The French Revolution on Film: American and French Perspectives.

Abstract

IT IS NOT HARD TO LOCATE negative or condescending images of the French Revolution in aspects of popular American culture, including film. Despite a handful of instances where nuanced or ambiguous "messages" may be identified, the number of American film interpretations of the French Revolution that might be judged historically "valid" is miniscule. Over the years, directors and producers in the movie industry have shown little inclination to explore in much depth the complex historical issues posed by the Revolution or to offer a genuinely balanced "take" on the events. Instead the work of film-makers, like most popular American assessments of the events of 1789-1794, has tended to conflate the entirety of the Revolution with the Terror of 1793-1794. Scholars from Europe and North America have long been fascinated by the intellectual and research vistas opened up by the events of the French Revolution, but the approach of American movie makers to this period, with one or two exceptions, has been mostly one-dimensional. The discomfort with which Americans have viewed the French Revolution will not come as a surprise to historians. Yet in a number of ways this attitude is difficult to explain, since from an historical perspective the American and French Revolutions and the republics that emerged from them were, in the opinion of many scholars, "sister" events.' The affini-