Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision

But chosing five mainstream feature films, Davis has allowed the average reader into the rather closed world of film criticism and historical analysis. A historian herself, Davis applies performance theory to examining how feature films do and can be an educational vehicle for history. Five films are examined: Spartacus, Burn!, The Last Supper, Amistad, and Beloved. The last four all deal with slavery in the "new world" of the Americas. Davis points out incidents where historical fact has been replaced with fiction, where events have taken on a modern twist, and how film-making has hindered or aided in connecting the past to the modern audience. None of the five films are perfect but Davis feels they are good overall because their goals are all to make the audience feel what the slaves or freed felt so that we can form a better understanding of a social institution that currently is frowned upon in most of the developed world. It would have been better if she spent more time on the history of the period and events each movie covered but for an early attempt at using performance theory in history, it is an excellent start.