Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision

by Natalie Zemon Davis

The written word and what the eye can see are brought together in this fascinating foray into the depiction of resistance to slavery through the modern medium of film. Davis, whose book The Return of Martin Guerre was written while she served as consultant to the French film of the same name, now tackles the large issue of how the moving picture industry has portrayed slaves in five major motion pictures spanning four generations. The potential of film to narrate the historical past in an effective and meaningful way, with insistence on loyalty to the evidence, is assessed in five Spartacus (1960), Burn! (1969), The Last Supper (1976), Amistad (1997), and Beloved (1998). Davis shows how shifts in the viewpoints of screenwriters and directors parallel those of historians. Spartacus is polarized social history; the films on the Caribbean bring ceremony and carnival to bear on the origins of revolt; Amistad and Beloved draw upon the traumatic wounds in the memory of slavery and the resources for healing them. In each case Davis considers the intentions of filmmakers and evaluates the film and its techniques through historical evidence and interpretation. Family continuity emerges as a major element in the struggle against slavery. Slaves on Screen is based in part on interviews with the Nobel prize–winning author of Beloved , Toni Morrison, and with Manuel Moreno Fraginals, the historical consultant for The Last Supper . Davis brings a new approach to historical film as a source of "thought experiments" about the past. While the five motion pictures are sometimes cinematic triumphs, with sound history inspiring the imagination, Davis is critical of fictive scenes and characters when they mislead viewers in important ways. Good history makes good films.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Film, Grad School

176 pages, Hardcover

First published March 14, 2000

About the author

Natalie Zemon Davis was an American-Canadian historian of the early-modern period.

Reviews

[Niffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read "The Return of Martin Guerre" for a college course many years ago. I enjoyed the book well enough to reread it a few years ago. Recently I was talking to someone about it and looked it up, and then noticed Davis had written other books, so I thought I would check some of them out.

I watched "Hidden Figures" before I read the book, and I remember being hesitant to read the book because I figured it would be the movie, only longer. When I finally read the book, I was fascinated by the differences between the two. The book is an historical account. The movie is a narrative that, whole being true to the spirit of the book, changes and compresses timelines and personal stories. One might feel betrayed by the lack of historical accuracy in the movie, but I think in order to reach people and to be understandable in a short period of time, there had to be changes. And at its heart, the movie is true to the book.

This book is basically Davis reviewing several films that were based on historical events. She limits herself to films depicting slavery.

The book is fairly short (the copy I read was 164, including notes, illustration credits and acknowledgements, with only 136 pages of actual text), but the topic she has chosen is huge. The book looks at the history of each film and the choices made in writing, filming, etc. The book explores the historical inaccuracies of each of the films. And the book explores significant aspects of slavery addressed by each film. In addition to that, there's a fairly lengthy introduction and conclusion. And there's a lot of summarizing of the storylines of each movie.

The result, in my opinion, is that each of the sections on each film feels rushed. There isn't really enough in this book to make it a solid book about historical films. There's not enough to make it a good study of how the requirements of film as media drives decision-making in the story. There's not enough about the individual aspect of slavery related in each film.

This is not to say that this book is worthless. I think it might be an excellent starting point for someone studying film, or historical films, or slavery. Certainly the extensive notes provide sources for further research.

So while this book might not have been as enjoyable a read as Martin Guerre, I think it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

[Rochu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buena exploración de cómo se traduce la Historia en el cine, centrándose en cinco ejemplos de representaciones de esclavitud histórica (Spartacus, Queimada, La última cena, Amistad y Beloved), cronológicamente para también preguntarse por la evolución de esas interpretaciones históricas en la pantalla y si van o no de la mano de cambios en el campo histórico clásico.

Está piola, no se detiene demasiado porque el libro es bastante corto, pero lo que dice es sin duda interesantísimo.

[Scotch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed Davis' writing style, but I don't completely agree with her criticisms and felt that the book's emphasis on a selection of films becomes too specific and overwrought in its summaries and details. Her primary criticism of historical films seems to be that they sometimes misrepresent certain historical facts in order to create more coherent and familiar narrative, and that they should be more transparent in their fictionalizations. The book then uses specific films as examples of successes and failures as historical accounts. Oddly, she does not seem to find it as problematic when films create fictions to fill the gaps in historical records. I find this position a tad contradictory, since history is always a story—a way of making sense of that which has come before us, a bridge from past to present—and therefore, often involves misremembrances, fictions and subjectivities. I feel like the power of historical films is not in their accuracy as mimesis, but in how they recover, unbury or evoke history or some aspect of it—some feeling or thought. I also have no idea what kind of disclosure she expects films to give. (Sass alert!) Maybe all films should begin with a shadow puppet show and a reminder that we're all in Platos' cave? Don't trust the shadows!