Shooting the Civil War: Cinema, History and American National Identity

by Jenny Barrett, Patrick Rael

Overview

No fewer than seven hundred Civil War films have been made by Hollywood from early silent days to the present, from the epoch-making "Birth of a Nation", through "The Red Badge of Courage" and "Gone With the Wind" to the recent "Glory", "Ride with the Devil" and "Cold Mountain". This readable and innovative book on the American Civil War as presented in Hollywood cinema goes deep into the best of these films, arguing that rather than belonging to a single genre, Civil War films are to be found across genres, as domestic melodramas, Westerns or combat films for example. As such, they have fresh insights to give into the war and into America's sense of itself."Shooting the Civil War" shows how these films create an American ancestor who is blameless and undertakes a process of reinscription into the American historical family. It also makes the remarkable revelation that no Civil War film yet made has had a central black character who survives the war, fathers the children of the future, and can stand as representative of the whole American people. To this extent, the book is saying, the Civil War remains a work in progress.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845117764
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/28/2009
Series:	Cinema and Society
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.10(d)

About the Author

Jenny Barrett is Programme Leader in Film Studies, Edge Hill University, North West England

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

General Editor's Introduction xi

Introduction 1

1 National Identity, Ideology and American Film Genres 13

2 Civil War Melodramas: The Family and the Home 24

3 War-Westerns: Shifting Lines of Conflict 58

4 Civil War Combat Films: Masculine American Ancestry 94

5 The Birth of a Nation: Race, Family, Gender 126

6 An Enduring Southern Ancestry 156

Conclusion: To Remember/Forget 185

Selected Filmography 199

Bibliography 205

Index 215