significantly in the work of Robert Rosenstone, however Burgoyne’s use of JFK (USA/France 1991) for the principal case-study makes for a clear and concise account of the way in which the metahistorical text functions.

With each chapter principally focused on a case study that fits under each of the aforementioned sub-genres of Historical film, a sound examination of how these sub-genres function is provided. However, one is left with the feeling that, given the purpose of the series in which this book has been published, Burgoyne seems to provide very little in the way of new approaches beyond the categorising of historical cinema as a genre in of itself. Ultimately, Burgoyne manages to provide an interesting, easy to understand account of the representation of history in mainstream American cinema.

James Curnow,
Monash University, Australia.

Created on: Sunday, 25 April 2010