Historical Accuracy in Cinema

[Sloper]

This may already have been referred to, but Alex von Tunzelmann's 'Reel History' column in the Guardian is a small pet hate of mine, and one which, like any good pet hate (or like a particularly itchy scab) keeps me coming back for more. That's no doubt the idea. Basically, she takes fact-based classics and points out some of their inaccuracies, usually the less interesting ones, in a manner which tries to be provocative by spectacularly missing the point - I think it's intended as a quasi-parody of the average history buff's aesthetic myopia, or something like that. The approach is very tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time fatally humourless, poorly written, and peppered with snide comments about the film in question, like this gem on Viva Zapata:

The young Marlon Brando plays Zapata, which is a problem mainly because the young Marlon Brando could only play Marlon Brando. They've taped his eyelids up in a bizarre attempt to make him look like an indigenous Mexican, but he just looks like Marlon Brando with his eyelids taped up. In a few scenes, he attempts a Mexican accent, but he just sounds like Marlon Brando doing a half-hearted impression of Speedy Gonzales. Incidentally, the real Zapata was renowned for his high-pitched, delicate voice.

I know a few people who, in all seriousness, assess films on the basis of their historical accuracy (or their fidelity to the source novel), and for some reason it gets me all riled up. But people here may get a kick out of it. I do quite like her boneheaded summary of The Scarlet Empress:

The Scarlet Empress isn't really aiming for credibility so much as providing Sternberg with an excuse to film bondage, bosoms, fur coats, schlocky expressionist sets and Marlene Dietrich's face peering through bits of gauze. He narrowly avoids flunking the history test by recreating a lively and vaguely accurate impression of the relationship between Catherine and Peter. As for the rest of it: destined for the glue factory.

The final sentence is the last in a string of allusions to the 'persistent myth that Catherine the Great died while indulging her carnal appetites with a horse'.

[colinr0380]

I'm in the middle of this. I would agree that judging a film based purely on its historical accuracy is rather wrongheaded (the above quote on The Scarlet Empress as an excuse to show Marlene Deitcrich's face seems perfectly fine to me!). What about artistic quality?

Yet at the same time if a film proudly boasts of its historical accuracy or has enough cultural cache to completely swamp a subject, then criticism of the portrarayl of the one dissenting United 93 passenger as a wimpy apologist or of the basic inaccuracies in Braveheart for instance seems perfectly fine. It just should be combined with the artistic angle into a more wholistic view of the film's total worth to culture.

I'm also someone who feels that a historical film should, like any film, be judged just as much for the contemporary period in which it was made than its historical subject matter (e.g. viewing the changes and trends in Westerns over the past hundred years is just as legitimate a method of criticism than simply just period accuracy).

[Sloper]

Colin, I quite agree that in cases such as United 93 (a brilliant film, regardless of its politics) there are probably things that should be said, and the idea of the column is potentially quite fun - but yes, since she's ignoring so consistently the artistic merit of the films in question, she really needs to ramp up the humour. Or at least display a bit more of a sense of irony. Or just say something intelligent about the relationship between fact and fiction, rather than pointing out the sort of inaccuracies you could detect without looking further than Wikipedia. As it is, von Tunzelmann is in the same league as fellow Guardian cultural commentators David Cox or Nirpal Dhaliwal, hired largely to be annoying. Not the end of civilisation, or even journalism. But still annoying.

[Tommaso]

I'm in the middle of this. I would agree that judging a film based purely on its historical accuracy is rather wrongheaded (the above quote on The Scarlet Empress as an excuse to show Marlene Deitcrich's face seems perfectly fine to me!). What about artistic quality?

This may be slightly off-the-point of this discussion, but I thought about something perhaps similar when I recently (finally!) watched Duvivier's "Au bonheur des dames". The film's ending 'resolves' the problems of unfettered capitalism and consumerism by a simple melodramatic/romantic cop-out, which is not only unbelievable today, but would have been equally so in 1930, I guess. However, the film apparently simply took over the ending of Zola's source text. So it can't be called 'inaccurate', but that ending seems appalling to me, basically because it isn't ironic, as I believe the end of Murnau's "Der letzte Mann" to be, for instance.

Now I actually couldn't care less, because the artistic merit of Duvivier's film is so high that the ending doesn't really bring the whole film down, but I wonder whether in this case LESS textual accuracy wouldn't have been better, always assuming that textual and historical accuracy are at all comparable. But in my view, people who clamour for one also clamour for the other.

[colinr0380]

That's an interesting subject Tommaso (and apologies everyone for misspelling Dietrich's name - I was in a hurry when posting!) - I actually feel that it comes down to stated intention versus end result. For example taking a novel or play and adapting it for the screen in itself implies changes in that translation as a given, so I usually only judge films more harshly for their historical accuracy, or accuracy to a text, when a big fuss has been made about their fidelity to their sources and the creators seem to be begging for comparisons to be made.

For example The Perfect Storm or Open Water (even United 93 when dealing with the passenger's actions beyond certain key moments) are films that if were not trumpeted as 'true stories' (which certain aspects couldn't be, given that in 'shocking' twists nobody survives to recount their stories therefore even more obviously necessitating artistic licence to create closure) would likely not have received half as much criticism, or attention, as they did without that tag. These are just extreme examples of the fictionalisation that goes into creating any historical film, but these particular examples are only really judged as extreme because of the blatantly obvious lengths they have to go to in order to finish their stories.

On the literary adaptation side I would mention those early 90s horror films that attached the names of their authors as a sign of fidelity (and legitimacy): Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. With the author's name so boldly attached to the titles it suggested a fidelity (and an impossible sense of finality of this being an 'ultimate' adaptation of the work) which many critics then judged the films by and found them wanting. When judged as a floridly operatic Coppola and wackily bombastic Branagh however the films actually work much better, and while still flawed are at least interestingly flawed and of a piece with the director’s other works (which is what I mean about judging as both an adaptation, and of their context within other films made on a subject and of what was occurring in the contemporary culture in the early 90s within which they were made and released - all things which are relevant and necessary to proper analysis of the worth of a film, along with analysis of the mechanics of the film itself of course).

However I'm not sure if with the above argument I am entirely critical of the filmmakers themselves. Perhaps I mean to attack an audience, and a wider culture, who would unquestioningly accept an image as only being an unvarnished truth of an event and not wish to explore a subject in further depth. I wonder if it is cynical to create a work that attempts to overwrite an earlier historical event or piece of work for a mass audience of passive consumers (remakes would probably factor into this too), or whether it is cynical and condescending of me to assume that the general audience just passively accepts an image as truth without question? Or a combination of both?

And of course reinterpreting events over and over gives a good barometer of what the culture finds significant at a particular time (Why do some works fall into obscurity while others get revamped over and over again? And similarly why do some events get pored over constantly? And what do they have to offer to a particular contemporary filmmaker to make further artistic analysis warranted? If only good box office returns and a perceived seriousness of intent to add gravitas to a career, what does that in itself tell us about both an audience’s appetites and the development of a filmmaker’s (or actor’s) career?) So maybe they do have a point after all!

Perhaps the main thing everyone can agree on – complaining about historical accuracy in Carry On Cleo is rediculous! (At the very least it was as much a comment on the rediculosity of the Taylor/Burton Cleopatra film as on the historical events themselves!)

[Sloper]

Interesting discussion - I guess in relation to what you're saying, Colin, it comes down to whether you think artists carry any moral responsibility, and whether they need to take seriously the potential impact of their work on an impressionable public. I just saw Traffic In Souls for the first time, which apparently is one of many filmic accounts of the 'white slave trade' from the early 1910s, and one that apparently gives a none-too-accurate picture of what this 'social evil' was really about. The film shows women being ambushed and entrapped and bundled off into brothels at gunpoint, when in real life the factors that drove people into such predicaments were far more complicated and less dramatic. It caused concern among the educated classes, and among those involved in trying to combat white slavery and prostitution, who felt that cinema audiences (drawn from all strata of society) were an unusually suggestible class of people, and that it was dangerous to misinform them, or to parade this genuine social problem as entertainment.

I actually feel some sympathy with those who champion the need for censorship in films, because I do think theirs is a defensible position - and I suppose the same is true of those who demand accuracy from films. But personally I don't care if a film depicts some historical event inaccurately, even if it's a really important event, and even if the film is being touted as a reliable historical chronicle. (Maybe Eisenstein is one of the better examples to cite here, or more controversially Griffith.) So my impatience with nit-picking history buffs might just be a symptom of my own moral apathy. I'm too much of a squirming aesthete to care about history or morality.

Tommaso, I haven't seen the Duvivier film, but what you said reminded me of Merchant Ivory's dreadful adaptation of The Bostonians, which ends with:

Spoiler

Olive Chancellor going out onto the stage and delivering a stirring feminist speech, when the book leaves her going out to, as she puts it, 'be hissed and hooted and insulted', and only hints that the audience were in fact more quiet and forgiving than might have been expected. The film's ending is a pusillanimous concession to the audience of 1984, drawing the teeth of Henry James's text and failing to capitalise on its thoughtful and genuinely provocative take on feminism. By winking at the audience like this, it assumes a moral superiority to the source text, which may or may not be justified but for my money kills it stone dead as an adaptation.

So part of me thinks that it might actually be best to just dramatise a text as it is, and trust the audience to manage their own reactions. Similar to the example I just cited is Michael Radford's Merchant of Venice from a few years ago, which adds a tedious prologue about the persecution of Jews in the 16th century, shows Antonio spitting on Shylock, etc... Now in principle, the intent behind this might seem admirable, and although I hated the film I might have approved of its attempt to read the play as something other than anti-Semitic; I've seen stage productions which make Shylock the hero, and do so through intelligent reading and playing of the characters. But by so mindlessly imposing extra baggage on the text, Radford's film just came across as cowardly and neutered, and really kind of irresponsible. How much more interesting it would have been if they had had the courage to let the text speak for itself.

One of the best things about the RSC's excellent stage version of The Canterbury Tales was that it presented the notoriously anti-Semitic "Prioress's Tale" completely straight, without any crowbarred-in commentary or condemnation. It basically said to its audience, 'hey, maybe this poem just is anti-Semitic, and we've got to deal with that if we want to carry on admiring its author and making schoolchildren study him'. Not in so many words, of course. The effect was shocking - truly scary - and forcefully brought out an aspect of the text which can all too easily be elided during reading or analysis.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I love the idea of letting an old, naïve, even out-dated and offensive text speak in its own voice, from its own time, because that way it has far more to say to our own era than it ever could through being meddled with and re-contextualised. Meddling can work too, of course, but slavish fidelity to the text becomes a very interesting method of adaptation when the text is a morally or historically problematic one.

[Tommaso]

Colin and Sloper, great posts, as usual.

I have always agreed with the idea that translating a text into a film not only necessarily brings about changes, even if a film uses the complete unaltered text of a stage play (and even for this I can't think of many examples outside Branagh's "Hamlet" and perhaps some film versions of brief, modern plays), but also that it is only with these changes that the film can become a work of art of its own. The complaints by Tolkien afficionados about Jackson's changes to the plot of LOTR seemed completely ridiculous to me, for instance. Thus, I never had the problems with Branagh's "Frankenstein" or Coppola's "Dracula" that you describe, Colin, though I completely agree with your points about the suggestion of fidelity by attaching the authors' names to the films' titles. But for me this was never more than a marketing device, trying to get some attention for films that after all were the umpteenth 'remakes' of well-known novels and even better-known films. To their credit, both films indeed follow the original plots more closely than most earlier adaptations, but after all that is completely unimportant for the question of how well these films work (and as you say, both of them are at least interesting, which cannot generally be said about 90s Hollywood stuff....).

However I'm not sure if with the above argument I am entirely critical of the filmmakers themselves. Perhaps I mean to attack an audience, and a wider culture, who would unquestioningly accept an image as only being an unvarnished truth of an event and not wish to explore a subject in further depth. I wonder if it is cynical to create a work that attempts to overwrite an earlier historical event or piece of work for a mass audience of passive consumers (remakes would probably factor into this too), or whether it is cynical and condescending of me to assume that the general audience just passively accepts an image as truth without question? Or a combination of both?

I cannot see any difference with regard to audience participation and/or further exploration in these cases than with any other film. Especially with these two films, most people in the audience would have been aware that they were based on a source novel anyway, given how famous the subjects are. It would indeed require a pretty unsophisticated audience to make them believe that what they see IS an accurate account of the source novels. So either an audience member becomes interested in reading the book afterwards (if he/she doesn't know it yet already) or not. The same if you watch a film about a historical person; you might get interested in exploring the subject more (e.g. by reading about the historical period or at least reading a more extensive biography), or you simply leave it as it is; then the film simply is what films are made for: an evening's entertainment, and that's not a bad thing at all. Perhaps I simply think that an audience isn't quite as impressionable as you seem to do, but perhaps my belief in a more 'mature' or 'media-literate' audience is just an illusion.

And of course reinterpreting events over and over gives a good barometer of what the culture finds significant at a particular time

Yes, a very good point. But some things like Shakespeare films seem to be ever-popular, though the way filmmakers look at the Bard have gone through various 'fashions' which clearly reflect the time in which they were made. Jarman's and Greenaway's adaptations of "The Tempest", also Taymor's "Titus" clearly have a daring and an 80s sensibility to them which would be completely at odds with the general approaches to Shakespeare as evidenced by Branagh's "Hamlet" or indeed Radford's "Merchant" made ten to twenty years later.

So my impatience with nit-picking history buffs might just be a symptom of my own moral apathy. I'm too much of a squirming aesthete to care about history or morality.

I feel exactly the same; which in my case often leads to 'defending' films which other people with good reasons consider as abominations (the Griffith is indeed a good example); but again this also has to do with what I said above: I simply don't believe in a really thorough power of a film to steer people into any particular direction unless they're already inclined to follow it anyway. You don't become a nazi just by watching "Triumph of the Will" or a bolshevik by watching "Potemkin".

As to Radford's "Merchant": I assume the lack of courage you mention is more or less on the part of the producers here, given that the film was made at the height of a period obsessed with 'political correctness'. They clearly wanted to avoid any sort of negative press or even discussion about the politics of the play (which didn't really work out, if I remember correctly). Sure, Orson Welles wouldn't have used such a cop-out, but those were different times. That's why I really admire the daring of someone like Lars von Trier these days, who simply doesn't seem to care about what people think about the implications of his films, even if perhaps he now even uses the criticisms he knows he will incur to form his marketable public persona of an irresponsible madman.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I love the idea of letting an old, naïve, even out-dated and offensive text speak in its own voice, from its own time, because that way it has far more to say to our own era than it ever could through being meddled with and re-contextualised. Meddling can work too, of course, but slavish fidelity to the text becomes a very interesting method of adaptation when the text is a morally or historically problematic one.

I sure agree. But then it will be almost inevitable that questions are raised WHY such a problematic or offensive text should be performed today at all, why the performers or the director think it has indeed something to say. Sadly, a purely aesthetic answer (e.g. "it's a very good play") won't be sufficient anymore for many people.

[Sloper]

I simply don't believe in a really thorough power of a film to steer people into any particular direction unless they're already inclined to follow it anyway. You don't become a nazi just by watching "Triumph of the Will" or a bolshevik by watching "Potemkin".

My instinct is to agree with you, but then again rhetoric was so integral to Hitler's success, as was the tendency of some people not to take him seriously enough - that's a vast topic I'm not qualified to talk about, but I'm in two minds as to the role art can play in these situations. I always think of the wickedly, sickeningly funny song, 'If You Could See Her Through My Eyes' from Cabaret, which seems to argue for the power of popular entertainment both to combat an audience's prejudice, and then to turn around and reinforce it. At least that's my humourless reading.

You may well be right about Radford's Merchant; as I said, I don't mind the political correctness so much as the mediocrity and lack of imagination of which that PC attitude happened to be a symptom in that specific instance. (I did quite like Pacino and Irons, but they belonged in a better film.)

But then it will be almost inevitable that questions are raised WHY such a problematic or offensive text should be performed today at all, why the performers or the director think it has indeed something to say. Sadly, a purely aesthetic answer (e.g. "it's a very good play") won't be sufficient anymore for many people.

Yes indeed, and I actually like the idea that such questions would be raised; the RSC's Canterbury Tales became far more than a good six hours' entertainment by foregrounding these problems. I've talked about this somewhere else on the forum, but this is one of the reasons I love The Birth of a Nation. David Hare (I think) said at some point that this film should never have been made, and perhaps he's right. If presented with a button that would erase the thing from history, I would be tempted to press it, and wouldn't try and stop someone else from doing so. It's a demonstrably evil work of art in terms of the impact it had, and has continued to have until very recently (a showing sparked a riot at some university in 1992, apparently). The fact (well, opinion) that it is also the greatest film of all time forces us to think very hard about the nature of this stuff we venerate so much. What if the Puritans were right, and art really is immoral, and we really would be better off without it? These seem like hysterical questions (no doubt they belong in this thread), but I think they follow logically from the issues raised by a filmmaker like Griffith. To me that's part of what makes the Birth so important. It makes us think about the stuff we don't want to, but should.

[Tommaso]

My instinct is to agree with you, but then again rhetoric was so integral to Hitler's success, as was the tendency of some people not to take him seriously enough - that's a vast topic I'm not qualified to talk about, but I'm in two minds as to the role art can play in these situations.

I am surely not inclined to underrate the impact art can have, but I don't think the impact is as long-lasting as the 'real situation' around you. If the people had opened their eyes about the effects of Hitler's doing, even in 1935, "Triumph" surely wouldn't have helped to change their mind back to the party line. And his rhetoric, I suppose, was pretty much perpetually around in those days, outside the cinema.

Yes indeed, and I actually like the idea that such questions would be raised; the RSC's Canterbury Tales became far more than a good six hours' entertainment by foregrounding these problems. I've talked about this somewhere else on the forum, but this is one of the reasons I love The Birth of a Nation.

I completely agree about this, though I would never say I love "Birth of a Nation". It is a thought-provoking film, a quality that was probably quite unintentional on Griffith's part when he made it. That is, if the film is 'evil', it is so only because of Griffith's thoughtlessness about the impact the film could have, whereas "Triumph" and other Third Reich films were planned from the beginning to support a demonstrably evil (from our point of view, see below) regime. Still, I wouldn't want to press the erase button in any of these cases; in retrospect, these films help us to understand the mentality and the mechanisms of a hopefully bygone age and its media and propaganda machinery. What happened at your RSC performance (I assume there was a lively debate after it) is precisely what is needed to make us understand a particular era or a frame of mind better; if you try to erase films from visibility by only allowing special screenings for academics or with introductions by some film scholar on special and rare occasions (which is the case in Germany with a number of the more openly propagandistic Third Reich films), you will only build a myth around them, and that's certainly not helpful.

The fact (well, opinion) that it is also the greatest film of all time forces us to think very hard about the nature of this stuff we venerate so much.

I wouldn't call it veneration; or rather, what I could venerate in "Birth of a Nation" (not among my favourite films anyway) or "Triumph" are those aspects that they share with other films (e.g. formal inventiveness, aesthetic perfection or whatever you like to pick), not what is specifically theirs.

What if the Puritans were right, and art really is immoral, and we really would be better off without it?

You could argue that Riefenstahl or Eisenstein were just supporting what the systems they were living in said was 'good'. While I'd love to think that morals were fixed, they are at least to a degree constructed by those in power. That also goes for the Puritans, who might have been acting pretty immoral by modern standards (if I think of "The Scarlet Letter" for instance). So yes, the Puritans WERE right: art is and should be immoral. Once art submits to a political or other agenda, it necessarily becomes 'moral', i.e. it supports a specific mindset about what is good and what is evil. That doesn't mean 'moral' art is necessarily bad, but while each of us certainly and necessarily has a belief in moral standards (however you define them), it is not art's task to reinforce them in my view. If it has a task apart from giving us delight, it is rather to make us question our views and perhaps define them better for ourselves. Thus, films like Griffith's or Riefenstahl's are perhaps even more interesting today than they were in their own times, questions of aesthetics or inventiveness aside.

[zedz]

I don't have anything to add, except that this is a really interesting discussion and it would be a shame for it to perpetually reside in what's basically a joke thread. I don't know how it could be summarised for a thread split, but it would be good to do so.

[Sloper]

Re: thread-splitting: I tend to feel kind of impatient with this thread (though I enjoy it and follow it religiously) because I always want to play devil's advocate and stand up for all the haters and morons who get quoted here. This discussion started from that impatience and, I think, is about the 'rediculousness' or otherwise of criticising films on moral grounds, specifically for crimes against history or ideology.

But if it does need its own thread, maybe 'Evil Films' would be a good title, and it might spark some discussion. I've sometimes thought about starting a thread on 'racist classics' like Dumbo, L'Eclisse and Zulu, but racism is such a prickly subject, understandably neglected on this forum (as the great kevyip1 once complained)... So I always chicken out. But I'd love to know what other people have to say about all this.

Edit: I see this now has its own thread. Nice title.


Very thoughtful and persuasive post, Tommaso. Just one more note on Griffith:

I would never say I love "Birth of a Nation". It is a thought-provoking film, a quality that was probably quite unintentional on Griffith's part when he made it. That is, if the film is 'evil', it is so only because of Griffith's thoughtlessness about the impact the film could have, whereas "Triumph" and other Third Reich films were planned from the beginning to support a demonstrably evil (from our point of view, see below) regime.

There is a story about Griffith being told that, if the Birth were shown in Atlanta, people would riot - and he apparently responded, 'I hope to God they do!' Thomas Dixon's novels and plays were enormously controversial long before the film got made, and were (I think) banned in some states. This was already known as a riot-inciting story, and I'm sure that was part of its attraction for Griffith. He wanted to prove, not only that the cinema was an artistically and commercially viable medium, but also that it was important. This was a film that everybody would have opinions and feelings about, whether they had seen it or not - a film that would get the president, no less, into trouble (although Wilson saw it partly because he was an old friend of Dixon's).

There is also evidence that certain cuts of The Birth took the racist agenda even further, to the point of showing (in a celebratory spirit) the deportation of blacks at the end. Obviously this was a story in which Griffith invested a lot of sincere emotion, but you could also see it as a rather opportunistic grab for attention, and I'm not sure how convincing it is to figure him as 'thoughtless' or naive about the impact the film would have. I'm not saying he intended people to get lynched, but this is a fierce and vindictive film, designed to excite and anger its audience. In that sense it's far more disturbing than Triumph of the Will which, as far as I remember, contains little in the way of 'evil' ideology except in certain parts of the speeches, and as you say is hardly likely to turn anyone into a Nazi. Griffith's film, on the other hand, really does push its racist polemic onto the viewer.

I've also heard that The Birth was used as a recruitment tool by the Klan as late as the 1970s, but that probably just means there was one Klan member who liked old films and kept trying to persuade his buddies to come over for a 'Griffith night'.

Personally I agree with you that it isn't the 'role' of art to define our morals for us, and I certainly don't regard myself as capable of being indoctrinated. But in practice I suspect that a lot of our morals and beliefs, and our ways of seeing and thinking about the world, are subtly instilled in us by popular entertainment, and that films especially (and TV shows even more especially; and adverts still more especially) are every bit as dangerous as the much maligned Mary Whitehouse-types would argue. Maybe that sounds paranoid... So maybe I'll stop here...

[knives]

I don't have anything to add, except that this is a really interesting discussion and it would be a shame for it to perpetually reside in what's basically a joke thread. I don't know how it could be summarised for a thread split, but it would be good to do so.

Me too, but I figure I could add something anyways.
Today I rewatched Lifeboat in what seemed like two dog ages and how that movie treats both the black survivor and the German I think can be related to the Merchant talk that was going earlier. From my understanding Hitchcock greatly changed those two characters from Steinbeck's treatment. Getting to the point, Hitchcock's alterations were not noticed at all and, at least for the German, he was attacked for perceived kindness.Nowadays it just seems like propaganda and silliness though. So while the alterations, along with general artlessness, make the Pacino version a wasted effort, it might actually be closer to what Shakespeare intended. After all, it is intended as a comedy and has lines/ satirical situations like the 'do I not bleed' speech in it. This isn't really for historical inaccuracies, but historical situations. The culture of one time sees a work differently from another.time. Just thought I should bring up that nugget of thought.

[Tommaso]

This was already known as a riot-inciting story, and I'm sure that was part of its attraction for Griffith. He wanted to prove, not only that the cinema was an artistically and commercially viable medium, but also that it was important. This was a film that everybody would have opinions and feelings about, whether they had seen it or not

Yes, that was basically what I meant when I spoke about Griffith's 'thoughtlessness'; he probably played with fire for the sake of getting attention. I don't know much about Griffith as a person, but I was unwilling to ascribe active support of racism to the man who made "Intolerance" and "Broken Blossoms" not too much later. But I may be wrong there, of course. That the film incited riots was known to me, and might actually be a good contradiction of my point that films are unable to really influence a viewer's mindset. However, I would assume that those who rioted (both for and against the film or the black people) already had very fixed opinions before they saw the film. A good contemporary example would be the reactions from fundamentalist Christians against Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ", many of which would have never seen the film against which they were protesting; or think of the demonstrations against Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" for an even more disturbing example.

I'm not saying he intended people to get lynched, but this is a fierce and vindictive film, designed to excite and anger its audience. In that sense it's far more disturbing than Triumph of the Will which, as far as I remember, contains little in the way of 'evil' ideology except in certain parts of the speeches, and as you say is hardly likely to turn anyone into a Nazi.

Quite right, that's certainly a difference. Riefenstahl clearly wanted to present Hitler in a positive light, and in order to do that, she had to completely leave out the more unacceptable parts of his speeches. This selectiveness, however, is precisely what turns "Triumph" into a propaganda film and makes Riefenstahl's claim that the film was 'only' a documentary unconvincing.

But in practice I suspect that a lot of our morals and beliefs, and our ways of seeing and thinking about the world, are subtly instilled in us by popular entertainment, and that films especially (and TV shows even more especially; and adverts still more especially) are every bit as dangerous as the much maligned Mary Whitehouse-types would argue.

I agree as far as adverts and general, ever-repeated concepts of 'beauty' are concerned, for example. They obviously have a strong influence especially on young people. But that is so because these beauty ideals are present everywhere; they are repeated by various interested parties, and are not proclaimed by just one film or one advert. If a dictatorial regime tries to bring its filmmakers 'into line' in a similar way, the results inevitably will be a loss of artistic quality in the long run, because art loses its individuality and originality. Think of the decline of Russian filmmaking under Stalin, or the endless array of mediocre comedies and melodramas in the latter half of the Hitler regime (though there are some exceptions here).

So while the alterations, along with general artlessness, make the Pacino version a wasted effort, it might actually be closer to what Shakespeare intended. After all, it is intended as a comedy and has lines/ satirical situations like the 'do I not bleed' speech in it.

A good point, though I find it terribly difficult to decide what Shakespeare intended in the case of "The Merchant of Venice". Even the attribution 'comedy' was probably made by the editors of the First Folio, and just remember that they also put plays like "The Tempest" and "The Winter's Tale" into that category. I have a similar problem with Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta", an apparently overtly antisemitic play. But reading it I couldn't help finding that the Christians in that play behave every way as bad as the title character. There's a similar ambiguity in the case of Harlan's "Jud Süß", at least from watching that justly infamous film from today's perspective. This ambiguity most likely wasn't intentional, but probably was even perceived by the audience of the time. Ferdinand Marian got baskets of love letters from young German girls after they saw him in that role.

[Gregory]

I taught a course that dealt with this topic, and the story that I told my classes on the first day was about my middle school history course in which our entire unit on the Vietnam War consisted of watching the awful film The Green Berets. There was no discussion before the film and none after. The point I hoped to make was that the discussion of accuracy and responsibility involves not just the films themselves but how they're used. There are some great teachers out there who could provocatively and effectively use even the most problematic of films in the classroom as part of a lesson plan incorporating primary sources and a lot of discussion. However, I fear that most people get just what I got: a lazy approach that uses film narratives as a substitute for real knowledge about historical subjects. And this is what has happened to our culture at large. Most people still never take a single college-level history course, and Hollywood films are arguably more influential of our notions about the past than any other source.
In my opinion, the problem with many of these films isn't inaccuracy per se, because a knowledgeable filmmaker can make use of some degree of artistic license to the benefit of the film and its ability not just to capture our imagination but also to say something interesting about the past. Rather the problem is that so many of these films are so poorly researched and betray not just ignorance but even a lack of concern about the actual people and events the films are assumed to portray. It's as though many filmmakers choose historical subjects merely to latch onto their appealing power to provide a special kind of escapism.

An exception to this is John Sayles, and I want to recommend to anyone interested in this topic his conversation with historian Eric Foner at the beginning of the book Past Imperfect. It's a lively and fascinating dialogue, and it's viewable in Google Books. Incidentally, I did have some reservations about Matewan, but I think it and Eight Men Out are in many ways outstanding historical films. A return to this type of project might be the way out of the rut Sayles seems to me to be stuck in with his last several films (though I haven't seen Honeydripper yet).

[MichaelB]

A good contemporary example would be the reactions from fundamentalist Christians against Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ", many of which would have never seen the film against which they were protesting

...as demonstrated by the fact that the protests started before the film even started shooting. In fact, before the aborted first version started shooting. If I remember rightly, a leaked script of the first version was the primary source for the protesters, and continued to be so even after the apparently quite heavily sanitised second version was shot and released.

If a dictatorial regime tries to bring its filmmakers 'into line' in a similar way, the results inevitably will be a loss of artistic quality in the long run, because art loses its individuality and originality. Think of the decline of Russian filmmaking under Stalin, or the endless array of mediocre comedies and melodramas in the latter half of the Hitler regime (though there are some exceptions here).

Two more excellent examples: the post-1968 crackdown on Czech cinema which not only killed off the New Wave but meant that hardly any really worthwhile features were produced for twenty years - those few half-decent ones (Jiri Menzel's Cutting It Short and Snowdrop Festival, for instance) generally suffering when compared with their 1960s predecessors. And the imposition of martial law in 1981 virtually killed off heavyweight Polish cinema for a decade - Kieslowski was just about the only filmmaker consistently producing outstanding work in Poland (Wajda, Polanski, Skolimowski, Zanussi and others generally worked abroad in the 1980s), and much of that was either banned (Blind Chance), restricted (No End) or made for television on minuscule budgets (Dekalog).

But in both those cases (and your Stalin example) there was a conscious decision to crack down on risk-taking work - but for a surprising amount of the time in Warsaw Pact countries, the authorities turned a blind eye to what was going on under their noses - or rather, if the filmmaker appeared to jump through the right hoops at the planning stage, that was fine.

On the subject of historical accuracy, it's worth noting that central and eastern European countries often have a very strong documentary tradition - Poland being an outstanding example. And I think this is partly because audiences had a craving for accuracy (given their limited diet when it came to popular mass media) that wasn't being fulfilled by feature films - which were perceived as being more likely to be open to manipulation. Of course, the documentaries could be just as contrived and propagandistic - but a surprising number at least got the basic facts right, even if they sometimes had to be shoehorned into ideological pigeonholes.

[Tommaso]

The point I hoped to make was that the discussion of accuracy and responsibility involves not just the films themselves but how they're used. There are some great teachers out there who could provocatively and effectively use even the most problematic of films in the classroom as part of a lesson plan incorporating primary sources and a lot of discussion.

A very significant point, but in order for that to happen, you would need a teacher who actually has more knowledge about a specific historical or political period than those who – to use your words – " use film narratives as a substitute for real knowledge about historical subjects." Of course for me that would be the first requirement for anyone who wants to teach, regardless about what subject, and I must say that in almost all classes I can remember this was actually the case. But these were literature classes, not film classes. On the other hand, according to my experience, if films were taught in literature classes, they were most often only used as a sort of visual illustration of a source text, with very little or no discussion of specific filmic means.

Most people still never take a single college-level history course, and Hollywood films are arguably more influential of our notions about the past than any other source.

Certainly true in many cases; I also often feel very uninformed about the historical period a specific film is set; and if I know anything about the history of Japan, for instance, this knowledge only comes from Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Naruse films; but I have no way to find out anything about their accuracy unless I indeed read a good book about the period. That's why I always clamour for a lot of extras and best of all, a knowledgeable audiocommentary; this way I at least have a chance to find out more about the backgrounds and about how far a director strayed away from accuracy (and sometimes there are better reasons to be 'inaccurate' than just providing easy entertainment). But I wonder how many people who casually buy, say, "Seven Samurai", would mole their way through the extras. The members of this forum are probably not really representative in this respect.

It's as though many filmmakers choose historical subjects merely to latch onto their appealing power to provide a special kind of escapism.

Absolutely. Can't help thinking of the wave of the so-called 'heritage films' in the 90s in this respect; I suppose Radmond's "Merchant" also somewhat falls into that category.

But in both those cases (and your Stalin example) there was a conscious decision to crack down on risk-taking work - but for a surprising amount of the time in Warsaw Pact countries, the authorities turned a blind eye to what was going on under their noses - or rather, if the filmmaker appeared to jump through the right hoops at the planning stage, that was fine.

Equally true for the Third Reich, at least in its early stages. I guess the situation changed when WW II started, but up to this point, there were at least a number of productions which contained some indirect hints at or seemed to make fun of the situation (Schünzel's "Amphytrion" is a good example), or which otherwise went against the grain of the official demands of Goebbels' ministry. It's hard to imagine that a fully-fledged, very 'American' screwball comedy like Paul Martin's "Glückskinder" (itself loosely based on "It happened one night") could have been made under the regime, but it was. Apparently Martin's "Capriccio" (1938) is even more irreverent, but I haven't seen that one.

On the other hand, later films like Harlan's "Kolberg" very purposefully changed historical facts in order to make a historic event useable for propaganda. I think it's basically those films which make up the so-called "Vorbehaltsfilme" today (i.e. those that cannot be shown publicly or only on those special occasions I mentioned earlier). Probably the German government thinks along the lines of what Gregory observes: they are afraid that people would believe that what they see was historical truth, basically. I'm far less pessimistic than Gregory in this respect, though: people who would want to sit through these films nowadays would do it most likely for study purposes (general history, film history, or simply the art of propaganda), and they would be able to detect the lies.

[Michael Kerpan]

Japan now allows the DVD release of at least some blatantly (historically-manipulated) propaganda films (not sure about screenings, but I assume so). Examples would be stuff like the Shanghai Marine Detachment and The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malay.

[knives]

A good point, though I find it terribly difficult to decide what Shakespeare intended in the case of "The Merchant of Venice". Even the attribution 'comedy' was probably made by the editors of the First Folio, and just remember that they also put plays like "The Tempest" and "The Winter's Tale" into that category. I have a similar problem with Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta", an apparently overtly antisemitic play. But reading it I couldn't help finding that the Christians in that play behave every way as bad as the title character. There's a similar ambiguity in the case of Harlan's "Jud Süß", at least from watching that justly infamous film from today's perspective. This ambiguity most likely wasn't intentional, but probably was even perceived by the audience of the time. Ferdinand Marian got baskets of love letters from young German girls after they saw him in that role.

Personally I think The Jew of Malta is much more blatantly anti-semitic then Merchant. For me, at least, a better point of comparison is The Taming of the Shrew. That play is terribly misogynistic and that reading of the play works because of the misogyny of his other plays and I suppose you could take in the accounts of the day even though I wouldn't completely trust that. The point kind of being that unless stated otherwise directly or indirectly by the creators if there's a great deal of ambiguity or complexity and not really ready to jump on the it's prejudiced play. In a way how I read the play is a bit like Robocop. It takes a pretty common story and tries to point out the faults in it. As for the comedies that work as dramas, they do have serious elements, but there is enough of an underlying sense of comedy that I'd give them.

[lubitsch]

Now I actually couldn't care less, because the artistic merit of Duvivier's film is so high that the ending doesn't really bring the whole film down, but I wonder whether in this case LESS textual accuracy wouldn't have been better, always assuming that textual and historical accuracy are at all comparable. But in my view, people who clamour for one also clamour for the other.

Don't think so. The unfortunate discussions about fidelity to the text mostly are made in order to bash film as the lower medium compared to literature. I think most of the posters here agree if we say that it's completely uninteresting if and how some artefact gets adapted in the same or another medium. What you have as a result, that's all that counts.
However with historical accuracy it's quite another thing and I think we all wouldn't be too happy if we accidentally became relevant figures of history and a work of art would paint a completely wrong picture of us. I just finished an article about the British sea war film and noticed the unpleasent way in which SINK THE BISMARCK carefully tried to eliminate every British fault and painted the historical Admiral Lütjens as a fanatical Nazi which he wasn't. I think every artist has a responsibility towards living and dead people and one should expect at least some fairness in the treatment of such matters.
In Griffith's case it doesn't matter if he was
a) a racist promoting racism
b) a business minded artist trying to exploit the market value of Dixon's racism
c) a naive man who created a controversy whose reasons he never understood
because in every case he was either ruthless or too dumb to act with responsibility which is equally criminal because every artist should at least have some grasp of basic matters regarding the time he lives in. And yes I'm very much in favor of criminal charges in case somebody turns facts on his head in order to besmirch people's names.

What if the Puritans were right, and art really is immoral, and we really would be better off without it?

You could argue that Riefenstahl or Eisenstein were just supporting what the systems they were living in said was 'good'. While I'd love to think that morals were fixed, they are at least to a degree constructed by those in power. That also goes for the Puritans, who might have been acting pretty immoral by modern standards (if I think of "The Scarlet Letter" for instance). So yes, the Puritans WERE right: art is and should be immoral. Once art submits to a political or other agenda, it necessarily becomes 'moral', i.e. it supports a specific mindset about what is good and what is evil. That doesn't mean 'moral' art is necessarily bad, but while each of us certainly and necessarily has a belief in moral standards (however you define them), it is not art's task to reinforce them in my view. If it has a task apart from giving us delight, it is rather to make us question our views and perhaps define them better for ourselves. Thus, films like Griffith's or Riefenstahl's are perhaps even more interesting today than they were in their own times, questions of aesthetics or inventiveness aside.

I somehow have the suspicion that you're writing this text from Germany enjoying the last sunny days, plan to go out with your friend or something like that. Assuming that I don't really understand the point of "art is and should be immoral". It always sounds great and daring and I know some people loving late Godard or Pasolini, admiring the predicted decline of the corrupt bourgeois society, but boy, would they scream if their monthly paycheck from the university would arrive a week later.
The most profound examples of art tend to portray humanity in their weaknesses and strenghts and let us watch them in order to understand better and judge not too hasty. This includes subverting all too narrow moral views of which the centuries have seen go down many until we arrived at where we stand now and it's not such a bad situation compared to some of the times gone. So while art should certainly rally against narrow attitudes, there's no point in admiring works of art which revel in their own amorality or self-importance. Therefore I doubt that BOAN and TRIUMPH are in any way interesting today because they simply are so weird and obviously wrong to modern audiences. Their formal brilliance is also mostly limited to a few scenes or shots, so there's few to hold an audience's interest.

A point that disturbs me in dealing with historical matters is that these times which are in some ways very far away from today's times are treated as if most things aren't that different. Instead of insisting on the foreignness and strangeness of a time, you usually are connected with it by different means like e.g. the attempt by Hollywood to deal with everything antique after Christ in presenting us some nice chaps who are Christians or influenced by Christianity and therefore could just as well live in our neighborhood today. So I think there's very much to gain in historical accuracy because it markes the differences to our times more clearly.

On the other hand, later films like Harlan's "Kolberg" very purposefully changed historical facts in order to make a historic event useable for propaganda. I think it's basically those films which make up the so-called "Vorbehaltsfilme" today (i.e. those that cannot be shown publicly or only on those special occasions I mentioned earlier). Probably the German government thinks along the lines of what Gregory observes: they are afraid that people would believe that what they see was historical truth, basically. I'm far less pessimistic than Gregory in this respect, though: people who would want to sit through these films nowadays would do it most likely for study purposes (general history, film history, or simply the art of propaganda), and they would be able to detect the lies.

That's most certainly so. It gets even more weird if you consider some of the films which are not banned like TITANIC, EIN ROBINSON or BISMARCK but which are aggessively propagandistic, BISMARCK being a viciously anti-democratic piece of trash. Some of the banned films are far more harmless or their propaganda and prejudices don't go deeper than the nasty treatment of blacks as dumb, stuttering and cowardish children. So either you ban on full scale level and hit a good part of the production from other countries or you focus on the few truly evil films, DER EWIGE JUDE being the "crowning" achievement.

[knives]

However with historical accuracy it's quite another thing and I think we all wouldn't be too happy if we accidentally became relevant figures of history and a work of art would paint a completely wrong picture of us. I just finished an article about the British sea war film and noticed the unpleasent way in which SINK THE BISMARCK carefully tried to eliminate every British fault and painted the historical Admiral Lütjens as a fanatical Nazi which he wasn't.

So you didn't like the end of IB.

[lubitsch]

So you didn't like the end of IB.

There's no second of Tarantino's work which would strike me as even watchable not to say likeable. How people think that a stylish recycler of trash movies could produce anything more than trash will always elude me.
I don't particularily mind political fantasy's (that's how Bordwell defends the film on his blog and I've lost a good quarter of the respect I held for this man) but the Third Reich is no adventureland for directors with a rather juvenile mind.

[Sloper]

Gregory, you make a very good point about the need for good teaching, and I blame my own woeful ignorance of history on the lousy teachers I had at school. At A-level, learning about Nazi foreign policy consisted of listening to the teacher read Ian Kershaw’s Hitler biography out loud for forty minutes, in a low monotone. Another teacher, conversely, was able to use an episode of Blackadder very effectively to teach us about rotten boroughs (aka robber buttons) or WW1 fighter pilots.

I don't know much about Griffith as a person, but I was unwilling to ascribe active support of racism to the man who made "Intolerance" and "Broken Blossoms" not too much later. But I may be wrong there, of course.

Griffith sounds absolutely lovely as a person, much nicer than most film directors; those who worked with him generally seem to have only good things to say, including the black actress Madame Sul-Te-Wan. And indeed the sympathetic portrayal of the Chinese (compared to barbaric whites) can be seen in one of the Biograph shorts, though the title escapes me.

However, I think when it comes to the portrayal of black people, Griffith’s attitude is pretty much determined by his background as a Southerner. He wouldn’t have thought of himself as anti-black, and indeed most of the black characters even in The Birth are heroic at best and comical at worst (the exception is Gus, who in the film seems not to mean any harm; it sounds like Dixon’s novel made him more of a villain). The racism consists in the view that blacks are inherently inferior to whites, and should be kept in slavery, if they must be kept in America at all. That’s probably an over-simplification, but it seems to be the message of the film – hence the real villains are the mixed-race characters, who represent the consequences of two races mixing as equals.

The apparent benevolence of Griffith’s approach is what makes it really insidious, because in his mind it may not have occurred to him that he was displaying or advocating hostility towards a whole race. At least that’s one way of looking at it – as I said before, you could also argue Griffith was more conscious of what he was doing. I guess the truth may be somewhere in between. He was going out on a limb making this epic feature – it was a brave attempt to prove several things about the medium and about himself, and he probably wanted to do whatever he could to ensure its notoriety and success.

In Griffith's case it doesn't matter if he was
a) a racist promoting racism
b) a business minded artist trying to exploit the market value of Dixon's racism
c) a naive man who created a controversy whose reasons he never understood
because in every case he was either ruthless or too dumb to act with responsibility which is equally criminal because every artist should at least have some grasp of basic matters regarding the time he lives in.

I’ve heard that the view on history in The Birth is actually consonant with the general line on these things among contemporary historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction period. I can’t really back that up because I haven’t read the books, but it was important to Griffith to try and tell the South’s story truly – at least, in accordance with his and his time’s perception of the truth.

Having said that, Thomas Dixon saw himself as a man on a mission to correct certain misconceptions about Reconstruction, slavery and so on – so perhaps even at the time there was an element of deliberate revisionism to the whole thing as well. The NAACP certainly thought so, as of course do modern historians. There must be someone around here who can comment more intelligently on this, but my point is that Griffith probably had a pretty good ‘grasp of basic matters regarding the time he lived in’, by the prevailing standards of his time.

So while art should certainly rally against narrow attitudes, there's no point in admiring works of art which revel in their own amorality or self-importance.

If you’re referring to The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will, then I think you’ve misunderstood the terms of the discussion. I don’t know very much about Riefenstahl, but her film is certainly not ‘revelling in amorality’. And The Birth is heavily, and I think sincerely, moralistic. You and I would regard it as immoral, but at the time and for a long time afterwards I should think it was regarded by most spectators as a work of great moral value. That was an essential part of Griffith’s project to legitimate the cinema as a form of entertainment acceptable to the ‘sophisticated’ middle classes, and dispel its reputation as lewd and immoral sensationalism (which is how films like the formally brilliant Traffic in Souls were regarded). Not sure how ‘self-importance’ comes into it.

Therefore I doubt that BOAN and TRIUMPH are in any way interesting today because they simply are so weird and obviously wrong to modern audiences. Their formal brilliance is also mostly limited to a few scenes or shots, so there's few to hold an audience's interest.

I didn’t like or enjoy either of these films when, as a teenager, I saw them for the first time. However, I was just about intelligent enough not to write them off. Condemn them on moral grounds, by all means. But to dismiss the formal brilliance of The Birth so summarily, and to declare that it has nothing to say to us today, amounts to a display of wanton ignorance, not ballsy iconoclasm.

---

I have a similar problem with Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta", an apparently overtly antisemitic play. But reading it I couldn't help finding that the Christians in that play behave every way as bad as the title character.

Personally I think The Jew of Malta is much more blatantly anti-semitic then Merchant.

I used to feel much the same way as you, Tommaso – yes, Marlowe’s play is clearly anti-semitic, but then again it’s anti-everything. Christians, Jews, Muslims, all come out badly, and the only good character (Barabas’ daughter) comes to a grotesquely comic sticky end; even her conversion to Christianity is subjected to parody. Crucially, the Jew and the Muslim are portrayed as essentially comic characters, whereas the Christians seem to come in for more earnest moral condemnation. Of course this is another form of prejudice at work – anti-Catholicism – but even in this respect the play seems less earnest than the anti-Catholic sentiments you find in, say, Webster or Spenser. I’d have difficulty seeing Marlowe as being seriously interested in dispensing any real moral message, even in a play like Doctor Faustus. He seems, as lubitsch might say, to revel in his own amorality, and to exemplify the kind of art you seem to be talking about, Tommaso – he simply explores and challenges, without trying to inform. There’s something very pure, unfettered and unashamed about his writing.

I moved away from this way of thinking when I studied the plays in more depth, and Marlowe started to seem more and more conventional. I hope to go back to them some day and recover that initial sense of Marlowe’s ‘fuck you’ attitude to the rest of the world (not unlike Lars von Trier!).

One thing that could be said about the difference between The Jew and The Merchant is that the former begins by showing the Jew being persecuted by the grasping, hypocritical Christians, whereas in Shakespeare this maltreatment is merely referred to, by the self-pitying Shylock. Ironically, then, Radford might not have had to make such an effort to satisfy the demands of political correctness if he’d adapted Marlowe instead... I’ve never seen it on stage, but I expect most productions of The Jew bring out this aspect of the story: it could easily be seen as a play about the awful logic of prejudice, persecution, terrorism, etc.

The Shakespeare play is one of my least favourites. There are great moments but so much of it feels twee and smug, and after Shylock leaves it seems to go on forever. I do think that Shylock is the villain – but Shakespeare wrote three-dimensional characters like nobody else ever could, so that, like Malvolio, Iago, Angelo and so on, Shylock is no mere caricature. Still, layered characterisation doesn’t get Shakespeare of the anti-semitic ‘hook’.

[knives]

That's an interesting look at things, and I can see where you're coming from and even agree, but, and maybe this is because I enjoy my reading of Merchant so much, but I can't imagine Merchant as purely Anti-Semitic. To go with your Von Trier analogy, I see Shakespeare as Veronhooven.

[Tommaso]

I think most of the posters here agree if we say that it's completely uninteresting if and how some artefact gets adapted in the same or another medium. What you have as a result, that's all that counts.

I couldn't agree more. But I cannot agree with your take on Griffith:

because in every case he was either ruthless or too dumb to act with responsibility which is equally criminal because every artist should at least have some grasp of basic matters regarding the time he lives in.

The equation of dumbness and crime is what disturbs me a bit here. You could say that an artist who is too dumb to act responsibly might in the end not be called an artist anymore (depending on how you define art), but if you want to criminalize every person who doesn't understand basic matters of his or her time.... boy, half of Germany's population should be put into jail then, as you'll see next Sunday
Seriously, who defines our approach to 'basic matters'? I tried to give a somewhat oblique answer to that when I wrote earlier that I believe that morals are at least partly defined by the society you live in, and not – as would be ideal – by a general, inborn 'ethicism' and understanding of humanity's 'togetherness'. In other words, morality in practice is changing with the times; I do not deny that I believe in a deeper, more general morality and compassion; but I have no way to prove it really exists as an 'essential' truth, and I'm just not enough of a devout Christian (or Buddhist, or Muslim, or...) to consider my point of view as unassailable. Even if my view of moral behaviour more or less seems to be shared by the UN or Amnesty International.

Assuming that I don't really understand the point of "art is and should be immoral". It always sounds great and daring and I know some people loving late Godard or Pasolini, admiring the predicted decline of the corrupt bourgeois society, but boy, would they scream if their monthly paycheck from the university would arrive a week later.

Okay, I try to make myself clearer than before, and will also ignore the bits about the sunny weather and the paycheck, because this is a question that really intrigues me. To repeat what I wrote from the bit you quoted: "Once art submits to a political or other agenda, it necessarily becomes 'moral', i.e. it supports a specific mindset about what is good and what is evil." Pasolini is one of the most moral artists I can think of, if my definition makes any sense. The man clearly had a moral agenda, not necessarily political in a narrow sense, but that is beside the point here. But his moral agenda is so interesting not least because it was directed against what he perceived were the accepted standards or realities of his time (and by extension, our time as well). Thus his films, to quote myself again, "make us question our views and perhaps define them better for ourselves." Pasolini is one of those rare artists in which a clear agenda actually adds to the intrinsic value of his films, or better: it makes him one of the outstanding artists, in a league in this respect with Kurosawa, Dreyer, Tarkovsky (though he's not fully in their league on a purely aesthetic/artistic level); but only because he was in opposition to a for him immoral world, and because of the originality of what he was believing in. It's no wonder that many people regarded him as 'immoral'; I can't remember how often he was brought to court for what he wrote, said, and did. And when I wrote "art is and should be immoral", I meant it precisely in the sense of at least following what you yourself believe what is true, not what those in power say you should think is right (taking up Sloper's original example of the Puritans). If there's no difference between what you think and what the ruling majority thinks, all the easier, but not necessarily better. But at least you should retain the freedom to become 'immoral' if necessary.

The most profound examples of art tend to portray humanity in their weaknesses and strenghts and let us watch them in order to understand better and judge not too hasty.

I don't disagree with that at all. But on the other hand I wouldn't draw the conclusion that, for example, "Solaris" is a more valuable film as a film than "The Gay Divorcee". Both are perfect works of art, one profound, the other light-hearted entertainment from the dream factory; but both are among the peaks of their respective genres or 'attitudes'.

Therefore I doubt that BOAN and TRIUMPH are in any way interesting today because they simply are so weird and obviously wrong to modern audiences. Their formal brilliance is also mostly limited to a few scenes or shots, so there's few to hold an audience's interest.

That's why I wrote that only people with a special historical or some such interest will be willing to sit through 'Kolberg' and other 'Vorbehaltsfilme', of which "Triumph" is one, of course. Those 25 minutes near the end with the nazis marching through Nuremberg are among the most boring I can think of in a film that is so often the topic of discussion. Regardless of the content of "Triumph", that sequence is a serious aesthetic/formal flaw in the film. I find "Birth of a Nation" much more engaging in simple narrative terms, though.

That's most certainly so. It gets even more weird if you consider some of the films which are not banned like TITANIC, EIN ROBINSON or BISMARCK but which are aggessively propagandistic, BISMARCK being a viciously anti-democratic piece of trash. Some of the banned films are far more harmless or their propaganda and prejudices don't go deeper than the nasty treatment of blacks as dumb, stuttering and cowardish children. So either you ban on full scale level and hit a good part of the production from other countries or you focus on the few truly evil films, DER EWIGE JUDE being the "crowning" achievement.

I agree, though I haven't seen "Bismarck" yet and only know excerpts from "Der ewige Jude". The decision on what to ban, as I said, seems to be basically made around misrepresenting historical facts, overt racism (specifically antisemitism) or direct propaganda for the nazi party (as opposed to propaganda for 'Germany' in a more general sense); I'm thinking of "Ohm Krüger", "Jud Süß" and "Hitlerjunge Quex" as the best known examples for each of these categories. Not wanting to defend "Ein Robinson", but to throw in a word of fairness for the good Doktor Fanck: he insisted that his name was taken off the credits after the film was changed into a blatant propaganda piece by the authories (at least that's what he says).

How people think that a stylish recycler of trash movies could produce anything more than trash will always elude me.

Aha. "El Topo" as a stylish recycle of Italo westerns (certainly regarded as trash by many people at the time) isn't anything more than trash? Seriously, I'm a bit baffled by such generalized statements, even if I also don't like Tarantino much (and haven't seen IB).

The apparent benevolence of Griffith’s approach is what makes it really insidious, because in his mind it may not have occurred to him that he was displaying or advocating hostility towards a whole race. At least that’s one way of looking at it – as I said before, you could also argue Griffith was more conscious of what he was doing. I guess the truth may be somewhere in between. He was going out on a limb making this epic feature – it was a brave attempt to prove several things about the medium and about himself, and he probably wanted to do whatever he could to ensure its notoriety and success.

I more or less share this view, perhaps leaning more to the side that it did not occur to him what he was actually doing. Dumbness, then, but as you point out, one that becomes comprehensible by the circumstances and the historical setting/perception in which he lived or with which he identified. That doesn't make it any better, but instead of voicing only indignation I find it important to try to understand why he made the film the way it is now. I don't know about the view of history at the time, but if you say the film is " in accordance with his and his time’s perception of the truth", that explains a lot.

Marlowe’s play is clearly anti-semitic, but then again it’s anti-everything. Christians, Jews, Muslims, all come out badly [...] He seems, as lubitsch might say, to revel in his own amorality, and to exemplify the kind of art you seem to be talking about, Tommaso – he simply explores and challenges, without trying to inform. There’s something very pure, unfettered and unashamed about his writing. I moved away from this way of thinking when I studied the plays in more depth, and Marlowe started to seem more and more conventional. I hope to go back to them some day and recover that initial sense of Marlowe’s ‘fuck you’ attitude to the rest of the world (not unlike Lars von Trier!).

Comparing Marlowe to von Trier would never have occured to me, but I can't help thinking you have a point there, though I think that von Trier, despite of his public persona or even his real-life character, might be much more serious and unsettling in his art than Marlowe ever was. Exploring and challenging without informing seems to me a very good definition of what I wanted to say with "immoral". Let people think for themselves, provoke them to think; and I don't mean procovation for provocation's sake (which is indeed silly, and which I sometimes also think is the case in Marlowe).