Free Historical Movies

[Osman Briseno]

Inthe 1930s, film developed color, and would never be the same again. Now, I wonder if some film genres are unconsciously reverting back to black and white. The trend is most visible in historical films, in which the past is increasingly (and incorrectly) portrayed as dark and monochrome.

It will surprise few people to know that the wealthy and powerful have always shown off their status with a wide range of colors. Exotic colors were particularly representative of status. In the ancient mediterranean, for example, purple dye came primarily from the murex, a maritime mollusk. The ancient Phoenicians caught and killed literally millions of the creatures to create their signature dye, Tyrian purple. That expensive dye would become the color of nobility for centuries. Most colors, however, were far easier to replicate than purple, and were within the reach of even the poorest classes of society.

For the majority of the population, dyes would have come from far more mundane sources. Most color came from common plants, such as woad (blues), madder (red) and weld (yellow). Each plant required a different method for treating and dyeing, but they all produced vivid colors. Skilled dyers could combine ingredients to produce a wide variety of effects.

The importance of these dye-production plants is hard to overstate. Woad, for example, was used throughout western Europe for thousands of years until the 1600s, when imported indigo largely replaced woad as the source of blue dye. While historical evidence is sparse, most historians believe that the majority of garments, even those worn by slaves and peasants, would have had some kind of color treatment, either by dying or bleaching (which created a pure white).

Even untreated clothes were not as colorless as one might assume. Most clothes in premodern Europe were wool, and woolen clothes take on the color of the sheep they were taken from. Therefore, untreated clothes would have been a fairly broad range of white, grey, and brown.

The idea makes intuitive sense. The purpose of facial dye, particularly in battle, is to create an unearthly and terrifying effect. Since most Celts had fairly pale skin, turning that skin into a slightly different color of grey creates little contrast. The men depicted above would have been far more intimidating if they used non-human colors like blue.

Why do filmmakers feel the need to suck away all the rich colors of history? Perhaps part of it lies in our modern obsession with portraying all pre-modern history as grim and lifeless. That would explain why certain historical periods, such as early 19th century Britain (think Pride and Prejudice and other period dramas) are spared this color castration. When people think of Regency Britain, they have a far more positive and lively impression than when they think of, say, Roman Britain.

Perhaps it also has something to do with the fact that the only things to have been preserved from distant history (castle ruins, armor, weapons, etc.) are mostly grey and colorless, while the vibrant clothing, art, and decorations from the classical and medieval worlds have long since vanished. Statues are a microcosm of the issue. Classical statues used to be brightly painted, but over time, the paint faded away, leaving us with the grey stone. Today, many people mistakenly believe that ancient statues were built to be colorless.

Historical films are eternally popular and filmed entertainments depicting the lives and intrigues of the English Tudor Dynasty are some of the most celebrated. One of the first movies ever made was The Execution of Mary Stuart, in 1895, while a decade later Sarah Bernhardt starred in Elizabeth I (1912). By the time sound came in at the start of the 1930s, already at least a dozen Tudor themed historical films had been released.

So, historical films reflect the issues and concerns of the time in which they were produced, and they use history to do this. But they also engage with the historical record, and it is interesting to notice where and when they leave truth far behind. It is always worthwhile to ask yourself how the presentation of characters and incidents in films colour our perception of the real-life people and events. Separating fact from fiction is an exciting process, as you discover that, in the end the truth is (almost) always more fascinating than the fiction.

Back to the sepia tone, though. This is actually a very popular palette for historical media. In the UK, for example, all signs for historical places are brown (technically all tourist signs are brown, but that might undermine my argument somewhat, so please ignore it).

My theory is that this is inspired by archaeology. Bones, mud, and terracotta are all part of the sepia spectrum. Add in elements like wood, leather and parchment, and our lazy assumption is that the past must have been a browner time. Forget seeing things through rose-tinted spectacles, our view of the past is plain muddy.

In most classrooms, the students doing the talking are the students doing the learning, however post-pandemic, I have struggled to facilitate decent academic conversations in my classes. Too many students do not want to take chances on original ideas in front of their peers. Presentations are dreadful and small group discussions trail off, wither, and die before including any academic content. This trifecta of an EduProtocol smash built student confidence in applying historical knowledge within an academic framework. The requirement of creating consensus within a small group was the secret sauce or pice de rsistance that kept the conversations going.

It is important to teach students that it is okay to hold deep, contradictory, and complex thoughts in their heads. Real life is seldom black and white. Rewarding conversations teach us to appreciate the many shades of gray involved in historical interpretation. These three students each viewed Alfred differently. Despite this, they were each able to provide evidence and a line of reasoning to support their claim.

There has been heated debate about how to teach racism and social justice in schools. Part of this rhetoric centers on whether or not white teachers can effectively teach racism and social justice since they have been the beneficiaries of privilege and members of the dominant American culture for hundreds of years.

I feel that it is the job of a History teacher to inspire curiosity. To do this I pair film and literature in my high school History classes and then let my students create inquiry projects that demonstrate their learning. There are too many facts, figures, events, and readings and too little time to teach civil rights history comprehensively, but good teachers help students make connections between different historical periods and contemplate the type of society they wish to create and participate in.

Every film begins with an idea. Shortly after Laurel Ulrich's book A Midwife's Tale was published, I (producer/writer Laurie Kahn-Leavitt) read a review of the book, bought a copy, loved it, and called up rights division of Knopf, the publisher, to inquire about optioning the film rights. They told me to speak with Laurel, the author of the book, which I did. And the two of us clicked. From the very beginning, I had the idea of interweaving the story of Martha Ballard's life with Laurel Ulrich's process of piecing it together. The film I imagined would begin as a documentary (with the twentieth century historian and the eighteenth century diary) and evolve into a drama as Ulrich gradually figured out what happened in Martha Ballard's world.

It is the job of a film's producer to raise the funding for the film. In this case, it took six years from conception to completion (many films do not take this long -- although some take longer). I raised the initial funding from state humanities councils in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, from Tom's of Maine (the toothpaste people), and from several small private foundations. Scripting and production grants came several years later from the public program division of the National Endowment for the Humanities. And the final piece of production funding came from The American Experience, the PBS prime time series on American History.

The past is a foreign place, and a film's portrayal of the past depends upon thousands of choices about the physical, behavioral, and cultural details of the period and place being presented. Being authentic or truthful about the past involves much more than getting the costumes and the architectural details right. Shortly after beginning the project, I put together a board of advisors who are expert on the eighteenth century: on women's history, architectural history, medical history, music, and material culture. With their guidance, I plunged into the research. I visited the buildings which are still standing which were part of Martha's world. I visited archives all over Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire and put together a database of thousands of images from the eighteenth century, including handwritten documents, paintings, maps, medical book illustrations, children's book illustrations, newspapers, broadsides, photos of buildings, and the artifacts of everyday life. I found out what had been written about dialects and music and religious beliefs two hundred years ago. I learned as much as I could about the everyday work done by men and women in eighteenth century Hallowell, Maine: textile production, laundry, cooking, farming, surveying, etc. I put together a timeline of Martha Ballard's life and the national and international events that affected her family and her town. And I also spent time talking with Laurel Ulrich about her process of piecing together Martha's life.

Filmmaking is storytelling, and the principles of story structure apply. Like plays or novels, films have protagonists and antagonists, conflicts, turning points, climaxes, and resolutions. In most films, there is a three-act structure at work. In the case of A Midwife's Tale, I had to interweave two stories: the story of Laurel Ulrich piecing together Martha Ballard's life and the story of Martha Ballard's life itself. To get a handle on each of these stories, I made color coded index cards with scenes I was considering including in the film. Martha's scenes were coded with red. Laurel's scenes were coded with blue. Spreading out the cards on my living room floor, I experimented with different ways to structure the double story. And I began to work out the seasonal cycle metaphor of the film. When I finally worked out something I liked, I drew it up as a story structure graph, with two intersecting story arcs. Laurel's arc (in blue) is dominant at the beginning of the film, and Martha's arc (in red) takes over at the point where the two women connect emotionally in the epidemic scene (the climax of Act I).

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