Films and Written Words

Student name: Lo Ka Fai

Student ID : 3035066182

CCHU9003 – Making history: Engaging with the powerful past

Professor: Dr. David M. Pomfret

Topic: What is the relationship between film and history? Can film help us to understand the past better than the written word? Illustrate with reference to your own 'history film' (or storyboard),and explain how it treats primary and secondary materials.

Introduction

Nowadays, there has been much controversy on whether film or written word can help people to represent the past. Some people believe that the historical films can represent the past realistically. While others argue that the past illustrated by the books is much more accurate. There is probably some truth in both sides.

The objective of this essay is to find out whether historical films or books can help us to understand the past better. My standpoint on this topic is that historical movies can help people to understand the past better than the written word.

Firstly, in order to make the discussion clearly, we need to define some of the important key words in this topic, such as “historical film”, “historical book” and “understand the past”. Secondly, we will look into the relationship between film and history, mainly focus on how historical films let people learn more about the past. Thirdly, Comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of the history represented by the books and movies would be done. Then, sharing of the people’s point of views about history films and history books, and argument on their statement would be made. There are totally two main arguments. The first one is “Historical film is a more entertaining way than written words to let the people understand the past”. The second one, “Movie can do better in providing a verisimilar picture of the history than the historical book”. And the last one, “Historical accuracy problem does not only exist in movies, but also in books. Lastly, we will compare all of the factors monitored, and...