Cinema As A Reflection Of History...

''Everything speaks.''
-Novalis

In Histoire(s) du cinema, Godard attempted to write history for cinema by using metaphorical montages including scenes cut from movies, paintings, sounds, captions... Behind this attemp, his motive was accomplishing the duty which he thinks cinema didn’t fulfill, showing his dissapointment because of cinema did not show what there was, especially in war time, but served its capacity only for scenarios, artificial facts.

We may find some reasons behind the fact that why didn’t cinema used its technology to show what there was and question if cinema literally ignored the reality?

Firstly, we should consider the issue in a retrospective perspective in order to understand what kind of circumstances cinema was under. Exceptional times such as war may change people’s perception to a great extent. Traumatic aspects of war ranges and denial of reality, ignorance of the stressor are common consequences. So, maybe cinema wrote history, but in a different way, not about the facts but rather the influence of facts on people.

Moreover, accomplished presentation of a fact requires extensive knowledge about it. In war time, people may not recognize what really is going on: how many people died, how many bomb-attacks occured etc. So editting a war scene without complete knowledge may cause an underestimated or overestimated conclusion of the real facts. Since cinema is a very powerful instrument to reach the society, taking the task to inform people may end up informing, but not in a comprehensive way. So, maybe cinema prefered not being the messenger rather than being an insufficient one.

Furthermore, Marc Ferro, who is a historian, answers the question whether cinema can be considered as a source of history in his book ″Cinema and History″: he mentions that at the beginning of 1960’s showing cinema as a source for history was improper, due to the common conception of the cinema, just as a tool to amuse and entertain people with artificial images so an unrealiable source for history. On the other hand, Ferro shows his opposition to this thought by suggesting that what a historian does is not so different than editting a film; choosing the documents, gathering them up, using them properly causes, kind of a similar effect that film does. He proceeds by saying that if historians legitimately resort to work with unwritten sources (i.e. folklore, traditions etc.) besides written sources, then, cinema is also a source of history.

Eventually, cinema may be grasped as a source of history whatever it shows or on what purpose.

As Marc Ferro says:

″Film, be the image of reality or not, either a document or a fiction, be reality or wholly imaginary scheme, it is history; our postulation is: the thing that didn’t take place (or why not, likewise, the thing that took place), beliefs, intentions, imaginaries of people are also history as much as history.″ *

Notes:

* The translation from Turkish to English is made by me.

Reference:

Ferro, Marc. 1995. Sinema ve Tarih. İstanbul: Kesit Yayıncılık.