Can history be represented on film (documentary or fiction) ?
Résumé de l'exposé
Representing history is a difficult work for historians as for filmmakers. Through pictures, sounds, music, montages and mise-en-scene, is it possible to represent the world, and especially history? We will try to analyse the representation of history in film, particularly in the fiction, by focusing on films that deals with the Vietnam war. This aim asks the question of the difference between documentary and fiction: the mise-en scene of the war tries to re-create an historical atmosphere but imagine some characters and facts that never existed. If in Rambo, we just have to follow the exploits of Sylvester Stallone, Platoon of Oliver Stone or Full Metal Jacket of Stanley Kubrick, that also deals with Vietnam War, need in contrary that the spectator realize than the characters are used to give the point of view of the filmmakers. Fiction suppose than the spectator identify himself to the main character(s) and use to judge affectively each of them. Representing history in fiction means that filmmakers mix a mise-en-scene of the war with a chaste and distant vision of the events. The major scenes deal both with an unspeakable experience and this kind of distance that exist through the esthetisation of the mise-en-scene. I will focus on the film of Stone Platoon, because it remembered for the striking realism with witch it recreated the Vietnam War from the point of view of the U.S. soldier, also because Stone lived this war when he was young.
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Sommaire de l'exposé
« Une accumulation de savoir »
La conception du savoir encyclopédique
La classification des connaissances
« Une source d'où sortent maints ruisseaux » (l.29)
Un objectif novateur
L'usage du Français
Un ouvrage destiné aux élites laïques
L'idéal du savoir au service de la cité
Extraits de l'exposé
[...] He undergoes so the events more that he provokes them or masters them. Mostly, the spectator does not know what Taylor is going to do or should do. On the other hand, in most of the films of action (Apocalypse Now, Rambo II) the hero has an explicit purpose and he should simply surmount obstacles to reach there: he should carry out a mission . In this genre of fiction, the "mission" gives coherence to all the film, while Platoon presents syncopated sequences without that a general purpose connects them. [...]
[...] Can history be represented on film (documentary or fiction) ? Introduction Representing history is a difficult work for historians as for filmmakers. Through pictures, sounds, music, montages and mise-en-scene, is it possible to represent the world, and especially history? We will try to analyse the representation of history in film, particularly in the fiction, by focusing on films that deals with the Vietnam war. This aim asks the question of the difference between documentary and fiction: the mise-en scene of the war tries to re-create an historical atmosphere but imagine some characters and facts that never existed. [...]
[...] Every sequence is a facet which describes an aspect of the military experience of a young American recruit, and adds to the previous ones without forming really a linear history: there is a walking in the jungle, then the night ambush, then the life in the base camp, then the discovery of an enemy bunker and the raking of a Vietnamese village, then the bloody collision with the communist troops, and finally the final night assault and the crushing defeat of the American soldiers. All the different situations that a young American soldier in Vietnam was able to live were transposed into Stone's film, as many fragments as only the person of the young person Chris allows to connect some to the others. A history will be outlined, but very late and very gradually, in the confrontation of both sergeants Barnes and Elias. The analysis of a sequence allows clarifying how works this realistic will in the concrete progress of the film. [...]
[...] These plans contribute not at all to the progress of the action: their only purpose is to show, in some very brief sights, the daily life of the soldiers and the boredom or the feeling nonsense which gets free of it (as confirms it Taylor in voice off. In a film of action, such plans would be useless and would constitute a hollow moment in the history. Contrary to Platoon, some films that deals with Vietnam War have been criticise because they was no realistic enough. Rambo became one of the most parodied action figures in film history. Numerous reporters criticise Michael Cimino, the director of The Deerhunter, as ill informed about real Vietnam experience, not having served in the war himself. [...]
[...] The purpose admitted by Oliver Stone was to translate its personal experience of the Vietnam War that is what he had lived, but also what he had felt, thought or tried. It was a question so for him of making coincide its author's point of view of film with the point of view of his central person, Chris Taylor. Platoon will distinguish himself then from films where the spectator knows the point of view of the various persons. Prejudice voluntarily subjective of the director he forbids to represent the other persons that Chris Taylor and the members of the section. [...]
Sciences humaines & sociales