Film as History and History as Film

09/06/14 22:07 Film as History / History as Film
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Patrick Vonderau (ed.): Film as History / History as Film
Working papers "Gemenskaper Gemeinschaften" Volume 21
Funded by the National Bank of Sweden's Tercentenary Foundation
Contents :
Preface
Patrick Vonderau: Historiography and Film: A Dangerous Liaison?
Stephan Michael Schrder: History Without Diegesis. The Little Trumpeter (1909) as an example of a
Danish historical lm of the early silent lm era
Claudia Beindorf: Film as Propaganda: Linking the Past to Politics. Ride this night! (1942) and the
Swedish Politics of Neutrality
Erik Tngerstad: History and the Possibility of Representing the Past: A Reection on Death in the Seine
(1988)
Preface
Film can be regarded as being related to the history of the society in which it is produced. Film can
function as history: as a source or a document not only of it's own aesthetic history, but of history in
general. Vice versa, history can be presented as lm: 'historical movies' compete with conventional written
historiographic reports for public acceptance since cinema and television have become widely available.
'Film as History' and 'History as Film' do not stand for two entirely different resarch interests, but rather
they mark a shifting of viewpoint which is related to different disciplinary approaches. Having a
background in lm studies, cultural studies, Scandinavian studies and general history, the contributors to
this volume took part in a workshop organized in 1998 at the Department of History at the European
University Institute in Florence, Italy. They thereby were entering into a lively discussion originally going
back to a debate among historians in the late eighties on the issue, a debate which meanwhile has found
interest in other academic disciplines as well.
Where does the idea that lm may be especially (un-) suitable as a historic source or report comes from?
What is a 'historical lm', what can and should it achieve? Are there any hints that it is especially
susceptible to propaganda? To what extent can lm challenge traditional historiographical notions of
identity and representation? These and other questions have been dealt with in this volume.
Patrick Vonderau gives a short introduction to the ongoing discussion. He outlines the backgrounds of the
interest general history has developed with regard to lm as a subject of study and refers to the
productivity and the limits of the debate. The focus of attention lies on an analysis of the theoretical
concepts about the specicity of the lm medium underlying the most well-known works on the issue.
Starting from a reection on the discursive constructiveness of history, Stephan Michael Schrder asks to
what extent lm in general can be regarded as a medium for history. Critically distancing himself from the
conventional denition of the 'historical lm', he pleads instead for a historization of this denition. He
then illustrates the necessity of historizing this notion with an analysis of the Danish lm Den lille
Hornblser (The Little Trumpeter, 1909) which takes both the general historical as well as the lm
historical background carefully into consideration.
Claudia Beindorf develops her reading of the Swedish lm Rid i natt! (Ride this night!, 1942) against the
backdrop of Sweden's politics of neutrality during the Second World War. In her view, the lm's reference
to the past can be understood as a political comment on the Swedish situation in the 1940s. She tries to
verify this thesis by above all pointing to what she calls the parable-like narrative style of the movie.
Erik Tngerstad reects on the relationship between 'history' and 'the past', and between 'identity' and
'representation' in historiography. He illustrates his reections on Peter Greenaway's Death in the Seine
(1988), a lm which in his opinion may challenge conventional epistemological and methodological
concepts of history.
The four essays position the authors within the debate on issue as well as with regard to the basic premises
of the research project "The Cultural Construction of Communities", which makes up the frame for this
publication. The editor would like to thank Bernd Henningsen and Bo Strth who head this project as well
as James Kaye, Anne G. Lynch, David Randolph and Debora Weber-Wulff who patiently proof-read the
English translations. The editor takes the sole responsibility for any grammatical mistakes which may
have slipped in during the nal editorial work.
Patrick Vonderau, November 1999
Patrick Vonderau: Historiography and Film: A Dangerous Liaison?
I.
The theoretical debate about the relationship between lm and history is almost as old as the inquiry into
the basic relation of lm to reality. Along with these questions, consideration has usually been restricted to
one single technical device of lm making: the camera. The discussion has its roots in the mid-nineteenth
century, when Fox Talbot described photography as an extraordinary invention as he regarded it as a
"pencil of nature", that is, a process through which nature portrays itself "without help from anyone who is
familiar with the art of drawing".
(1)
Accordingly, the reception experiences of the rst cinema-goers were
not characterized so much by the feeling of being the victims of a deception whose suggestive powers
overran them like Lumires famous train.
(2)
Instead this new experience resembled what Vaughan called
an "invasion of the spontaneous into the human arts".
(3)
The lm camera apparently made a picture of
nature possible, that originated not from an artist, but from nature itself; the singularity and
unpredictability of the movements shown obviously exceeded conventional artistical craftmanship.
Similar ideas shaped one of the theoretical reections on the issue of lm and history which comes down
to us from the early days of cinema. In 1921 August Wolf praised the "lm as historian":
Film, that is, the carrying on of history in accordance with Xenophon, who went among the people, to prostitutes,
manual workers, and whoever crossed his path. [...] Without arrogance, every area seemed to him good enough to
allow something of interest to develop. [...] Film has also been invented with some understanding of movement. Its
memory is the camera with the unreeling picture, a memory which exactly records and in slow motion shows to
what degree of clarity the observations can be made. And what a fortunate memory! It thinks existentially, shows
the tree as tree, without mood stimulants, with the pleasure of naive watching. [Film] doesn't need any imploring
gestures, to allow nature to come forward, it lives in the pictures as natural as it is. Fortunate lm, that doesn't need
any skills of portrayal.
(4)
Film appears, therefore, to be the 'more fortunate' historian, because it is supplied with a memory, such
that all the very different and unique phenomena of the world are, without human assistance, registered
equally. In a way, with the camera he possesses a privileged technique of historistical 'thinking' since the
photographic recording of the world will always depict more than a normal observer would even be able
to intend to show.
Wolf's approach predicts in two respects the coming debates. First, he bases, as do many historians of later
generations, his reections on a widespread idea of cinema which focusses on a certain experience of
reception. Secondly, he writes his observations in the direct context of a wave of so-called historical
monumental lms;
(5)
also, in view of concrete 'historical movies', the historiography of the future will get
reexive. This essay tries to describe the situation in which the occupation with the audiovisual media
would be of necessity to historical science, as well as to analyze the lm theoretical concepts which this
occupation is based upon implicitly.
(6)
II.
The interest that the historical science of the future would invest in lm became apparent to D.W. Grifth
by 1924. The director of The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) expressed in an article his
conviction that lm would acquire, with continuing technical developments, its actual meaning in a
different context than cinema. According to Grifth, in a hundred years, not only school lessons would
"almost exclusively make use of lmstrip as a medium for unsurpassable visual lessons", also "historians
and other academics [...] will concentrate on lm with their whole spirit and their total work capacity".
(7)
Indeed, Grifth actually underestimated the dynamics of the development in his science ction
considerations. Seventy years later innumerable academic texts have been published which examine
feature lms with reference to their view of history.
(8)
As different as these works, written for the most
part by historians, are, they nevertheless share a common experience, which was more or less forced upon
them by the technical developments of audiovisual media: the experience of contingency.
Television especially made clear, certainly by the time such series as Roots or Holocaust were broadcast
worldwide, that history is no longer a territory reserved for specialists. As Benjamin once aptly noted, it
depends on the "technique of lm, as well as of sport, that everyone who attends the achievments they
display does so as a semi-expert".
(9)
Historical science cannot demand control of either the choice of the
supply of memories in lm and television, or over its individual use in cinemas and living-rooms. It is
troubled by the observation of this "double contingency"
(10)
of history constructions in, and with, the
audiovisual media, without, however, being able to compete with its popularity. If history today is most
lively outside of the schools and universities, then the historian is obliged to critical self-reection.
(11)
This developing reectivity of historical science and its associated insights of only being able to deliver
views of history which also could be (and constantly are) both differently produced and evaluated does
not have to do only with the experience of being defeated in its own territory by lm and television. It was
also caused by lm and media studies which with its institutionalization integrated history as a subject
area, and as was the case with other similar art and cultural academic disciplines, called into question the
idea of maintaining a general historical science.
Historical science as a countermove, tried to work off its own contingency experience with lm. In many
ways this proved to be quite productive. Feature lms can be used in lessons in order to illustrate abstract
historical doxa. Moreover, they contribute to the emotional engagement of students, whose personal
aesthetic experiences can become starting points for an academic engagement with history. The contact
with lm serves not only important pedagogical functions, but also stimulates the historiographical
discussion. Film can be used as a metaphor that helps to clarify general considerations of methodology.
Michle Lagny, for example, used the metaphor of lm images in order to argue for the giving up of the
ideal of factual truth and the use of multiple viewpoints: "History resembles an image, as it requires as in
photography or the moving picture the selection of framing and lighting options. As with lm, it requires
an editing process."
(12)
Even if the attempt to integrate lm into the subject area of general historical science has lead to this and
other advantages, certain central expectations have not yet been fullled. First, it must be stated that lm
is usually only perceived by lm studies as an occasion to mediate information between the two
disciplines. Film studies have long since developed a consciousness of historiographical methods, while
historical science usually has great difculty with lm studies terminology and theory formation.
(13)
In
addition, it must be accepted, that its occupation with movies does not change the fact that it continues to
be accessible to only a limited part of the public. While feature lms are received not only in the context
of cinemas, for which they are designated, but also at historical seminars etc., the consumption of
historiographical production continues to be limited to the academic eld. Feature lms are open enough
in their meaning structure to be 'read' outside of their intended reception contexts, while in the reversed
case, historical science studies are usually only accepted in the mass media if they adapt to the technically
'thin descriptions' of infotainment.
Last but not least, many historians still have not found a satisfying answer to the question of what
historical value can be attributed to lm representations of the past. Here the answers have to be revised
constantly in so far as they always only refer to a specic historical form of cinematic, as well as
historiographic production.
(14)
In this way, until the beginning of the 1970s documentary lms were
mostly preferred over feature lms by historians. While the latter type of lm generally was under
suspicion of representing history falsely, it was said that documentary lms are indeed accurate, but, as a
result, dull.
(15)
At the time of the 'linguistic turn' in historical science, the distinction between
documentary and feature lms became problematic.
(16)
Now one assumes, along with Marc Ferro, "that
lm, image or not of reality, document or ction, true story or pure invention, is History".
(17)
Ferro's
assumption that every type of lm can be perceived as a document of its context of origin still has many
followers today.
(18)
Since the beginning of the 1990s Robert Rosenstone has also been gaining inuence.
He believes he has found, in the postmodern aesthetics of experimental 'historical lms', a new and
original representational medium of history.
(19)
Ultimately, all these assumptions to dene the historical source value of lms appertain to the attempt to
relate them to the traditional source typology of historical science. As is well known, 'reports' and
'remnants' are differentiated here. While intentional traditional reports are on principle subject to the
historians suspicion to be documents about their point of time rather than of actual events, in contrast,
unintentional traditional recordings appear more dependable.
(20)
Accordingly, it was at rst assumed that
the showing of audiovisual 'remnants' in documentary lms was superior to the narrative 'report' of so-
called historical feature lms. Later, Ferro demanded that both intentional and unintentional sources be
analyzed with regard to their contexts of origin. And Rosenstone would like to have the discussion about
lm reduced to one limited body of aesthetically particularly qualied 'reports'.
(21)
From this, it is possible to implicitly gauge some of the methodological debates with which historical
science has been occupied over the years. The question of the status of the lm as a source, however,
cannot be answered most of all because it has been wrongly posed. For this debate is not about
substantially different lm types, but about different applications of lm in specic communication
situations. Movies do not 'contain' history as an unchangeable meaning. Rather, it is their meaning which
is always historical. As with all other sources, the material structure of lm is only the cause for subject-
bound semantic operations.
(22)
If denotations always are historical, it is just in a specic communication
situation and only on condition that a specic prior knowledge
(23)
exists that lm is denoted to be
historical. Accordingly, the problem of the historical feature lm cannot be separated from the general
question of the source value of the moving pictures, also in so far as the historian's examination of both is
the result of the same 'historiographical response'
(24)
of a particular communication community. All lms
can consequently be interpreted by historians as documents of their contexts of origin. In addition, a
historian can, as long as he recognizes the lm as 'historical'
(25)
, assess this as a "report on written past".
(26)
Why, however, is lm so often made out to be a document, while, for example, the historical novel hardly
receives any attention from historians?
(27)
Interest in lm is obviously not only related to the popularity of
cinematic history representations, but also to popular ideas of lm's specicity.
III.
The actual appeal of lms for historical science is based on the general tendency to see the camera as a
means of representation by which the world is portrayed directly and seemingly without human
intervention. Ferro's works are the most important theoretical points of reference for many later
discussions. He uses the historical feature lm as an opportunity to ask about the function of traditional
historical writing in society. From Ferro's ideological critical perspective, historical science is controlled
by the interests of the ruling class, and accordingly, he expects from the mass media a means "to de-
structure what several generations of men of state and thinkers have built into such a beautiful harmony".
(28)
The use of historical lms for a 'counteranalysis of society' presupposes, however, that they
themselves, in accordance with their relationship to dominant ideologies, as well as to social and historical
memory, will be classied. Such a classication is possible, most of all with the help of the treacherous
spontaneity ("a little girl's scream or a frightened crowd"
(29)
), which the lm involves, contrary to the
intentions of the producers:
These lapses of a creator, of an ideology, or a society constitute privileged signicant signs that can characterize
any level of lm, as well as its relationship with society. Discovering them, seeing how they agree or disagree with
ideology, helps to discover what is latent behind what is apparent, helps to see the nonvisible by means of the
visible.
(30)
We are dealing here with the structuralist inspired variation of an old view, which was quoted at the
beginning, and which is based on the assumption that the camera always portrays more than the person
lming intends. Robert Rosenstone's theoretical contemplation on the theme is based on a similar camera-
centered understanding. His approach is in many respects symptomatic enough to set him in the center of
the following observations.
(31)
Rosenstone's theme is not so much historical lm itself, "but the new sorts of history that are made
possible by the medium of lm. The new ways of thinking about the past."
(32)
As with Ferro the
examination of audiovisual media serves at rst as a border to the traditional historiographic practice.
'Film' is not only understood as a cause for metahistorical reections, but, at the same time, also as its
medial more suitable transformation. Finally, according to Rosenstone, the postmodern, "visual media"
releases one from the thought "that perhaps history is dead in the way God is dead"
(33)
:
Filmmakers to the Rescue: If you long for new kinds of history, if you think we need ways of relating to the past,
don't despair. Postmodern history has been born and is currently alive and well. It exists not on the page but on the
screen, and is the creation of lmmakers and videographers.
(34)
The proclamation of the resurrection of history in the 'paradise' of the mass media has two premises. One
is that lm has at its disposal an essentially different media specic characterization than do books. The
other is that this is xed. And so Rosenstone is certain that "a lm is not a book". However, he does not
want to hold forth anything more about the specic characteristics of lm. After all it has to do with "a
visual and aural realm that is difcult to capture adequately in words".
(35)
A more exact denition of the
object lm can not be achieved here, because in the end lm is no more than an argument brought to bear
against mainstream historiography. Nevertheless, Rosenstone's arguments are based on concrete views of
the nature of lms and lm studies.
Film as History as Vision
While Ferro believed that the historical feature lm is "a lmic transcription of a vision of history which
has been conceived by others"
(36)
, for Rosenstone lm itself is "history as vision".
(37)
His assertion that
lms are especially suited as a means of postmodern historiography is grounded on the drawing of an
analogy between lm technique and human perception. In this way he denes the historical lm as "a
mode of thinking that utilizes elements other than the written word: sound, vision, feeling, montage".
(38)
However, even the "visual media" neither sees anything nor has visions, and it is doubtful whether it feels
or nurses the idea of history as thoughts.
A similar anthropomorphization of the camera turns up in V.I. Pudovkin, who equates the lming
apparatus with the eyes of an omnipresent invisible observer.
(39)
As is the case with Pudovkin,
Rosenstone assumes that the camera-observer is identical with a lm's narrator. The model of the invisible
observer is used because it promises to be the solution to the problem which is central to historical
science's occupation with lm: the problem of authorship. As seen above, in connection with the typology
of 'unintentional' and 'intentional' sources, the identication of the author and his intention is a decisive
precondition for the historiographical classication of a document. By drafting the camera as a human
narrator, Rosenstone simplies this classication. Feature lms now seem to be easily distinguished as
suitable and unsuitable, or more precisely, as 'serious' and 'non-serious' because history is innate in them
as correct or incorrect 'thought'.
The emphasis on 'vision' and montage as primary means of expression of the lm-'language' is
accompanied by the assumption that the camera might stand for the representative function and montage
for the constructive function of the cinematic sign.
(40)
Nonetheless, both the activities of representing and
constructing do not begin at the rst moment of lm recording. The total denial of, among other things,
aspects of mise-en-scne leads here, not least, to a narrowed concept of lm style.
Standard Film vs. 'Serious' Film
In accordance with the logic of his allegorical argumentation, Rosenstone rejects not only mainstream
traditional historiography, but also mainstream cinema. Even though he assumes there is an essential
difference between the two media he sees a striking concurrence in the respective types of their
representation. Accordingly, traditional historiography, as well as Hollywood history lms, claim to show
history as it once truly occurred. Mainstream lms want to "make us think they are reality", they want to
suggest to us "that we can somehow look through the window of the screen directly at a 'real' world".
(41)
This type of movie does not uncover the constructed nature of its historical images. On the contrary, the
masking of its own discourse is used to consciously deceive the viewer. Rosenstone's contrasting model of
the "'serious' historical lm" "that parallels [...] the 'serious' or scholarly written history", denes itself
accordingly "in opposition to the mainstream Hollywood lm". All these 'oppositional' lms "struggle in
one or more ways against the codes of representation of the standard lm. All refuse to see the screen as a
transparent 'window' onto a 'realistic' world."
(42)
Rosenstone supports his argumentation not only with a
canon of lms, which he himself compiled by means of a conventional aesthetic value judgement;
(43)
he
indirectly also refers back to mainstream models of lm theory from the 1970s, most of all to Colin
McCabe's work.
McCabe took up Pudovkin's idea of the camera-observer under structuralistic conditions.
(44)
According to
his theory, 'realism' is a structure which can be found not only in nineteenth century literature, but also in
Hollywood feature lms. Just as realistic literature strove "to achieve perfect representation to let the
identity of things shine through the windows of words",
(45)
so did commercial feature lm endeavor to
make its narration appear as reality. In this connection, the camera was central, as a "visual discourse
which guarantees truth",
(46)
in steering the audience unobtrusively through the plot.
The ideological critical impulse, which Rosenstone follows, leads him to a romanticization of lm
production which overlooks the fact that lm is generally a prot-oriented collective work. Doubt also
remains about whether Hollywood ction renounces self-reexivity in order to manipulate the passive
subjects in the movie theater with suggestions of reality.
(47)
If the deception was awless, how did
Rosenstone see through it?
Most problematic however seems to be the basic idea of describing methodological questions of historical
science based on a parallel with aesthetics and politics in lm production. Even if Hayden White
popularized the comparison between the realism debate of the nineteenth century and historiography,
(48)
neither the one nor the other has anything to do with Hollywood. 'Realism' in lm is related less to a
textual structure, than to a reception experience which is linked to a certain knowledge of camera
technique. That is, based on the cultural conviction "that every photograph is a portrait signed by a sitter".
(49)
However, this representation of the world is also only one of many that can be ascribed to lm and for
its portrayal lm uses more than only a camera.
(50)
Empirical Facts Exist
If the "visual media" are a "set of institutions which lies wholly outside the control of those of us who
devote our lives to history",
(51)
then Rosenstone questions the competence of those institutions to deal
with history. This is true of the commercial lm industry and especially of lm studies, which is allegedly
too laden with theory in its disciplinary core: "Current theories of cinema [...] all seem too self-contained
and hermetic, too uninterested in the esh-and-blood stuff of the past, the lives and struggles of human
individuals and groups, to be directly useful to the historian."
(52)
Rosenstone's critique is paradoxically
truer of the structuralistic concept, which is the basis of his approach, than it is of that which presently is
understood as lm theory.
(53)
Since the author never explicitly deals with lm theory or lm history in his argument one comes away
with the impression that his concepts of lm are, in the end, only components of a hegemonic discourse
by which the actual Challenge of Film to our Idea of History, that is the challenge of interdisciplinary
arguing, shall be dismissed. Film studies and its object are obviously seen as an existential threat, not as a
challenge for the historian. Rosenstone's observations have as their starting-point the knowledge of the
contingency of historiographical working. However on the last page of his essay collection he declares his
unshakable belief in empirical method, thereby returning to the status quo ante of his metahistorical
considerations:
My need is to bring this [lm] theory down to earth, to personalize, humanize, historize it. To admit that as a
historian, I believe in the reality of the signied which is to say, the world. Believe that the empirical facts exist
and insist that if we let go of that we are no longer historians.
(54)
IV.
The belief in the world does not contradict the knowledge of the contingency of the experience of the
world. Anyway, the acceptance of the interdisciplinary challenge should, in my opinion, lead less to a
personal creed than to the formulation of a scientic question. Precisely because neither historians nor
lm academics can avoid their own reception experience with lm, it is essential for them to reach an
agreement on how to deal with their audiovisual subject.
In summary, it can be said that all lms could be interpreted as historical documents, even if this is not
their primary cultural function. Film can, in a specic context, be attributed the function of illuminating
contemporary ideas about the present and the past.
(55)
On the one hand, this presupposes that
preoccupation with lm does not occur for the sake of lm alone. On the other hand, dealing with lm
history, lm theory, and lm analysis would even be indispensable for the historian. Finally, any study
must start with the sobering assumption that lm allows statements on the 'system of lm', rather than on a
positivistic ascertainable world. In other words, in comparison to other documents and historical science
itself, lm is dispensable for the academic construction of history.
(56)
Also, the "limitations of traditional
history"
(57)
cannot be overcome by a simple change of the media, since the historiographical analysis of
lm is indeed subject to its own methodological constraints.
(58)
Under these conditions a heuristic model could be developed regarding the construction of history with/in
lm, which should take at least the ve following factors into consideration: (1) context and function of
the study of lm as document; (2) discussion of the lm's concrete production and reception history; (3)
analysis of the style of the movie in question and (4) of the specicity of its narration
(59)
, among others,
through a (5) construction of a series of intertextual references to other lms.
Even when every spectator carries about the claim, as suggested to him by the mass media, to be his very
'own' historian (thus himself being confronted with historiography's experiences of contingency),
historical science's occupation with the moving image seems of special interest. Not least because the
'historiographical response' to lm can in itself be interpreted with regard to its context of origin. In this
view, the theoretical debate on the relation of the audiovisual media to history can also be understood as
the result of a self-observation of the historian in postmodernity and thus as part of the history of science
and culture.
Stephan Michael Schrder: History Without Diegesis. The Little Trumpeter (1909) as
an example of a Danish historical lm of the early silent lm era
Extra Datei, separate le, separat dokument
Claudia Beindorf: Film as Propaganda: Linking the Past to Politics
Ride this night! (1942) and the Swedish Politics of Neutrality
After the occupation of Denmark and Norway by German troops on April 9, 1940, Sweden, which
remained neutral during World War II, found itself surrounded by belligerent and annexed nations. Before
the Allies decided to march into Normandy, their opening of a Scandinavian front seemed not unlikely.
The transporting of German troops through Swedish territory, blackouts, rationing of food, as well as the
conscription of men and women to so-called stand-by duty contributed to keep alive the feeling of being
direcly threatened. In addition, Sweden became the playground for agitators. Numerous German, Russian,
and Allied propaganda writings were published; politicized radio programs were broadcast, as were
feature, documentary, and short lms often circumventing national censors at cinemas of labor unions
and society events.
(1)
The politics of neutrality at the price of widespread concessions to individual warring nations seemed the
only possible means of keeping the country out of war. Numerous books and essays devoted to the politics
of the all-party coalition government formed in 1939 under the minister of state, Per Albin Hansson, are
testimony to the complexity of the occurrences which happened under the protection and label of
neutrality.
(2)
A deliberate stance existed of refusing to take sides and of thereby avoiding taking
responsibility, since to do so would almost certainly have meant war for Sweden a war whose outbreak
seemed a matter of time anyway. This position was not infrequently viewed as cowardly, indeed a policy
which weakened the nation and played into the hands of the enemy. Discontent in Sweden found
expression, not least of all in artistic form and spread across income and educational barriers. What began
with ofcial requests for Swedish solidarity gradually changed into public vigilance and perseverance,
before culminating in just that unambiguous agitation for open resistance and active protection of the
home of the people (folkhem), which the government had hoped to avoid. Statements with the latter
intention contradicted the decree for Swedish neutrality, and yet it was not possible to stop even obvious
calls of this sort.
Along with the press and radio, lm played an important role in propagandizing such inofcial political
goals. The medium's tendency to be perceived as 'realistic', allowed and still allows lms to be produced
whose function goes beyond entertainment. Certainly, little can be said about the effect of these lms on
the lm-goers, much less whether the comprehension of the lm's message led to any kind of action. One
indicator of a lm's impact could, however, be the degree of public interest it inspired. High attendance at
such a lm might well indicate that the public was concerned with the themes implied and that a need for
discussion and clarication existed. Not least of all, the success of the lm with the public would indicate
that such themes were successfully 'translated' into an entertaining form.
The lm to be dealt with here is Gustav Molander's Rid i natt! (Ride this night!, 1942)
(3)
, which has been
called "the most obvious stand-by lm of the epoch".
(4)
It seems to have been an almost exact answer to
what public opinion 'requested', if the high level of public interest is any indication. The story of the
movie had simultaneously been made available to the public in three other forms, which were also
frequently consumed. It adapted a novel published by Vilhelm Moberg in 1941.
(5)
The book version had
sold 50.000 copies within a short period of time; in 1942 the author converted it into a radio play and a
theater play. Then it became the basis for the screen version, which was succeeding at the box-ofces,
while the play simultaneously ran in large theatres in Stockholm, Gteborg and Helsingborg.
(6)
This
timely material, which appeared concurrently, and not as a sequence of changes in medium, could through
its ubiquitous presence signicantly intensify public discourse on Swedish foreign policy and thus today
be regarded as 'propaganda'.
(7)
Three Levels of Narration
Ride this night! organizes narrative information at three different levels, to which most of its motives,
characters and conicts are allocated; other characters mediate between these levels where they overlap.
(1) The rst basic level is that of the 'historical' situation presented in the plot. In the small 17th-century
village of Vrend, a number of free farmers who up till then had been directly subject to the crown, fall
under the authority of German nobles, who force them to compulsory day labor. Besides being subjected
to what they consider humiliating forced labor, they are forced to leave their own elds fallow which
means their village, once quite well-to-do, is now plagued by hunger. This poverty seems to demoralize a
large number of the villagers. However, the inhabitants of Vrend see that it is more honorable to follow
the example of an upright farmer who prefers to risk his life rather than to give himself up to a foreign
authority, and thus decide to ght for a life worth living, instead of bowing to their loss of freedom and as
cowards enduring their 'fate'.
(2) A second level consists of Christian motives. Ragnar Svedje (Oscar Ljung), the main positive
character, is an uncompromising Swedish Son of God, who sacrices himself for the well-being and for
the inner, as well as the external liberation of his village community in other words, for his people. Even
his name is meaningful: 'sveda' in Swedish means something similar to 'burning pain, burning', but also
'singe, scorch, and burn'. When the world still seemed normal, he walked with his ance, Botilla (Eva
Dahlbeck), an equally awless and pure person ('bot' can be translated as 'medium, healing action', but
also as 'penance'), through the blossoming forest, leading a bull, which symbolizes fertility a promise
which, however, will not be fullled. Ragnar and Botilla walk purely and virginally into death for she,
too, will be 'sacriced' later in the lm. Ragnar and Botilla meet death both still pure and virgin. She is,
however, not killed at the hands of a superior opponent (as is Ragnar), rather she returns quietly and
undramatically again into the bosom of nature, which had never been her antagonist.
The tall, blond forms of Ragnar and Botilla are shown again and again rising up before the sky with the
sun shining through their hair. Malevolent and deceitful people may well take their lives, but still their
sacrice makes unavoidably clear to viewers their symbolic meaning the message survives the mortal
remains of the two. Ragnar's symbol is the morning star, which appears on the 'bodkavle'
(8)
, which passed
on from farm to farm is the sign for the uprising against foreign domination and promises the freedom,
which will be recovered, after privation and struggle, in the nal victory. The village elder buried this
'bodkavle' in order to save himself and his daughter. When the time came for the revolt, he could no
longer nd it, because it had freed itself from its grave and made its own way into the appropriate hands.
The lm image shows the message as it is once again being carried from house to house, passing through
innumerable hands, even as the village elder is still searching for it.
(3) A third level of the lm might be seen in its pantheistic conception of nature. Nature is in league with
the just demands of the people of Vrend. However, nature also stands above the events, in such a way
that all its powers seem to be capable of transforming everything to bring forth good but for this people
are held responsible as well as for disaster. The frequency of nature motives should not to be
underestimated: when evil reveals itself, a thunder storm builds up. Crows sit on roof-ridges to announce,
to those who are familiar with the signs, that the threat of death and destruction are at hand. While taking
a walk, Botilla nds a nail, from which Ragner surmises, while shuddering, that a murder must have
occurred at that location. Not suspecting anything, his ance pockets the murder weapon, which in turn
can trigger associations with Christ's crucixion. At home, a spark from the open re attracted by the
'fateful' nail burns her above the heart. This wound will convince Annika (Gerd Hagman), who is pursuing
Ragnar and hopes to separate the engaged couple, that Botilla is a witch. The basic antagonism between
re and water characterizes Botilla's fate because she cools the burn with water again and again, in vain,
until a spring at the edge of the forest speaks to her and convinces her to bring an end to the suffering and
at the same time prove her innocence. Botilla voluntarily undergoes the trial by water and by drowning
refutes the accusation of witchcraft. Meanwhile Ragnar is hunted and struck dead in the boggy forest by
the steward's pursuers, recruited natives, and a satanic traitor. Since he is not burried in consecrated earth,
but in the forest, Ragnar will nd no peace, and instead will return to become an even more forceful
symbol of the call for rebellion.
As already sketched out, characters (and groups of characters) can be assigned to these three discourse
levels of Ride this night!. Transitions are uid and not all characters are clearly dened. This is especially
true at the (rst) level of historical 'reality'. Here one nds practically all the players who are on the side of
the rulers, and also those who, out of fear or laziness, have been subjugated to them. Among them are the
steward Lars Borre (Erik Bullen Berglund), the farmers, and above all, the village elder Jon Stnge (Lars
Hanson), also the witch-like Annika, who betrays Ragnar and drives Botilla to her death, as well as the
benign tramp, Ygge (Nils Lundell), known as the Blsmla thief, who takes in the wounded Ragnar for a
while and cares for him.
The 'Christian plot' is based on Ragnar and the parish priest, Petrus Magni (Hugo Bjrne). The priest
travels to Stockholm to represent the farmers who have lost their liberty, and is harshly rejected there. In
this way Christianity is represented to a large extent as a masculine force. Christianity is complemented
and encircled by the pantheistic access to the earth's powers. It is best embodied by the two women,
Botilla and Ragnar's mother Sigga (Hilda Borgstrm), who clearly has the characteristics of a wise
woman. Nature 'speaks' to both these women. It is the spring which speaks to Botilla (what can explicitly
be heard by the spectator). For the mother all nature is full of signs, hints, and omens. One nameless
character appears who doesn't belong to any of these three levels, but who affects them all, and this is the
expelled traitor in black. His unexpected appearance links the fates of people in the different circles, and
implies even more, in that this character stands for evil itself. In order to resist this diabolic traitor, all
three levels of narration the historical, the Christian, and the pantheistic would have to merge, in order to
cut off all his possibilities of escape and drive him out of this world. However, this goal is not achieved.
The traitor disappears when Ragnar is defeated. The devil is thus depicted as invincible, but restrainable.
To drive him from the world, solidarity would rst have to be achieved. But from the start this cannot be
expected of the German Bertold Klewen, or the steward, or Annika, so the ght against evil appears to be
eternal. The three last-named characters are, however, mortal and thus can be defeated, if the intention
derives its strength from the 'justice of the cause'. This intention is represented visually by torchbearing
horseman riding past and on the sound track, as an admonition to the inhabitants of Vrend and to the
audience.
The visual language does not leave it to the audience to interpret the message and take a position. The
people are not only characterized by their words and their actions, but also by their appearance, their
clothes, their facial expressions and their gestures, by the position of the camera and the settings. Down to
the last detail, nothing is left to chance: in bright yet modest clothing, the tall representatives of goodness
and righteousness ght against the intimidated, darting, cowardly farmers. The shameless Annika, who
exploits her sexual allure in order to ingratiate herself with the new masters, wears low cut and carelessly
fastened clothing. The diabolical traitor, who always seems to appear stealthily out of nowhere, is dressed
in black and wears close-tting headgear, which makes him actually look like someone whose appearance
could bring about disaster and death.
Linking the Past to the Present
Ride this night! draws on Swedish feudal-dynastic history
(9)
in that it uses an historical event as a vehicle
to portray and comment on the nation-state's present situation. This "recourse to a past age" is essential
here to inspiring in the audience that "understanding of the nation", for which the lm seems to call. The
lm succeeds in imparting this message of overt resistance against occupying forces and foreign
domination, by employing a dramatic occurrence from Swedish history as an example. Ideally, the result
would conrm and reinforce this declaration on the different levels and communicate with discourse
beyond the lm.
(10)
By contextualizing the lm with contemporary documents, Brostrm described this
'message' as follows: "Sweden's freedom and independence require at the present, as they did in the past,
and will in the future, defenders of the Swedish tribe, Swedish blood and disposition, and these in great
numbers."
(11)
Generally, the link between the historical past and daily experience can be portrayed in the lm medium
both more easily and in a more 'natural' manner than in media dependant on written language. To depict a
historical event and connect it with a contemporary event in words or text one must switch between the
preterit and the present. These will either be contrasted by placing them side by side if possible,
unobtrusively or ow into one another. In this respect, a lm does not recognize the past; even a ashback
is narrated in the present. The past and the present are no longer forced to ow side by side, but instead
oscillate and overlap in such a way that one lm image can depict both. In this way no temporal
separation remains. Instead the two merge and a timeless, mythological quality is effortlessly bestowed on
history. When this as is the case here matches the intention of the structure of the lm, then these
characteristics are, of course, dramatically exploited.
At the very end of Ride this night!, it is the admonishing voice of the actress Hilda Borgstrm who reads
Moberg's words as the torch-bearing rebels ride in pursuit across the horizon, as a new day dawns:
And so a budkavle passes on through nights and days, through years and centuries, running with its important
content, bearing from time to time the urgent message, the highest and most important. Budkavle passes on. Ride
this night, this night.
(12)
This unusual clarity no longer allows the viewer to contemplate the cinematic message of Ride this night!
as an uninvolved 'witness'. He is directly addressed by the wise old woman (who in the novel shows the
characteristics of a magician, initiated into the meaning of the old signs and relationships). This voice is,
on the one hand, an admonition from a time long past to those living today and threatened by oppression.
On the other hand, the ction is consciously cut; at one and the same time it is the voice of a well-known
and respected actress, and a contemporary sharing the audiences fate, who speaks to them and calls them
to action. Against the background of the experienced, the urgent admonition and Hilda Borgstrm's
expressive voice links the mythical story to the threatening present and links the fate of the inhabitants of
Vrend with the fate and future of the Swedish people, now threatened by war and destruction. The
parallel is drawn at the 'reliable' and 'believable' level of 'history', which ideally conrms the experiences
portrayed during the entire lm, that is, living life in a longue dure, since a mythical tale, like this one, is
both a "guarantee of constancy"
(13)
and a promise. This is the way it was and this is the way it will always
be and this is the way it now is.
If Ride this night! is understood in this sense, as popular history, then the factor which obviously
dominates is historical interpretation. As Landy points out:
Historical representations may often seem to reiterate dominant cultural ideas and values, but a closer scrutiny
reveals that popular history represented through the cinema is a pastiche of conceptions about the world: a fusion of
practical and current strategies of survival couched in clichd, proverbial language characteristic of
commonsensical approaches to knowledge.
(14)
In Molander's lm history becomes the means to convey to the Swedish cinema-viewing public the long
tradition of freedom it has inherited, and to demonstrate through an example, that the danger of foreign
domination cannot ever be conquered, but instead can only be kept in check through utmost vigilance.
This lm argues, by pointing to parallels between the events in remote antiquity and those occurring
today, that it is possible to again become aware of one's forgotten strengths, and to protect the homeland
against enemies both within and without. The (naturally) selective use of the historical tradition can be
explained and additionally illustrated without that it is necessary to support this argument by reference to
any specic event, as is the case in this lm.
Popular Cinema and Common Sense
The need to create a "shared experience" for the audience, which Marcia Landy ascertained, is translated,
with the help of "popular representation[s]" of a "common sense" into the production of a communal
emotional reaction in the audience.
(15)
Landy refers elsewhere to this common sense as characterized by a
complex interweaving of "bits and pieces from religion, science, proverbs, folklore, magic, and history",
which has found expression in popular lms, among other places, and is in turn shaped and transformed
by them.
(16)
Characters to be identied with are available for all the different members of the audience.
Several argumentative strategies (see the three levels) are simultaneously followed and expertly
intertwined, which, in turn, corresponds with the solidarity, the lm is intended to promote. No
photographic defects interfere with the lm's reception; instead rather the lm's message is accelerated
and given a rhythmic quality through the gifted manipulation of the media. The landscape reconciles the
contrasts between fruitful elds, woods and boulders. The village is small and homey whereas, during the
steward's absence, the few occupants of his residence walk, forlorn and anxious, through the empty rooms
and long halls of the cold castle, which stands alone and unprotected on an empty site. The actors move
between realistic and theatrical performances, which hit exactly the fairytale, mythical storytelling tone of
the story, which could more appropriately be called a parable-like narrative style.
(17)
In this way links are consciously established between lm and common sense, which is yet another reason
for dealing with Ride this night! as a propaganda lm. Alf berg also points to a contemporary discussion,
in which the following statement referred to the book version of Ride this night!: "It is a challenge against
the threat of repression by Hitler's Germany, and also an attack on the Swedish politicians, who were
considered in league with the oppressors because of their policy of diplomatic concessions or delays."
(18)
In this way not only are the cinematic events fashioned such that they are both comprehended and
subjectively experienced, but both lm and common sense are so closely linked that they corroborate each
other. If this effect is successfully achieved, then it is reasonable to conclude that the propagandistic
purpose of the work was fullled. The lm seems 'true' with respect to the known historical 'facts' the
relatively free status of the Swedish farmers, as well as the bestowal of feudal rights on members of the
German nobility by Queen Christina of Sweden. Since these facts can be veried (even if that is not the
case with the historical fates of the individuals), the cinematic message achieves, through combining an
apparent authenticity with pathos, a quality which neither historical documentaries nor feature lms
achieve.
And so surely it can be asked, along with Ernst Karpf:
Can a lm as a genre actually in its own way carry weight historically, in that it effectively deals with myths and
even creates them itself? Can the close link between cinema and dreams, between desired ideals and lm
projections, which has been demonstrated at the individual level, also be afrmed at the "political" level, that is, in
a search for collective identity?
(19)
In Ride this night! a political-historical myth is constructed, against whose background the lm appears to
be nothing more than its "iconographic condensation". Ride this night! is itself a historical document of
the Swedish Preparedness era. It is a witness to the society which produced it and in turn shaped that same
society, as can be demonstrated to a greater or lesser degree.
(20)
Thus two perception-complexes can be differentiated, namely history or tradition on the one side and
contemporary events on the other. However, the later must remain empty if one considers only the lm
along and not its contemporary context. Lagny emphasizes this point of view when she rigorously rejects
the allegation that a lm has the potential to "say something in the positivistic-scientic sense":
In order to grasp the interest and the limit of the lm as a document for the historian, the idea should be asserted
that there is no "witness-cinema", in the sense that lm never shows "reality", but only can construct pictures of this
reality, representations which testify not so much to facts, as to perceptions, which one had or wanted to create at a
particular location and a dated moment.
(21)
Nonetheless, the lm articulates a great deal about contemporary circumstances and might have had an
impact on its own time as well, in that it calls on a shared history to supply a unifying factor, so that
individuals nd fulllment as parts of a mutually supporting group. At this point, Ride this night! nds its
place in what Brostrm calls "Swedishness in spirit of the community":
The prevailing mood of the propaganda during the time of crisis was Swedishness in the community spirit. [...] The
thoughts on the "good home of the people's" were put to practical use during the stand-by years. At that time there
was also something unidentiable: [...] a spiritual strength, a will to defend what had been inherited from the
forefathers, and the Swedish way of life in short, the Swedish values, the mental preparedness stood for.
(22)
A community can face a threat, as long as it is conscious of its greatest strength, namely solidarity in its
response. Internal unity is recognized as an indispensable prerequisite for successfully defending the
present generation and securing the chance to live worthy lives in accordance with the traditions of the
nation. This concept, derived from the historical past, bestows on the idea of the nation a transcendental
nature. In other words it is worth to protect something of a higher order. This object of worth is precisely
the collective identity, through which the individual and his community form an indissoluble union. Since
this according to Deutsch
(23)
is characteristic of a pre-modern community, the spontaneity of this unity
cannot be recovered, and so stand-by propaganda targeted a "national" community which found itself in
the process of transforming into a modern industrial community. This entailed a restructuring and a new
denition of identity at the personal level, which is comparable to the transition from a privilege-based,
medieval society to a modern one. An individual, who now has a separate personal identity, no longer
necessarily shares this community identity. Instead he relates to the community, and reacts towards it.
Therefore persuasive arguments and emotional appeals as well are necessary in order to encourage
voluntary integration into the "us" of community. It is this appeal to the individual which is common to
lms like Ride this night!, all of which call for learning a lesson from one's forefathers. The emphasis on
the implied timelessness of the events, as well as the strong emotional appeal, enable the lm to create of
an ideal prototype of a freedom and peace-loving society. Its model is the late medieval village of Vrend
and its response to a limited, local, yet existential threat. The people of Vrend are shown summoning up
hidden strength from within as they reappear out of the dark past to confront their enemy and defend their
traditions unbeatable and glorious.
Ride this night! certainly can be perceived as a myth, which conveys the "transcendental founding
relationship, which an individual can escape only at the price of not belonging and accepting the
accompanying exclusion from society."
(24)
Via collective coercion the lm propagates an unbroken and
frank commitment to a tradition which is embodied by the Swedish nation, since the depicted community
of Vrend represents the Swedish people. The individual member of the audience is called upon to involve
himself in the learning process and come to agree with the lm's conclusion that an uprising is necessary.
The Swedish homeland undoubtedly represents a value which is the basis for (national) characteristics,
such as tenacity, diligence, a sense of justice, and a sure sense of what is good and right. Thus the Swedish
homeland is a secure locus for national identity and represents for its inhabitants an object of love.
All this is threatened by internal as well as external enemies. It has become essential to encourage the
hesitant, support the weak, and together defend the Swedish homeland even at the risk of one's own life,
of course because a life which abandoned these values would no longer be worth living. Exclusion from
the community and the knowledge of having disavowed one's true self, are threats that should not be
underestimated. With this in mind, Ride this night! should be understood, on the one hand, as the creation
of a myth, and on the other, as a call for vigilance and solidarity.
(25)
The demandingly appellative
character of the lm has lost little of its impact in the decades since its inception, and so the
propagandistic value of a lm like Ride this night! may ultimately be explained by the fact "that it is
precisely the one who makes a persuasion, who will be unable to evade it."
(26)
Erik Tngerstad: History and the Possibility of Representing the Past: A Reection
on Death in the Seine (1988)
At rst glance, the assertion that history is about the past looks like a tautology. For what is history, if not
the representation of the past? Given a second thought, however, the relationship between history and the
past turns out to be problematical. For in everyday language 'the past' signies something that was, but is
no more. What is, is the present, not the past. And history is. History is the present understanding of how
things once were. So it is not a contradiction to say that history is always in ux it is perpetually rewritten
and is therefore always changing because it is, while the past was and cannot be changed.
What does this differentiation between history and the past imply? Such a question is hard to answer,
because it tends to challenge our common-sense view of the world. The idea that we could have
knowledge of the past is more or less taken for granted. But can we really have that kind of knowledge?
Even if thuntimely God. But what if there is no God to be used as reference when reecting the nature of
time? Would that mean that the distinction between 'past' and 'present' would collapse into chaos, and that
all forms of causality would prove to be pure grammatical structure or mere illusions?
The problem is how something here-and-now can represent something there-and-then; or how one thing
can be about another thing when no xed point of reference exists. What does it mean to say that history is
about the past? When trying to give an answer to this question one notices a problem in conventional
historiography because traditionally it is supposed that history should be able to transcend knowledge
from present to past. But is such transcendence at all possible? Also everyday language makes it difcult
to solve the problem. Sometimes history is regarded as identical with the past, and sometimes as a
representation of the past. Because the terms 'identity' and 'representation' are not synonymous, an
unsolved problem in historiography can be assumed.
The aim of this essay is to reect on the paradoxical relationships between 'history' and 'the past', and
between 'identity' and 'representation' in historiography. The discussion will take its point of departure in
the TV-lm Death in the Seine made by Peter Greenaway in 1988.
(2)
The reason for this choice is that
though Greenaway in this lm has used the kind of source material that any academic historian would
accept, his general approach differs from what is accepted as historical research. When regarded as a
particular work of historical writing, it can be used both to reect conventional historiography as it is
traditionally conceived, and as an example how to write history in an alternative mode, as well as with
alternative means (video instead of printed text). Greenaway's lm can be seen as a catalyst of an
immanent crisis of conventional historiography.
(3)
Photography and the Problem of Representation
One way of introducing the problem of representation and identity is to bring to mind a little story. In
January 1839 L.J.M. Daguerre publicly demonstrated his invention of how to x the images produced by a
camera obscura "so that these images are not temporary reection of the object, but their xed and durable
impress, which may be removed from the presence of those objects like a picture or an engraving", as one
contemporary journal reported.
(4)
A few weeks later, William Henry Fox Talbot showed his "photogenic
drawings" for the Royal Institution in London. In March the British astronomer John Herschel, a friend of
Talbot's, coined the term 'photography' (literally 'writing with light'), thus indicating that it was possible to
produce pictures of objects as they really are in themselves, and not as depictions drawn by men.
(5)
Shortly before, Talbot had written: "I made in this way a great number of representations of my house in
the country [...]. And this building I believe to be the rst that was ever yet known to have drawn its own
picture."
(6)
An astonishing idea is here being formulated; objects cannot only be represented by a manmade depiction,
but through the technology of photography they can make representations of themselves. Because these
new pictures were understood to have been created through the radiation of their objects, their
representations would be seen as virtually identical to the things they represented. But to what extent is a
photographic image identical with the object it depicts? What relationship exists between the represented
and its representation? These questions run parallel with the problem of the relationship between history
and the past. To what extent can reality be represented as it 'really is'? And can the past be represented as
it 'really was'?
In June 1839, the Parisian inventor Hippolyte Bayard publicly exhibited his work. This event could be
called the world's rst exhibition of photographs, because Bayard had independently developed a
photographic technique. Later this year, the French government bought the rights of Daguerre's invention,
and gave it to humanity, so that anybody could use it free of charge. However, Bayard was not
compensated when the French state in this way gave away his work for nothing.
(7)
Soon Bayard bitterly
noticed that it was Daguerre that got all the fame and fortune, while nobody really acknowledged his own
contribution. In October 1840 he published a long letter in which he accused the French government for
steeling his invention and leaving him penny-less. As a consequence he had seen no alternative to
drowning himself, Bayard ironically wrote, and included, as to proof this, a photographic selfportrait later
entitled A Self-Portrait of a Drowned Man:
The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you. As far
as I know this indefatigable experimenter has been occupied for about three years with his discovery. [...]. The
government, which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur
Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself. Oh the vagaries of human life!
(8)
What can be seen in this picture is 'dead' Bayard's naked body placed in an upright position in a room that
could be associated with a mortuary. A straw-hat is hanging on the wall, and a vase with a ower can be
seen next to the man; the straw-hat as well as the vase were things that Bayard had turned into a personal
signature.
This scene never took place in front of a camera; the picture is a composite of three different photographic
depictions.
(9)
It has been called both the rst ctional, as well as the rst propaganda photograph
(10)
and
can thus be interpreted as a provocation to the very idea that a photograph should be a perfect
representation of reality as it 'really' is, an idea that lies imbedded in the term photography as it was once
coined by Herschel.
Just to give a hint of the scope of this provocation from 1840 one example shall be mentioned. 150 years
later, in 1990, an entry on Daguerre was published in the National Encyclopaedia of Sweden,
Nationalencyclopedin. There one can read: "Through the invention of the daguerreotype, man could, in a
manner more correct and true to reality, depict himself and the world."
(11)
Well, is that so? Can a photographic depiction be said to be a representation more "true to reality" than
any other form of construct? Bayard's photography from 1840 provoked this question then, and it still
provokes it today.
The lm Death in the Seine is dedicated to precisely this picture. In the same way as Bayard's depiction
puts the representation of reality into question, Greenaway's lm can be seen as a provocation of the
representation of the past in conventional historiography. Before analysing the movie, the problem of
representation within historiography should rst be made explicit through the discussion of a recent article
on the subject.
Representation and History
In his attempt to revise the theoretical foundation of conventional historiography, F.R. Ankersmit has
focused on the notion of historical representation. He differentiates between a "substitution view" and a
"resemblance view" of representation.
(12)
Basically, the difference between these two theoretical
perspectives is that from the point of view of substitution anything can be used in order to represent
anything else, while from the point of view of resemblance there must be some sort of likeness between
the represented thing and the thing representing it. In order to connect to the example of photography
above, in the substitution view, representation is not limited to physical markers. According to the
resemblance view, however, there must be physical, rst and foremost visual, connection between the
represented and its representation. Or to take the same exaggerated example as Ankersmit uses, according
to the substitution view, a y can represent the New York World Trade Center (of course, the reverse
relation is also possible). Such a form of representation would not be legitimate in the resemblance view,
since a y is not regarded as being like the World Trade Center.
A fundamental difference between these two theoretical perspectives seems to be that according to the
substitution view every connection between a represented thing and its representation is a construction
made up by the active interpreter, while in the resemblance view it is assumed that there is some inherent
'likeness' between the representation and its representation. And that this 'likeness' is to be discovered by a
passive analyst. What is at stake here is whether there is an essential connection that can be discovered
between the represented thing and its representation, or if any such relationship of representation is
invented. Hence the difculty lies in the question of the extent to which history can be said to represent
something essential that exists/existed beyond itself, or whether history can only be regarded as an inner
structure of constructions based on an innite number of other such constructions. The problem with the
former position is that it short-circuits the differentiation between exists and existed it undermines
temporality (this is also Ankersmit's critique of the resemblance view). The problem with the latter
position is that it ends up in a hard-line constructivism, which in turn tends to dissolve any relationship
between history and the past. In other words, the issue here is to judge between the claims made by an
essentialist and a constructivist perspective. The problem of judging between these two perspectives is
that both of them, at least as they are presented by Ankersmit, tend to undermine the distinction between
'is' and 'was'. They do so, however, in different ways. According to Ankersmit, the essentialist claims that
the origin of something can be experienced here and now, the constructivist on the other hand states that
the construction of identity and representation is always made here and now.
The notion of identity is the crucial aspect, and one can here continue to follow Ankersmit's line of
argument. If anything could be said to be a potential representation of anything else, then anything would
also be identical with anything else, and it would not be meaningful to differentiate between
representation and identity. If, on the other hand, there is rst something present and later a representation
of this something, and if the identity between the presented and its representation grows stronger the more
the representation resembles the original presentation, then a hierarchy will exist in which the notion of
identity is placed on top of the notion of representation.
This could be illustrated with the above mentioned camera obscura. With this device, an image of a
landscape could immediately be projected on the rear wall of a dark room. A person in the room could
then ll in the image so that the picture of the landscape could be xed. If the landscape is seen as the
original presentation, then the image on the wall is its rst representation. The closer the picture made
from this representation resembles the likeness of the original landscape, the stronger the identity between
the original and its representation. As a consequence not every representation would be regarded as
equally good, but the stronger the identity the better the representation. Contrarily, this idea would not be
supported in the substitution view, since it would not acknowledge the condition that the notion of identity
is made into the reference point with which it would be possible to measure the quality of different
representations. So the fundamental difference between the two theoretical approaches is the question
whether the notion of identity should be regarded as a point of reference when estimating representations,
or if it instead should be seen as a construct that is produced together with each and every representation.
Ankersmit writes that the "resemblance theory inadvertently creates such a hierarchy by presenting
resemblance as the link between identity and the representation", indicating that the representation holds a
subordinate position in comparison to what it presents. In the substitution theory this hierarchy is absent:
"Representation is the representation of identity because identity only comes into being by representation
and vice versa; there is not, rst, an identity, which is or could be represented next whether in agreement
with certain criteria of resemblance or not no, representation and identity both come into being at one and
the same time."
(13)
Because identity and representation come into being at the same time, according to Ankersmit, the
substitution view excludes the idea that there once would have been an original presentation that has then
been represented over and over again. This view sets out that history is a construction made on the basis
of an innite series of other constructions, whereas whatever preceded this innite series of construction
cannot be settled from a position within historiography. Instead, following this theoretical approach, one
would nd an innite number of representations throughout history, but no original presentation. Such
perspective turns to undermine the notion of presence as such, breaking up the idea of a nucleus here-and-
now and turning it into an innite number of there-and-then. The reason for this is that not even presence
(as such) can be understood as an original presentation, because presence is always in ux, and since it is
not a stable entity it cannot be used as a point of reference when measuring temporality. This view comes
close to the one outlined by Reinhard Koselleck in which he splits the notion of an ever-present here-and-
now into the two categories of "space of experience" and "horizon of expectation".
(14)
Contrary to the
resemblance view, which takes this notion of a nucleus here-and-now as its starting point, thus assuming
that history is the sum of an innite number of such here-and-now entities, the substitution view puts the
notion of empirical research into question. The reason for this is that empirical research as a scientic
practice which is generally understood as critical reections based on sensations experienced here-and-
now cannot be intellectually defended if the notion of a nucleus here-and-now is abolished. On the other
hand, Ankersmit argues that the substitution theory is superior to the resemblance theory, because the
former "is the theory that remains sensitive to the difference between the represented and its
representation and is capable of accounting for it, whereas this distinction is lost [in] the resemblance
theory".
(15)
But is that the case? What Ankersmit apparently aims to demonstrate is that when, as in the resemblance
theory, the supposed likeness between an original presentation and the following representation is the
foundation of identity, then the claims of conventional historiography cannot be justied, because then
temporality is short-circuited. The lack of connection between presentation and representation means that
there is no foundation for identity as a non-constructed quality that in any 'natural' way could connect two
or more different entities with one another. But on the other hand, because Ankersmit has argued that
"representation and identity always come into being at one and the same time", also the substitution view
short-circuits temporality. In practice both the resemblance and the substitution view thus undermine the
presupposed connection between history and the past, because both these theoretical perspectives neglect
to theorise temporality. Moreover, in both the resemblance as well as in the substitution view, every
identity and every representation are the results of an act of interpretative construction made by an active
interpreter. The only way of bridging the gap between the notion of the past and the perceived sources at
hand is to actively produce an interpretation in which the sources are understood hermeneutically (and not
experienced empirically) as representations of that which one wants to study. However, it seems to be
clear that what Ankersmit calls 'identity' is a constructed relation between two entities. Furthermore, he
writes: "When asking a historical question we want an account, a comment on the past, and not a
simulacrum of the past itself. And these are not even ideally identical things."
(16)
But even if we want to
have such an account or comment on the past, to what extent do we get it through the means of
conventional history? Does not any such account or comment always refer back to our notion of the past,
as it comes down to us through historiography, and never to 'the past itself' (to use Ankersmit's term)?
When representation and identity, in the act of interpretation, are constructed at the same time, and when
neither the representation nor the identity are identical with the past as such, then we have no access to
this enigmatic 'past itself'. Furthermore, if the sum of constructed representations as well as their
interrelated identities is identical with history, then history is not identical with the 'past itself'. Therefore,
to say that history would represent the past would be a statement without signication, because we have
no access to the past itself and, therefore, cannot compare the two entities with one another.
At this stage one can refer back to the question posed in the beginning of this essay: What does it mean to
say that history is about the past? The claim that history is a representation of that past as it was is, as has
been pointed out above, problematical. What, then, does it mean to say that history is about the past? This
question is not settled. However, one way of confronting it could be to say that although history is not
identical with the past, there exists a constructed identity between produced history and the notion of the
past. This would open for the notion that history is about constructing meaning for the human predicament
of always being in the midst of unstable temporality. A preliminary answer to the question of the relation
between history and the past could then be that history is about a perpetual production of meaning in the
face of temporality. So, when we assume that history is and that the past was, a gap between these two
entities of temporality, or tenses, appears. But this gap could be said to be bridged by the constructions
that have actively been produced within the realm of historiography, however historiography itself is also
one of these constructions.
Nevertheless, according to tradition, the results produced by historians and presented in historiography are
not being considered as constructions, but rather as discoveries. In conventional historiography this gap or
fundamental difference between history and the past has been neglected and/or repressed. As a result, a
contradiction is built into the very core of conventional historiography, namely that although history
cannot be considered identical with the past, most historians would nevertheless be tempted to claim that
this would indeed be the case. The often quoted dictum by Ranke that the historians should represent the
past 'as it really was' ('wie es eigentlich gewesen') could here come to mind. What Ankersmit and others
have pointed out, however, is that the transition from history to the past cannot be conducted, and since
history can never be perceived as identical with 'the past itself' but only our constructed notion of the past,
the entire Ranke-tradition of conventional historiography seems in crises.
In the face of this crisis, the question how history should be written arises. Obviously one can argue that
the problem is not so grave after all, and that the historians should just continue to do what they always
have done: namely to put a question and try to answer it by critically scrutinising a source material. Of
course, the result of such an investigation would not be identical with the past, but 'merely' constructed
history. But so what? Since there is no access to the past as such never was and never can be how can
history be produced otherwise? What does it mean to write history, when history is understood both as the
studied object and as the presented results of the study? This is the delicate question that Peter Greenaway
has challenged by making the lm Death in the Seine.
Death in the Seine as historiographic argument
Apparently, the then latest video-technology had been used to edit Death in the Seine. The visual as well
as audible markers in the lm could make it possible for a latter-day viewer to date its production to the
turn of the 1990s. Like any work of history, this lm can be used as a historical source to the era in which
it was made.
In this essay, however, Death in the Seine is not used as a source-material when studying a specic time
period, but as a historiographic argument. It should, in other words, not be viewed as an object for a
historical study, but instead as result of a historical study. What interests us here is what Greenaway
argues with his video-lm and how this argument is outlined.
The focus of the lm lies on the corpses that were found in the river Seine during some of the crucial
years of the French Revolution. In this respect, Greenaway has found a matter that would not be regarded
as conspicuous when taken up by any cultural or social historian. Greenaway has put forward a question
and made a clear delimitation in space and time: he asks about the actual people who once lived and
concentrates on the location of Paris between 1795 and 1801. Also, he has been using written
contemporary source material, namely a mortuary archive that was set up by two morgue assistants, Boille
and Daude. On a day to day basis, they gave an account of their work: to attend to the corpses, which were
found in the river, and to identify them so that they could be properly buried. As a historian (although
working outside of academia and conventional historiography), Greenaway interprets these sources in
order to study something that is not included in the material itself, but to which he obviously suggests that
the sources point. It is therefore not the source material at hand that interests him, but the people that once
lived however they are now dead and forgotten.
(17)
After the opening picture with a dedication to the Bayard photo discussed above, the lm shows scenes
with streaming water, underscored by the music of Michael Nyman. Then follow sequences some
animated, some depicting actors playing corpses, some displaying hand-written documents that are edited
so that they seem to be placed in layers upon layers on top of each other. The lm has been edited
congenially to the perspective that history is construction, which is perpetually being built on top of
previous constructions.
Throughout the lm, a voice-over comments the scenes. The built in dialectics between this voice-over
and the image creates some of the tension that keeps the audience alert. In the beginning of the lm the
voice-over reads:
It can safely be presumed that whether through accidents, misadventure, suicide or murder, all the bodies that were
taken from the river met death violently, though not all may have drowned. [...] From these mortuary assistants'
notes it is perhaps possible to build an identity for each dead body; to make a few speculations about the life it
lived; and in some cases to ruminate on the possible reasons and circumstances of each death; though Boille and
Daude rarely indulged in such hazardous and inexact speculations. To be able to do such a thing at anytime would
be intriguing, to do in the years immediately after the Storming of the Bastille, especially so. For these people taken
from the Seine had witnessed the French Revolution at rst hand, and as a group they had lived through the Terror,
experienced the Directorate, and saw the beginning of the Consulate.
(18)
Here is presented a difference between what can "safely be presumed" and the "speculations" that
"perhaps [make it] possible" to construct identity. But instead of trying to x this difference, Greenaway
has in a conspicuous manner throughout the lm blurred the analytical categories of deduction and of
speculation.
The lm is composed in such a way that it follows a recurrent matrix. It is based on 23 episodes placed
after one another in a non-chronological order. The episodes start with the splashing sound of something
falling into streaming water, Nyman's music, and the sound of a pen scraping paper. On the screen, the
viewer can parallel see a hand drawn sketch, which works as a frame for shots of Boille and Daude at
work. Over these scenes, smaller frames, depicting running water, are placed. On top of all these, the
archive-number, name of the charge, and dates are written out on the screen. A hand, writing with a quill,
is a little later juxtaposed with depictions of the written source-material. A pan from feet to head of the
naked actor playing the corpse concludes every episode.
About the source-material, on which he has funded his argument, Greenaway has said:
The mortuary assistants had recorded in a haphazard fashion details of sex, hair colour, physical wounds, details of
clothing and contents of the pockets, and where witnesses and relatives had come forward with information or to
identify or collect the corpses, some indication of the corpse's profession or trade or circumstances. These mortuary
notes are largely about what these two morgue assistants see and not what they know perhaps a similar concept to
that which governs The Draughtsman's Contract.
(19)
The distinction between seeing and knowing should be noticed. If the mortuary assistants thought that
they could know anything about the persons that they received as corpses simply by writing out a list of
all there empirical experiences about them, then they would be in a somewhat similar position as the main
character in Greenaway's earlier lm who had to nd out that there was no direct linkage between his
empirical experiences and his understanding of reality. Anybody believing that one can know anything of
'the past itself' simply by studying a source-material would be in the same situation as that man. It can be
presumed that in Death in the Seine Greenaway has argued that there can be no direct connection between
historical scholarship and knowledge of 'things and situations as they really were'.
Nevertheless, Greenaway 'writes' history. In his lm he ruminates on the people that lived in Paris around
the turn of the 18th century, especially the individuals that became the objects for Boille's and Daude's
undertaking:
Twenty-three corpses were given the responsibility in the project Death in the Seine of representing all 306 bodies
dragged from the river between 1795 and 1801. It is said that unnatural deaths can be classied as either murder,
suicide or misadventure. But what is a natural death and what is a misadventure? Historical scholarship can turn
these emotive events into at statistics. Here are three grids to comprehend pattern and organise signicance. But
after the stripping down of these case-histories, there is an attempt to try to nd some way back to the pathos of
their origin by the introduction of anecdotes of colour and the drama of paint surface grey and plain deaths bloody,
gaudy, deaths deaths the colour of nude pink and corpse brown or choking purple and dull black for dull, black and
everlasting darkness.
(20)
Hence, when producing the history that is presented in this lm, Greenaway's aim has been "to try to nd
some way back to the pathos" of the "origin" of the people he is studying. When doing this he has to nd
new ways of working, because conventional historical research tends to transform "emotive events" to
"at statistics", instead of producing meaning. If the production of history is to construct meaning to the
human predicament of being temporal, then new forms of history writing have to be developed. Also, the
existing tradition of historiography must be revised.
In order to give a more detailed impression of how Greenaway has composed his argument in the lm, a
ve-minute sequence of it, including three of the episodes, should be recapitulated.
[Insert:]Procs Verbal No 68 Jean-Babtiste Laglasse
[Voice-over:] By far the majority of the 306 people taken from the Seine between 1795 to 1801 were unskilled, and
many had occupations that could rapidly change with circumstance or season.
[Insert:] 8 avrile 1797 19 Germinal 5
[Voice-over:] This 58 year-old man worked as a casual day labourer. When they undressed the body and wrote out
the clouding-list, Boille found that the man wore a body-bandage. With a man in late middle-age doing such a
strenuous job, and we may perhaps suppose that he had been doing it for 40 years, needing to labour as hard as his
companions, body-bandages supported muscle.
[Boille undresses the body, while Daude pours two cups of coffee. Throughout the lm Boille is exposed as a hard
working person, while Daude is portrayed as someone being less serious in his work. This differentiation in their
roles is never explained or even commented on by the voice-over. Fade into a depiction of a hand-written
document.]
[Voice-over:] How long could such a man labour before sheer physical collapse made it impossible? Three
witnesses came forward to sign the mortuary notes: a casual labourer, a ladies tailor, and a messenger.
[Now three men are seen by the dead. One is taking it off a cap. Pan from the feet to the head of the corpse.]
[Insert:] Procs Verbal No 98 Henry Seraphim Lapaix
[Voice-over:] In Seraphim and Lapaix this child had an auspices name: Angel and Peace. But both did not save
him.
[A shot in which Boille gently lifts the dead body out of the river.]
[Insert:] 6 juillet 1797 18 Messidor 5
[Voice-over:] At seven years of old, he is the youngest corpse to be taken out of the river. He was seen to fall,
maybe from the banisters of a bridge, the verge of a quay, the side of a boat, and he was in the river six days before
they found his body by the pont de la Rvolution, later the pont de la Concorde When everyone else in the world
had never known that this child had lived. This boy was born the year that they stormed the Bastille, and everyone
remembered that.
[Pan from the feet to the head of the corpse.]
[Insert:] Procs Verbal No 51 Marguerite Merle
[Voice-over:] A 21-year-old lle de conance, which can be translated as trusted servant and companion, as house
servant.
[Insert:] 23 novembre 1796 3 Frimaire 5
[Voice-over:] Boille wrote that she was ve feet in height, had brown hair and brown eyebrows, and an ordinary
nose. Why should he have picked that feature out of if it was so ordinary? She wore a man's shirt, marked with a P
and an H, which were not her initials; two petticoats, which were not unusual; and two red garters. Her father, who
came to claim the body, was uncertain of her employer's name. An inspector of furnished rooms was also a witness.
Maybe he knew more about her than her father did. She had been missing for three days and was found, like so
many others, under the pont de la Rvolution; a bridge that seems to have liked the dead. What was she doing in the
river?
[Boille and Daude are seen leaving the table where the young woman lies, and accommodating themselves at a
table with food in the background of the scenery. The screen fades: about two thirds shows the written source
material, and one third shows the woman on the table in the foreground. Parallel, one can see Boille and Daude
eating and amusing in the background. Suddenly the lighting of the scene changes and is concentrated on the
woman. She sits up, reaches out for a wine-glass. She drinks. After having put down the glass again, she lays down
again. Then the lightning of the scene returns to its previous set.]
[Voice-over:] According to the mortuary notes, Daude had to go to Vandme on business. And Boille makes no
comment. But they must have speculated what her life would have been like, and considered why a 21-year-old had
to come to such an abrupt end.
[Pan from the feet to the head of the corpse.]
Obviously, Greenaway has not used the archive material in order to say anything clear-cut and denite
about neither the persons Laglasse, Lapaix, Merle, nor about Boille and Daude. He does not even draw
any denite conclusions about social life in Paris during the era of the French Revolution. However, he
does not question that these people once lived (and died). Greenaway has not put the existence of reality
and of the past into question, but instead challenged our understanding of what we can know of reality and
the past. It seems clear that his starting point is that we are all subjected to the same temporal
precondition, whether we live now or we lived then. And even though we cannot know anything for
certain even if we think contrary we are inclined to inexhaustibly speculate and ruminate over reality and
our role in the world; over what once were as well as over things to come.
This is also what Greenaway has done though he has come to his results by actively interpreting sources at
hand, not by producing sources in accordance with expected results. Thus, by actively interpreting the
source material he is in possession of, he states that Jean-Babtiste Laglasse was a hard working man on
the brink of physical collapse. Furthermore, Henry Seraphim Lapaix was a child who, in his father's
memory, lived on after his death; Marguerite Merle was a beautiful young woman that could very well
fallen victim to the lusts of men etc.
But Greenaway does more than let the source material be the groundwork of a speculation over three
individual persons. He lets these persons represent three forms of human life. Laglasse is used in order to
represent every day life of the hard working people that lived in Paris around the turn of the 18th century.
Lapaix is used as a representation for all parents that have lost a child. Merle represents the object of male
fantasies. Of course, these people can be used as means both to represent existential conditions, and the
particular conditions of the people in Paris of the French Revolution. Greenaway has used both these
strategies, without emphasising the difference between historical and existential levels of human
existence.
Together with a pan over a number of bodies, the lm ends with the following voice-over-reection:
It only takes three generations for personal contact to get lost, and then the memory, if it exists at all, passes on to
strangers, us. Who, in this case, have been relying on notes written with pen on paper by two mortuary attendants
of whom we know far less than we do of there charges. This television tape is almost as perishable as ink on paper.
And the world is one thousand times as populated and teen thousand times as busy. Who will remember us? Who
will speculate on our existents in 200 years time? And who will remember these people, who have been lying very
still, attempting to deny their bodies resemblance of life in order to impersonate the dead? It is pertinent that the
record of the deaths of these unfortunates tted a new and bold way of measuring times; the calendar of the
revolutionary era. But in the same year as the mortuary notes ceased, so did the calendar. It could be said that these
bodies, that oated in the Seine, did so in a time that does no longer exists, because it is no longer measured.
(21)
The end titles follow, rst comes the list of the the actors, together with the names of the corpses that they
have played. Although having been arranged in make-up in order to give the impression of being
something else then what they are, these actors do not resemble the corpses that they are set out to
represent.
(22)
The most obvious example of this lack of visual resemblance is shown in the above
described scene in which a young woman, while playing dead, sits up and drinks a glass of wine. The last
thing to be seen in the lm is the same picture of Bayard with which it began.
Pathos and History
Since one consequence of the difference between history and the past is that the human knowledge does
not seem to have access to the past as such, all human understanding of change over time is directed to the
perpetual construction of history. It is possible to interpret this lm as a conscious attempt to tackle this
condition.
Greenaway has indicated three approaches to challenge conventional historiography. First, he has hinted at
an identity between written documents and dead bodies so that he can argue that corpses can be identied
through the act of interpreting conventional source material. Second, he has explicitly criticised the
historians for attempting to "turn emotive events into at statistics". With what justication can a historian
in the broad sense of the word (i.e. every social scientist or researcher of the humanities that is taking an
historical approach) vindicate that their work would have any relevance for the lived everyday life of
ordinary people? In addition to this critique he, thirdly, indicates that when attempting to examine an
origin, the point of reference would be 'pathos', not empirical facts.
(1) In his answer to the question what we can know of the today dead and forgotten persons that lived in
Paris during the time of the French Revolution, Greenaway has elaborated on two parallel levels of
constructed identities. To begin with, he has constructed an identity between the source material that he
has at hand and the person that is forever vanished. Thereafter he has constructed another identity between
bodies and persons. These two sets of constructed identities have enabled him to make the connection
between documents and corpses. When he states that "[t]wenty-three corpses were given the responsibility
[...] of representing all three hundred and six bodies", the statement is based on written documents, not the
physical remains of people.
The manner of reasoning that Greenaway has here presented comes, nevertheless, close to the way any
trained historian would work. When a researcher examines, for example, a nation-state or an ethnical
group, s/he does not actually study the nation-state per se nor the ethnical group as such, but documents
and other source-materials that s/he identify with the nation-state per se or the ethnical group as such.
Similarly, Greenaway has linked his sources to dead people. The point to be underlined here is that it is
equally impossible to directly study these dead persons, as it is impossible to study, for example, the
nation-state per se. Instead, all such research has to be indirect and reexive. In order to carry out such an
'empirical' study, the researcher rst has to construct an identity between the studied material and the
studied objective. This differentiation between studied materials and studied objectives is as central as it is
often neglected and forgotten in applied research.
It is possible to interpret Death in the Seine as a manner of speaking ironically about the lack of self-
reexivity demonstrated in the practice of historical research. When Greenaway asks "who will remember
these people, who have been laying very still, attempting to deny their bodies resemblance of life in order
to impersonate the dead?", he emphasizes the role of the actors. While showing one seemingly
uninterrupted sequence of living actors playing dead people, he lets the voice-over shift between three
different levels of reection and of interpretation of this particular source material. First, he compels the
viewer to identify the shown bodies with the corpses that were found in the Seine, then he suggests that
the same bodies should be reected as representations of our own bodies, lastly he points out that these
bodies could also be seen as neither identical with dead people, nor with ourselves, but with living actors.
Thus, without changing the scene and without taking the attention away from the studied source, three
different levels of interpretation and identity construction is provoked. It can therefore be said that it is not
the source material that guides the researcher to a result, but the question formulated. And since the whole
transference from a present document to a past person is rather dubious, it is understandable if a director
like Greenaway wants to mock it in this subtle manner.
(2) A second mode of challenging conventional historiography is taken when asking what role the writing
of history plays for everyday life. On one level, the focus of the lm lies on the actual people who once
lived, and the lm formulates the question what we today can know of them. The answer given is
straightforward: in a strict manner of speaking, nothing! However, what we can do is to speculate over the
source-material to which we have direct contemporary access. Since the source-material is present at
hand, we could use it empirically, i.e. interpret it. Or, in Greenaway's case, "build an identity for each dead
body". But he has even taken one step further, marking out both the corporeal continuity from our
forefathers to us, and the discontinuity in the transition from their knowledge to ours.
In the same way as we are strangers to our corporeal forefathers, our physical descendants will be
strangers to us. This argument can also be developed further. To what extent are our conscious selves
strangers to our physical selves, to what extent are we strangers to ourselves? Any answer to this question
would be elusive. However, by posing such a question, one has at least taken into account that we are not
identical with our physical bodies, and that we, in order to unify our body and our self, have to construct
an identity for ourselves. This construction has to be carried out on both an individual and a collective
level (presupposing that we have previously constructed the distinction between individuality and
collectivity; between the individual and the collective).
(3) The third manner in which Greenaway has challenged the historians is his way of shifting focus from
empirical facts to pathos. But what is here meant by 'pathos'? According to The New Encyclopdia
Britannica the word signies a "quality of human experience or its representation in art that evokes pity,
sympathy, and sorrow in the spectator or reader."
(23)
When Greenaway uses the term, he enters a discursive eld in which the word can be seen as a marker for
either experiences of strong emotions, or for a theatrical behaviour, or for something sick and disorderly.
Nevertheless, what seems to be clear is that when it comes down to representing the emotive aspects of
these dead persons, Greenaway tends to defend the pathos of colour before the truth of statistics: he has
tried to produce meaning and not facts.
A Challenge to History
Two general conclusions can be made. The rst one is that there cannot be any linkage between history
and the past as such, because history is and the past was, and since no transcendence from is to was can
convincingly be conducted, there can be no epistemological connection between the two. This conclusion
tends to challenge conventional historiography that has had as its goal to attempt to represent, through the
writing of history, 'the past as it really was'. If history is neither to be recognised as identical with the past,
nor as a representation of it, then the whole tradition of conventional historiography is in crisis. A way of
overcoming this crisis is to rethink historiography as a whole. One preliminary result of such an attempt to
rethink history is that the purpose of writing history has never been to reproduce the past, but has always
been to create meaning to the human predicament of being embedded in temporality. One meaning of the
assertion that history is about the past would then be that historians, within the realm of historiography,
have constructed visions of what once was, but is no more. These visions cannot be regarded as identical
with the past as such or 'the past itself', but they can nevertheless be considered to be meaningful accounts
or comments. In this context, the lm Death in the Seine can be read as an ironical comment on the lack of
self-reexivity that limited historians in their attempt to grasp the obvious inconsistency that lies in the
core of conventional historiography.
The second general conclusion is that the notion of 'identity' in the social and historical sciences has to be
understood as a construction, which is made up by whom ever that claims this identity. For reected
knowledge there is, then, no position outside discourse. Of course, that does not imply that there is
nothing beyond discourse, but merely that we cannot have any knowledge of whatever that might be. Our
knowledge is something that we construct within discourse; it is entirely discursive. This is, of course, a
condition that we cannot know, but we must believe it. In turn, that would indicate that all meaning and
knowledge is founded in our belief-system.
In his video lm, Greenaway has made this condition evident by underlining that the bodies shown in the
lm are not identical with the corpses that they are set out to represent, but with living actors. The identity
between the actor and the corpse is indicated through the composition of the lm, and nally constructed
by the audience. As viewers of the lm, therefore, we collaborate in the creative work of constructing by
accepting the identity-construction of the lm. When we believe that we have understood the logic of the
composition, then we can use the lm as a means to construct meaningful knowledge. In this way, all our
knowledge is rooted in what we already believe.
There is a commonly spread idea that photographs should be more 'true to reality' than any other form of
depiction. Nevertheless, Hippolyte Bayard's photograph A Self Portrait of a Drowned Man one of the rst
photographic portraits ever to have been made has challenged this notion to its core. In the same way,
Peter Greenaway's lm Death in the Seine has challenged the non-reected idea that history is about the
past. This essay has been written in the conviction that every historian should take both these challenges
seriously.
Footnotes
Vonderau
1. William Henry Fox Talbot: "Der Zeichenstift der Natur" [1844 1846]. In: Wilfried Wiegand (ed.): Die Wahrheit der
Photographie. Klassische Bekenntnisse zu einer neuen Kunst. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1981, 45.
2. See Loiperdinger's and Vaughan's remarks on this widespread 'panic-legend'. Martin Loiperdinger: "Lumires Ankunft des
Zuges. Grndungsmythos eines neuen Mediums". In: Kintop 5. Auffhrungsgeschichten. Basel, Frankfurt/Main: Stroemfeld, 1996,
37 70. Dai Vaughan: "Let there be Lumire" [1981]. In: Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (eds.): Early Cinema: Space Frame
Narrative. London: British Film Institute, 1990, 6367.
3. Vaughan [1981] 1990, 65.
4. A.W. [= August Wolf]: "Der Film als Historiker". In: Film-Kurier 3, 20.10.1921, 245. German original: "Film, das ist Betreiben
der Geschichte im Sinne Xenophons, der unter Menschen ging, zu Dirnen, Handwerkern und wer gerade ihm entgegenkam.
berall schien es ihm recht, seine Typen herauszuschen. [...] Ohne Arroganz, jede Gegend schien ihm begabt genug,
Interessantes wachsen zu lassen. [...] Der Film ist auch im Gefhl zum Bewegten hin erfunden. Sein Gedchtnis ist die Kamera mit
dem abrollenden Bild, ein Gedchtnis, das genau aufzeichnet und mit der Zeitlupe zeigt, zu welcher Schrfe der Betrachtung es
fhig ist. Und welch glckliches Gedchtnis! Es denkt existenziell, zeigt den Baum als Baum, ohne Stimmungsstimulanz, in der
Freude des naiven Anschauens. [Der Film] braucht keine Beschwrungsgeste, um sich die Natur erscheinen zu lassen, sie lebt im
Bild so ungezwungen, wie sie ist. Glcklicher Film, der keiner Darstellungsknste bedarf."
5. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell: Film History. An Introduction. New York, St. Louis, San Francisco: McGraw-Hill,
1994, 107f.
6. Thus, neither lm historical issues, nor the development of methodical concepts for the general historian's occupation with
feature lms, is dealt with here. Instead, the focus is on some theoretical denitions as well as on some observations regarding the
academic nature of the historian's interest in lm.
7. D.W. Grifth: "Der Film in hundert Jahren". In: Licht-Bild-Bhne 17, 26.7.1924, 86.
8. See for example, Paul Smith (ed.): The Historian and Film. Cambridge, London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Pierre Sorlin: The Film in History. Restaging the Past. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. K.R.M. Short: Feature Film as History.
London: Croom Helm, 1981. Ilan Avisar: Screening the Holocaust. Cinema's Images of the Unimaginable. Bloomington,
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988 (= Jewish Culture and Literature). Marc Ferro: Cinema and History. Translated by
Naomi Greene. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988 (= Contemporary Film Studies). John E. O'Connor (ed.): Image as
Artifact. The Historical Analysis of Film and Television. Malabar: Krieger, 1990. Rainer Rother (ed.): Bilder schreiben
Geschichte. Der Historiker im Kino. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1991. Hans-Arthur Mariske (ed.): Zeitmaschine Kino. Darstellung von
Geschichte im Film. Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1992. George F. Custen: Bio/Pics. How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Leger Grindon: Shadows of the Past. Studies in the Historical Fiction
Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994 (= Culture and the Moving Image). Robert A. Rosenstone: Visions of the Past.
The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1995a. Robert A. Rosenstone (ed.):
Revisioning History. Film and the Construction of a New Past. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995b. Marcia Landy:
Cinematic Uses of the Past. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Ted Mico, John Miller-Manzon and
David Rubel (eds.): Past Imperfect. History According to the Movies. New York: Holt, 1996. Vivian Sobchak (ed.): The
Persistence of History. Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. New York, London: Routledge, 1996. Robert Brent Toplin:
History by Hollywood. The Use and Abuse of the American Past. Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Maria
Wyke: Projecting the Past. Ancient Rome, Cinema and History. New York, London: Routledge, 1997 etc.
9. Walter Benjamin: "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" [1936]. In: Walter Benjamin: Das
Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Drei Studien zur Kunstsoziologie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,
1977
4
, 28.
10. Siegfried J. Schmidt: "Geschichte beobachten. Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft aus konstruktivistischer Sicht". In:
sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Geschichtswissenschaften (Geschichte beobachtet), 8 (1997:1), 41.
11. "Film is out of the control of historians. Film shows we do not own the Past. Film creates a historical world with which books
cannot compete, at least for popularity." Robert A. Rosenstone: "The Historical Film. Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age"
[1994]. In: Rosenstone 1995a, 46.
12. Michle Lagny: "Film history: or history expropriated". In: Film History (Philosophy of Film History), 6 (1994:1), 31f.
13. In the last ten years numerous publications have appeared dealing with theoretical and methodological questions of lm
historiography. For an introduction, see e.g. Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery: Film History. Theory and Practice. New York:
Knopf, 1985. Thomas Elsaesser: "The New Film History". In: Sight and Sound, 4 (1986:55), 246252. Knut Hickethier (ed.):
Filmgeschichte schreiben. Anstze, Entwrfe, Methoden. Berlin: edition sigma, 1989. The problematic (and to a degree certainly
also very constructive) attitude historiography strikes towards lm studies will be dealt with below.
14. Accordingly, in his contribution in this volume, Stephan Michael Schrder starts out by historising the term 'historical ction
lm'.
15. Donald Watt: "History on the public screen". In: Smith (ed.) 1976, 169.
16. Stephan Michael Schrder describes the 'linguistic turn' and its effect on historiography in more detail in this volume. The
distinction between documentary and feature lm became problematic, when, among other reasons, feature lms were increasingly
adapting documentary lm techniques. For more on this, see e.g. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell: Film History. An
Introduction. New York, St. Louis, San Francisco: McGraw-Hill, 1994, 517 598.
17. Marc Ferro: "Film: A Counteranalysis of Society?" [1971]. In: Ferro 1988, 29.
18. See e.g. Grindon 1994. Michle Lagny, Pierre Sorlin, and more recently, Marcia Landy, have achieved a very useful and
methodological development of Ferro's assumption. Michle Lagny: De l'Histoire du cinma. Mthode historique et histoire du
cinma. Paris: Armand Colin, 1992 (= Cinma et audiovisuel). Pierre Sorlin: "Historical Films as Tools for Historians". In:
O'Connor (ed.) 1990, 42 68, as well as Landy 1996.
19. With his article, "History in Images / History in Words: Reections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film",
Rosenstone started a discussion forum in American Historical Review, 93 (1988:5), in which, among others, Hayden White took
part. A reprint of this and other articles on (most of all) the American discussion can be found in Rosenstone 1995a.
20. Helmut Seiffert: "Geschichtstheorie". In: Helmut Seiffert and Gerard Radnitzky (eds.): Handlexikon zur Wissenschaftstheorie.
Mnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994
2
, 109.
21. Marc Ferro: "Film: A Counteranalysis of Society?" [1971]. In: Ferro 1988, 29. Rosenstone: "Introduction". In: Rosenstone
(ed.) 1995b, 4f.
22. Schmidt 1997, 38.
23. For more on this, see among others, Peter Ohler: Kognitive Filmpsychologie. Verarbeitung und mentale Reprsentation
narrativer Filme. Mnster: MAkS Publikationen, 1994.
24. Cf. Dai Vaughan's concept of the 'documentary response'. Dai Vaughan: "The aesthetics of ambiguity". In: Peter Ian Crawford
and David Turton (eds.): Film as Ethnography. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 1992, 101.
25. According to Sorlin, the so-called 'historical feature lms' only share the reference to history, and do not contain text-internal
structures as a genre does. Kagemusha (1980), for example, depicts the past, but does it also show history? Accordingly, it seems
impossible to dene criteria common to all 'historical' movies, as Grindon is attempting to do. His observation that every 'historical
feature lm' shows above all "the relationship of the individual to society", is true of Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), as it
is of Disney's The Jungle Book (1967). See Grindon 1994, 9 and Sorlin 1990.
26. Karsten Fledelius: "Zur Semiotik der Geschichte. Abriss einer semiotischen Methodologie der Geschichte, mit besonderer
Rcksicht auf lmische Aufzeichnungen als historisches Quellenmaterial". In: Gnter Bentele (ed.): Semiotik und Massenmedien.
Mnchen: lschlger, 1981 (= Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft fr Kommunikationswissenschaft; 7), 365.
27. Herlihy rightly points out that it would only be logical to discuss not only lm, but also novels in historical academic journals.
David Herlihy: "Am I a Camera? Other Reections on Films and History". In: American Historical Review, 93 (1988:5), 1186 -
1192.
28. Ferro [1971] 1988, 29.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 30.
31. Rosenstone hopes, "that my own concerns parallel some broader concerns of the historical profession; that dare I be so bold? -
these essays represent the meeting of traditional historical consciousness with the increasing demands of the visual media." Robert
A. Rosenstone: "Introduction. Personal, Professional, and (a Little) Theoretical". In: Rosenstone 1995a, 1f. For the most part I will
base my arguments below on this essay collection.
32. Robert A. Rosenstone: "What You Think About When You Think About Writing a Book on History and Film" [1990]. In:
Rosenstone 1995a, 231.
33. Robert A. Rosenstone: "History in Images / History in Words. Reections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto
Film" [1988]. In: Rosenstone 1995a, 23.
34. Robert A. Rosenstone: "Film and the Beginnings of Postmodern History". In: Rosenstone 1995a, 206.
35. Rosenstone 1995a, 14f.
36. Marc Ferro: "Does a Filmic Writing of History Exist?" [1978]. In: Ferro 1988, 161.
37. Rosenstone 1995a, 15.
38. Ibid., 11.
39. David Bordwell: Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge, 1993
5
, 9f.
40. Rosenstone takes the form of lm as a model for historiography. Accordingly, he suggests cinemorphic writing as a solution to
methodological problems in postmodernity. Cf. Rosenstone 1995a, passim.
41. Rosenstone [1994] 1995a, 54f.
42. Ibid., 53.
43. The canon does without any lm historical differentiation and unites a series of (post)modern classics, such as Sans Soleil
(1982) with 'New Hollywood' commercial productions, such as JFK (1991).
44. See Colin McCabe: "Realism and the Cinema: Notes on some Brechtian Theses". In: Screen, 15 (1974:2), 7 27 and "Theory and
Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure". In: Screen, 17 (1976:3), 7 27.
45. McCabe 1974, 8.
46. McCabe 1976, 11.
47. It is a basic characteristic of every narrative ction to point to its own constructed nature. Thus, the question rather would be
which lms can avoid to be 'self-reexive'. Over and above that, Rosenstone equates the viewer's awareness of the construed
character of a given narration improperly with methodological insight. Concerning the activity of the spectator in the cinema see
e.g. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson: Film Art. An Introduction. International Edition. New York, St. Louis, San Francisco:
McGraw-Hill, 1993
4
, 41 98.
48. Cf. Hayden White: Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1973.
49. Vaughan 1992, 101.
50. Details on this can be found in Nol Carroll: "Concerning Uniqueness Claims for Photographic and Cinematographic
Representation" [1987]. In: Nol Carroll: Theorizing the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 3748.
51. Rosenstone 1995a, 22f.
52. Rosenstone [1988] 1995a, 36.
53. See, among others, Bordwell's recent statement on 'classical' lm theory. David Bordwell: "Contemporary Film Studies and the
Vicissitudes of Grand Theory". In: David Bordwell and Nol Carroll (eds.): Post-Theory. Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison:
Wisconsin University Press, 1996 (= Wisconsin Studies in Film), 3 36.
55. Michle Lagny: "Kino fr Historiker". In: sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Geschichtswissenschaften (Film Geschichten), 8
(1997:4), 467.
56. Ibid., 466.
58. Lagny 1997, 436.
59. This involves questions such as: how specic regarding the time and space of its production is the plot's construction of the
world? To which degree does it make use of conventional narrative motifs?
Beindorf
1. For a survey on this, see Jonas Brostrm: "Svensk lm i beredskapstid". In: Kate Betz, Jonas Brostrm and Aleksander
Kwiatkowski: Film, samhlle och propaganda. Filmens anvndning fr opinionspverkan och propaganda under den ryska
revolutionen, den svenska beredskapen och det kalla kriget. Stockholm: Liber and Beredskapsnmnden fr psykologiskt frsvar,
1982, 77 151.
2. See for example, Gunnar Fredriksson, Dieter Strand and Bo Sdersten: Per Albin-linjen. Tre stllingstaganden till en
socialdemokratisk tradition. Stockholm: PAN/Norstedts, 1970 (= En PANbok). Alf W. Johansson: Per Albin och kriget:
samlingsregeringen och utrikespolitiken under andra vrldskriget. Stockholm: Tiden, [1985] 1995. Anders Isaksson: Per Albin.
4 vols. Stockholm: Wahlstrm & Widstrand, 1985 ff. Anders Linder: Andra vrldskriget och Sverige: historia och mytbildning.
Stockholm: Infomanager, 1997. Jerrold M. Packard: Neither Friend nor Foe: The European Neutrals in World War II. New York:
Scribner, 1992.
3. Screenplay: Gustav Molander, Vilhelm Moberg. Production: AB Svensk Filmindustri. Release: 23.11.1942 Rda kvarn,
Stockholm.
4. Bjrn Norstrm: "Synpunkter p svensk bondelm". In: Filmrutan, 13 (1970:1), 25. In the original Swedish: "epokens mest
tydliga beredskapslm".
5. Vilhelm Moberg: Rid i natt! Roman frn Vrend 1650. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1941.
6. The play premiered at the Dramatiska teatern in Stockholm on 4.9.1942, in Hlsingborgs stadsteater and at the Riksteatern on
10.10.1942 and at Gteborgs stadsteater on 14.10.1942. The Riksteater went on tour with Rid i natt!. See G[sta] W[erner]: "Rid i
natt". In: Lars hlander and Rickard Gramfors (eds.): Den svenska lnglmen. Filmogra. De frsta hundra ren. CD-Rom.
Stockholm: Svenska Filminstitutet and FilmhusFrlaget, 1997.
7. As Richard Taylor observes, "the 'propagandist' uses all the weapons that are available to him at a given time and in a given
context". See Richard Taylor: Film Propaganda. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. London: Croom Helm; New York: Barnes &
Noble Books, 1979, 22. Even if it is beyond the scope of this essay to identify concrete propagandistic 'agencies', the analysis
below will be based on Taylor's general assumptions on the nature of propaganda, seeing it as a public activity: "Propaganda is the
attempt to inuence the public opinions of an audience through the transmission of ideas ans values." Ibid., 27f.
8. The word 'bodkavle' used by Vilhelm Moberg, is explained in the German version of the novel as following: "Botkawel: a short
wooden rod or a slim, arm-lengths board, which carved with signs was secretly sent from village to village by farmers to
communicate important news. The symbol of rebellion! (Bot = command, message, notice, announcement. Kawel = used for
untied prepared pieces of wood)." (Vilhelm Moberg: Reit heut' nacht! Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1946, 417.)
9. Moberg studied not only the scholarly literature on this theme, but also worked with the original sources themselves.
Nevertheless, after the publication of his novel, a long debate ensued among legendary historians, about the historical accuracy of
Rid i natt!. For a summary of this controversy see Alf berg: "Striden kring 'Rid i natt!'". In: Svenska Dagbladet, 6.6.1969.
10. See Rainer Rother: "Nationen im Film. Zur Einleitung". In: the same (ed.): Mythen der Nationen: Vlker im Film. Munich and
Berlin: Koehler and Amelang, 1998, 9 16, 9.
11. In the original Swedish: "Sveriges frihet och oberoende krvde nu som frr och in en framtid frsvarare av svensk stam,
svenskt blod och kynne och i nskvrd numerr." Brostrm, 111.
12. Vilhelm Moberg: Ride this night. New York: Doubleday, 1943, 252. In the original Swedish: "S gr en budkavle genom ntter
och dagar, genom r och rhundraden, lpande i sitt angelgna rende, frambrande frn tid till tid det brdskande budet, det
yppersta och det frmsta. Budkavle gr. Rid i natt, i natt."
13. Herfried Mnkler: "Politische Mythen und nationale Identitt. Nibelungen-, Barbarossa- und Hermannsmythik in der
deutschen Politik". In: Karpf (ed.), 45.
14. Marcia Landy: Cinematic Uses of the Past. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, 1.
15. Landy 1996, 2.
16. Marcia Landy: Film, Politics, and Gramsci. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, 98.
17. Concerning the use of 'allegory' and 'parable', see Dieter Liewerscheidt: Schlssel zur Literatur. Munich: Knaur, 1990, esp. 89 -
98 and 129 188.
18. berg, ibid. In the original Swedish as following: "Den [boken] r en utmaning mot det frtryck som hotade frn Hitlers
Tyskland men ocks ett angrepp p de svenska politiker, som genom diplomatiska uppgifter eller frhalningspolitik ansgs g i
frbund med frtryckarna."
19. Ernst Karpf: "Geschichte sehen. Zur Wahrnehmung des Historischen im Film". In: the same (ed.): Filmmythos Volk. Zur
Produktion kollektiver Identitt im Film. Frankfurt/Main: Gemeinschaftswerk der Evangelischen Publizistik, 1992 (=
Arnoldshainer Filmgesprche; 9), 18.
20. Michle Lagny: "Kino fr Historiker". In: sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Geschichtswissenschaft (1997:4), 457.
21. Lagny, 466.
22. In the original Swedish: "Samhllsandans svenskhet var grundtonen i kristidspropagandan. [...] Tankarna kring 'det goda
folkhemmet' [...] ck en praktisk tillmpning under beredskapens r. I tiden fanns ocks ngot obestmbart: [...] andlig kraft, en
vilja att frsvara det fdernervda och en svensk livsform kort sagt de svenska vrdene, det som den andliga beredskapen stod
fr." (Brostrm, 88 f.)
23. Karl W. Deutsch: "National Consciousness and Will". Chapter 8 in: the same: Nationalism and Social Communication. An
Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. 2nd. ed. Cambridge, Mass. u. London: M.I.T. Press, 1966 [1953], 165186.
24. Werner Schneider: "Das Volk und der Einzelne. Von Tod und Wiedergeburt eines Mythos". In: Karpf (ed.), 63.
25. See Rother, 13.
26. Mnkler, 51.
Tngerstad
1. In: Augustine: St. Augustine's Confessiones. Translated by William Watt [1912]. London: Heinemann, 197779, 239. The quote
refers back to Book 11, 14:17, of St. Augustine's Confessiones.
2. Death in the Seine, 1988, 44 min. (exists also in a 40 minutes version). Production: Erato Films, Mikros Image, La Sept, Allarts
Enterprises, NOS. Distribution: Ideal Audience (France).
3. Cf. Bo Strth and Nina Witoszek (eds.): The Postmodern Challenge: Perspectives East and West. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi,
1999 (= Postmodern Studies; 27). See especially the editors' "Introduction" (9 23), Hayden White's article "Postmodernism and
Textual Anxieties" (27 45) and Georg Igger's article "Historiography and the Challenge of Postmodernism" (281301) deal with the
crisis in contemporary historiography and the background to this crisis.
4. Quoted after Robert Leggat: A History of Photography from its Beginnings till the 1920s. Available on the Internet,
www.kbnet.co.uk/rleggat/photo/. The original article was published in The Literary Gazette, 7. January 1893.
5. Michel Frizot (ed.): Neuere Geschichte der Fotograe. Kln: Knemann, 1998, 27. (French original: Nouvelle Histoire de la
Photographie. Paris: Bordas, 1994).
6. W. Henry Fox Talbot: Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing. London 1839, reprinted in Beaumont Newhall:
Photography: Essays and Images. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980, 23 32. I would like to express my appreciation to
James Kaye for this reference.
7. Frizot, 23 31.
8. Quoted after Leggat. A full length reprint of Bayard's letter can be found in Frizot, 30.
9. Frizot, 30.
10. Frizot, 30; Leggat.
11. Nationalencyklopedin. Vol. 4. Hgans: Bra Bcker, 1990, 338. The original quote reads: "Genom dagerrotypen kunde
mnniskan p ett mer verklighetsnra och korrekt stt avbilda sig och sjlv och sin omvrld."
12. F.R. Ankersmit: "Danto on Representation, Identity, and Indiscernibles". In: History and Theory, 37 (1998:4), 44 70.
13. Ankersmit, 52f. Italics in the original.
14. Reinhard Koselleck: Futures Past. The Semantics of Historical Time. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
15. Ankersmit, 54.
16. Ankersmit, 67f. Italics in the original.
17. About his sources, Greenaway has said: "I'd come across Richard Cobb's book Death in Paris. He'd discovered a mortuary
archive in the Bibliothque Nationale, supplied by two morgue assistants, Boille and Daude, who in the years after the French
Revolution had very carefully, if naively, written up accounts of corpses they'd been responsible for between 1795 and 1801, years
that would include the Terror, the Directoire and the Consulate." Quoted from Alan Woods: Being Naked Playing Dead.
Manchester 1996, 255.
18. Transcribed after the sound-track of the lm.
19. Quoted after Woods, 256.
20. Peter Greenaway: papers/papiers. Paris: Dis Voir, 1990, 20.
21. Transcribed after the sound-track of the lm.
22. According to the information on the lm at The Internet Movie Database Ltd. (www.uk.imdb.com), some viewers have
reported that when the actors in the lm move, blink, or in any other way show that they are alive, that should be considered a so-
called "goof" (or an unintended error in the lm, an error that breaks up the logic of the construction upon which the composition
of the lm is founded). The database states, however, that this is not a "goof": "Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Director Peter
Greenaway has stated that although he didn't set out to have the actors playing the corpseees move about, he didn't mind when they
did, because on one level the lm is about people only pretending to be dead, and that the movements just helped reinforce that."
23. The New Encyclopdia Britannica the 15
th
edition, 1985, Micropdia, vol. 9, entry "Pathos". A somewhat anecdotal detail in
this context is that in The New Encyclopdia Britannica, Micropdia, the entry "Pathos" can be found, but not the entry
"Pathology". This fact should be compared with The Encyclopedia Americana. In the latter encyclopaedia one can nd the entry
"Pathology", but not the entry "Pathos". Also, in the former work one can read "Gr. Pathos, emotion", while in the latter it is
written "Gr. Pathos, disease".

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