Films as Essential Tools of National Historical Analysis - Research Paper Example

Films as essential tools of national historical analysis Films are usually developed for several reasons. Most film writers and directors come up with films that present or represent certain thematic and topical issues that they have in mind. These issues may be meant for entertainment purpose as well as educative purposes. It is essential to note that films usually carry societal connotations (Guynn 127). They depict the desires and pains of people within the society. They capture lifestyles, cultures, and political issues, social and economic issues among others. Cinematic and narrative elements of movies together with other stylistic devices help to bring out the intended meaning or outcome. Modern filmmakers have creatively used various aspects that show events that depict historical growth of particular nations. These films show the reasons why certain historical aspects have faded away or have remained and why they hold particular importance to those nations. Au Revoir les Enfantes also known as Goodbye Children is about a French boarding school that is under the administration of priests (Everett 49). The school seems to be a place of protection where people enjoyed peace and harmony until a new student gets into the school. The new student was allocated a room, which he could share with a student who was top in his class. Despite the fact that they became rivals at their first contact, they later form an inseparable bond linked by a shared secret. They became friends one night when they got lost in the woods and are rescued by German soldiers. The soldiers wrapped them in blankets and drove them back to school. The film was written and directed by Louis Malle. It was produced in the year 1987 (Everett 49). The movie is based on an event that happened in January 1944. Louis Malle was twelve years old when the incident happened. At that time, he was attending a Jesuit boarding school along Fountainebleau. After the Christmas holiday had ended, schools were back with normal classes and other operations. In the middle of the scholastic year, three new students joined the school one of whom became a rival and competitor with Mall. Malle used to top the class in scholastic domain. After several weeks in school, Germans arrested the young boy who competed with Malle together with the other newcomers. Julien did not know about the true identity of jean but tried as much as he could and learnt that Jean was a pseudonym. The headmaster of the school also disappeared at the same time. The three boys were of Jewish decent. The convent school in Au revoir les enfants, on the other hand, is an elite institution for wealthy children, and it attempts to insulate itself from events outside its walls.  This is also a familiar trope in Holocaust/Occupation films... the wealthy elite who go into denial and/or lie about what's going on around them in order to hang onto not just wealth and power, but also customs, tradition, and civility. As the film documents, films can be used to show important historical events that took place at a certain period in time. This film captures the events that took place during the Second World War and their impacts. It is a fiction film that was created from the memories from a journalist’s conscience (Aitken 207). It is a story about France during the Second World War. It is essential to note that the young boy, Jean Bonnet was different from the other students in the school. He had a curly hair and did not eat pork. However, the secret about his decent becomes an open secret when everyone knows that he is Jewish. The catholic priests who are the administrators of the school admitted the Jewish boys as an act of charity because the boys lived as pseudonyms because they did not know the whereabouts of their parents (Aitken 207). Malle’s films clearly show the use of the narrative trope of class, morality, and opportunity during crisis. For instance, Lucien Lacombe is a working-class farm boy who is able to advance himself during the Vichy crisis, without thought about the social ramifications of his actions.  The film certainly illustrates the dilemma of survival vs. morality, as well as Hannah Arendt's concept of "the banality of evil." The Nazis made a surprise inspection that put the subterfuge to an end. However, this did not happen before bonnet transformed Quentin’s life. Quentin was a prototypical member of the French upper crust who was spoilt and did not worry about the horrors of the raging war that was happening around him. Malle created the film as a moving portrait of the boys and their promise. These child actors in the film present an embodiment of hopes that are vested in the new generation. He wrote the movie with the compassion of an adult and simplicity of a child (Insdorf 83). This style sets the pranks shown by seventh grade students and the prejudices of adults. He juxtaposes school bullies with a Gestapo goon who decides to tear the allied flags out of a map put in a school classroom. Not all Germans are brute in the same manner as not all Frenchmen are noble. When French collaborators harassed a Jewish man inside a restaurant, a German officer saved the Jewish by throwing the French collaborators outside the hotel. Therefore, Malle used the film to show the events during the Second World War capturing the tension that existed around him and between France and Germany (Insdorf 84). Malle used an autobiographical element to bring out the theme of the film. It is a form of his wartime memoir and an epitaph to his innocence. He was born in a wealthy family. He presents his ideas from that perspective. The film captures his boyhood memories of the Second World War crisis in France. Therefore, this perfect film shows the ability of creative film writers and directors to capture significant periods in the history of particular nations and the importance of those events to those nations. The films demonstrate the lies, denials, and self-deceptions that plagued the French people during the morally confusing time of Vichy, when the line between resistance and collaboration was often blurred, or crossed for a variety of reasons. Both films focus on youth and the future of France: how the decisions these young men were forced to make, at such a young age when they do not fully comprehend the context and ramifications, would come to haunt them and the entire nation for decades. Une Affaire de Femmes (Story of Women) is another film that describes the events during the Second World War period in France. The film was written by Claude Chabrol and Colo Tavernier O’Hagan. It was directed by Claude Chabrol and produced in 1988 (McLaughlin, Strategies of the French war film 64). The women in the story are customers who sort the services of an amateur abortionist Isabelle Huppert. It is set in a Nazi occupied French town in 1941. Huppert decided to provide illegal services of terminating unwanted pregnancies to women for a bulky fee. Her work helped her increase her income and relocate her family from the house and environment that they lived into a posh apartment. She shares her house with a new friend who is a prostitute (McLaughlin, Strategies of the French war film 64). Isabele Huppert is capable of conveying self-interest on the screen. The utter indifference in the film makes this quality more steel. Ms. Huppert never appears frail. This strength of will transforms her from a nondescript figure into a beautiful and single-minded woman (Hawthorne and Golsan). These women are ruthless pragmatists who lead unexamined lives and stop at nothing to get what they want. This film shows the position that certain women took during the Second World War. For instance, Marie Latour is modeled as a woman who was decapitated because of her activities during the German occupation of France. He is first seen in 1941 with her children. She takes care of them because it is her duty. However, this is a burden to her. This is clearly seen one night when she left her seven-year old son to take care of his sister because she had gone dancing. She says that she needs to have fun because she is still young (Hawthorne and Golsan 157). She is clearly an ambitious woman but bounded by the hard times. When opportunities come by in the form of pregnant unmarried women, she takes it up and makes good use of it. Her neighbor has tried endlessly to get an abortion but has not been successful. Therefore, Marie offers her help in form of business and does the abortion on her kitchen floor. After her first job, she is given a Victrola by her patient as a gift. She takes this as a great beginning to a perfect career. She treats her husband who returns from war with contempt and perceives him as a loser. This makes her determined to improve her life and in a small part that of her family. As her life improves, Marie finds a lover to replace her husband. These actions are seen as eager pragmatism of grotesque expediency. However, they are not considered as moral transgressions. The film maintained a deliberate detachment that highlights the atmosphere of the hard times in the Second World War period. When her Jewish friend is deported, Marie is surprised to know that she was Jewish. Her activities do not go long before they are noticed. The judge accuses Marie of cynicism and abjection. The climate that favored opportunism has not turned pious and develops an environment showing the importance of family values. The real question is moral versus ethical issues that come into play. She is able to rationalize her actions by seeing them as a form of "resistance": helping women raped by Nazis.  However, does her "resistance" ever come into question when she is performing abortions that have nothing to do with the Nazis?  The film deals with this question in a complex way, and illustrates how well intentioned people can slide into callous, opportunistic behavior during times of crisis.  Latour thus becomes a kind of symbol of morally confused Vichy France, in which the line between collaborating and resisting was often unclear.  The fact that Latour was unrepentant as she was sent to her death does not necessarily make her right it could also signal how blinded and self-deceptive and the people of France were at the time. The film has captured the negative events of the wartime crisis showing the weakening of family values because of financial hardships. It shows the frustration of a married man who is helpless coming home to a single-minded wife after war. It is a depiction of France in the wartime era (McLaughlin, French war films and national identity 238). Chabrol had to tackle the German occupation as a good French citizen. Chabrol took up the issue of illegal abortion and promiscuity among women in the Second World War era. The movie shows the failure of family value systems. Women downplayed the importance of family for their own happiness. This made them promiscuous to the extent of abandoning their children in pursuit of fun. The mix up of culture between German, Jewish and French cultures and the war period did not make it easier for anyone. However, Chabrol shows that these negative activities were bound to end with time. He shows that they were vices marked by a period of war (McLaughlin, French war films and national identity 238). Another film IL Generale Della Rovere shows the representation of history through the creativity of the filmmaker. This was one of the successful films written by Roberto Rossellini. This is an Italian formulaic film produced with patriotic slogan and whitewashed politics and a banal cinematic perspective. Roberto and Vittorio De Sica were renowned producers of Italian neo-realism (Brunette 416). The plot of the film is based on real life activities that took place in the Second World War. This was after Italy decided to leave the axis and join the allied forces. This film was based on Indrio Montanelli’s novel. Therefore, it is not clearly about its truth-value. The film is about a conman named Emanuele Bardone who used aliases to run his frauds, actresses, prostitutes, desperate families willing to pay him for information about their missing relatives captured by Nazis and other schemes (Brunette 416). It shows the escapades of Bardone through his gambling, fleeces and his unethical ways. He interacts with a Nazi colonel who has the same attributes like him. They are interested in causing havoc. Muller, the colonel has power unlike Bardone (Wagstaff). Bardone is captured by Nazis after he failed to fleece a rich woman. He pretends to know about the man who took one hundred thousand lira from the woman. When Bardone is brought to Muller, his crimes are exposed to his victims. Muller convinces Bardone to pretend to be a recently murdered Italian general so that they can kill Italian resistance leaders who man the Milan prison. If he refused, he would be taken to a military court and be sentenced to death or take the Nazi bidding. However, if he agreed he would receive one million Lira and be safely taken to Switzerland (Wagstaff 119). While in prison, several things happen that unsettle Bardone’s cynicism and greed. Rossellini managed to come up with a beautiful performance that captured the events in Italy during the Second World War. He highlights the activities of the Nazi during the war, the role that prisoners played, also prostitutes, and other illegal activities. This was an important moment in history of shaping Italy. Therefore, the film helps the viewer understand Italy during the Second World War (Landy 94). In conclusion, the three films analyzed show that films can be used to represent historical events that happened in particular countries. They achieve this through cinematic and narrative conventions. They depict class struggles in these historical periods. The films are used as representative of national cinematic history, such as Rossellini and Vittorio being used as representative of Italian neo-realists. Autobiographical elements have also been used to authenticate the thematic development of the films. Louis Malle used his autobiographical elements to influence the themes of Au Revoir les Enfantes. They represent a realistic version of the fiction film. Therefore, the above films clearly show that films can be important aspects when studying the historical information of particular nations. This is because the films can be used to pass information from one generation to another. Therefore, they are essential tools in the representation of historical information. Works cited Aitken, Ian. European film theory and cinema: a critical introduction. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2002. Brunette, Peter. Roberto Rossellini. California : University of California Press, 1996. Everett, Wendy. The seeing century: film, vision and identity. New Jersey: Rodopi, 2000. Guynn, William. The Routledge Companion to Film History. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2010. Hawthorne, Melanie and Richard Joseph Golsan. Gender and fascism in modern France. New York: UPNE, 1997. Insdorf, Annette. Indelible shadows: film and the Holocaust. London: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Landy, Marcia. Italian film. London: Cambridge University Press, 2000. McLaughlin, Noah. French war films and national identity. London: Cambria Press, 2010. —. Strategies of the French war film. Pennsylvania: ProQuest, 2007. Wagstaff, Christopher. Italian neorealist cinema: an aesthetic approach. 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