Early Modernity on Film: Introduction

These pages reflect my personal interests in film and TV representations of the early modern period. They include some essay-writing, bibliographies and links to online resources. Perhaps most important, however, are two features: the ‘Close-Up’, focusing in some depth on a single important film, and ‘Themes in Focus’, taking a look at a particular subject which is frequently found in films of the early modern period. Each Theme can be expanded to include new discoveries (and, of course, a single film might well appear in more than one Theme). In both cases, commentary on the film and suggested reading will be accompanied by links to individual film information and historical background information. ‘Shorts’ contains brief comments on films I’ve seen but haven’t yet thought about in detail. Comments and suggestions for films (and links) that could be included will always be welcomed.

Just a few comments: what gets included is conditioned by what I happen to have seen and what has caught my attention: so it’s likely to be as much about me and my latest enthusiasms as about any film. I’m a newcomer to this, much more familiar with textual than visual materials (my own initial stimulus to studying history, as it happens, came from reading historical novels); this project is really my way of expressing my excitement at the whole process of learning something new. Initially at least, it will focus on fiction rather than ‘factual’ (a term I use extremely loosely in the light of some documentaries I’ve seen recently) films. Also, the emphasis will often be on the ‘mainstream’, the well-known and commercially successful, if only moderately so in many cases.

‘Mainstream’ is after all a crude category: there are films out there that have achieved popular and critical success as well as being well researched and historically ‘literate’. Besides, their limitations can be in themselves telling. And why not make space for an occasional rant?