Historical drama

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Salah Zulfikar and Nadia Lutfi in the historical drama Saladin the Victorious (1963) Nadialutfi&Salahzulfikar.jpg
Salah Zulfikar and Nadia Lutfi in the historical drama Saladin the Victorious (1963)

A historical drama (also period drama, period piece or just period) is a dramatic work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents historical events and characters with varying degrees of fictional elements such as creative dialogue or fictional scenes which aim to compress separate events or illustrate a broader factual narrative. The biographical film is a type of historical drama which generally focuses on a single individual or well-defined group. Historical dramas can include romances, adventure films, and swashbucklers.

Contents

Historical drama can be differentiated from historical fiction, which generally present fictional characters and events against a backdrop of historical events. A period piece may be set in a vague or general era such as the Middle Ages, or a specific period such as the Roaring Twenties, or the recent past.

Scholarship

In different eras different subgenres have risen to popularity, such as the westerns and sword and sandal films that dominated North American cinema in the 1950s. The costume drama is often separated as a genre of historical dramas. Early critics defined them as films focusing on romance and relationships in sumptuous surroundings, contrasting them with other historical dramas believed to have more serious themes. Other critics have defended costume dramas, and argued that they are disparaged because they are a genre directed towards women. [1] Historical dramas have also been described as a conservative genre, glorifying an imagined past that never existed. [2]

Historical accuracy

2004 filming of a 19th-century film scene set in London LondonSmog.jpg
2004 filming of a 19th-century film scene set in London

Historical drama may include mostly fictionalized narratives based on actual people or historical events, such as the history plays of Shakespeare, [3] Apollo 13 , Braveheart , Chernobyl , Enemy at the Gates , Les Misérables , and Titanic. [4] Works may include references to real-life people or events from the relevant time period or contain factually accurate representations of the time period.

Works that focus on accurately portraying specific historical events or persons are instead known as docudrama, such as The Report. Where a person's life is central to the story, such a work is known as biographical drama, with notable examples being films such as Alexander , [5] Frida , House of Saddam , Lincoln , Lust for Life , Raging Bull , and Stalin .

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historical fiction</span> Fiction that is set in the past

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Docudrama is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and "a fact-based representation of real event".

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A biographical film or biopic is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docudrama films and historical drama films in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a single person's life story or at least the most historically important years of their lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epic film</span> Style of filmmaking with large scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle

Epic films are a style of filmmaking with large scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle. The usage of the term has shifted over time, sometimes designating a film genre and at other times simply synonymous with big-budget filmmaking. Like epics in the classical literary sense, it is often focused on a heroic character. An epic's ambitious nature helps to set it apart from other types of film such as the period piece or adventure film.

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to fiction:

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When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for interpreting literature: literary biography and biographical criticism. Conversely, two genres of fiction rely heavily on the incorporation of biographical elements into their content: biographical fiction and autobiographical fiction.

References

  1. Annette Kuhn; Guy Westwell (21 June 2012). A Dictionary of Film Studies. OUP Oxford. pp. 98–. ISBN   978-0-19-103465-7.
  2. Robé, Chris (2009). "Taking Hollywood Back: The Historical Costume Drama, the Biopic, and Popular Front U.S. Film Criticism". Cinema Journal. 48 (2): 70–87. doi:10.1353/cj.0.0082. JSTOR   20484449. S2CID   153354352.
  3. Grant, Teresa; Ravelhofer, Barbara (2008-01-15). English Historical Drama, 1500-1660: Forms Outside the Canon. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN   978-1-4039-4849-6.
  4. Niemi, Robert (2013-10-17). Inspired by True Events: An Illustrated Guide to More Than 500 History-Based Films, 2nd Edition: An Illustrated Guide to More Than 500 History-Based Films. ABC-CLIO. ISBN   9781610691987.
  5. Carver, Terrell (Spring 2005). "Oliver Stone's Alexander". Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies . Center for the Study of Film & History. 35 (2): 83–84. doi:10.1353/flm.2005.0033. eISSN   1548-9922. ISSN   0360-3695. S2CID   191432461.