Can history be represented on film (documentary or fiction) ?

Résumé du document

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.

Extraits

[...] 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. [...]

[...] There is so in Platoon an inflexible part of fiction that is the non-truth. But, at the same time, Stone's film represents facts, events, and things, decorations that look like those of the war of Vietnam. Nothing in the film allows distinguishing the truth of the false because everything has there the same degree of truth (or of hypocrisy): the wounds of the young hero, Chris, have the same reality (or absence of reality) as bombardments in the napalm. One does not judge the film only in himself, but in reference to a knowledge, to an experience outsides in the film: if no, the film cannot appear as realist. [...]

[...] The dominant of colour will become one orange lively. In this sense, the decoration becomes as a representation of the psychic state of the persons: completely destroyed, but where lives a last flame, that of the hatred. The choice to film in inside for this sequence is harmless and breaks again a code: as the soldiers sink into rubble of the building, a feeling of confinement settles down, becoming more and more heavy. The discovery of the sniper is a major moment which the stage setting passes on us thanks to the slow motion. [...]

[...] It is not the hero, only the soldier among the others, who participated in fights without having played it a central or determining role. Sometimes, the spectator will be unable to guess if he attended a victory or a military defeat of the Americans. In spite of his will of realism, Platoon remains a film of fiction. It is not about a taken report on the deep, but about a film reconstruction, interpreted by professional actors who "play" the war, but do not participate in it really. This fictitious part seems however not so important. [...]