A Filmmaker's Guide to: Historical Settings

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

Historical Settings

What are they?

Historical Settings are settings from a time in the distant or near past that are used to some impact, to tell the story. Most of the time, the historical setting has something to do with the overall narrative.

When historical settings are used in literature we need to make sure it is not the present to the author. Such as a book like "Jane Eyre" does not actually have a historical setting because it was written in perspective of Charlotte Bronte's own time. Whereas, a book like "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco has, in fact, a historical setting.

Books that you can read include:

1. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
2. The Wolf Hall Trilogy by Hilary Mantel
3. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
4. The Tudor Court Series by Philippa Gregory
5. Circe by Madeline Miller
6. The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
7. Romola by George Eliot
8. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
9. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
10. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

What about in film?

Historical settings in film are used for many different purposes of storytelling which all come from different aspects of literature and its many genres.

Some of the genres include but are not limited to:

Romance - in which historical settings are used mostly to depict class and society etc.

Horror - in a fashion of creating some sort of mythical alliance with the past in order to make the feeling of horror slightly more realistic

Adventure - settings are normally used in order to create a difference between the civilised and the savage, even though the differentiation within humans and other humans has often been frowned upon in the modern era due to the implications of racism and orientalist exclusion

Here are some films you could watch of all different genres to further investigate the different ways in which it is used:

1. Cloud Atlas
2. Interview with the Vampire
3. Anna Karenina
4. No Country for Old Men
5. Schindler’s List
6. Chaplin
7. I’m Not There
8. Twelve Years a Slave
9. The Duchess
10. Gangs of New York
11. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
12. The Favourite
13. Cold Mountain
14. Dunkirk
15. JFK
16. Barry Lyndon
17. Mary Queen of Scots
18. Darkest Hour
19. First Man
20. Hidden Figures

So, now let’s take a look at some further reading that will help when understanding the different ways in which you can use historical settings throughout film by various secondary readings. Remember, in order to understand how historical settings are created in film, you may want to read books that are not just purposefully set in a different time but are also written in a different time. Unlike literature which is written in the modern day and set in the past, the best thing to do for film is to watch films about books that were written in the past and have been created and adapted into films we can view now.

Further Reading: