Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen
Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen

Author: Gregory S. Aldrete

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-05-15

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 153815952X

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An unparalleled exploration of films set in Ancient Rome, from the silent Cleopatra to the modern rendition of Ben-Hur. No sooner had the dazzling new technology of cinema been invented near the end of the 19th century than filmmakers immediately turned to ancient history for inspiration. Nero, Cleopatra, Caesar, and more all found their way to the silver screen and would return again and again in the decades that followed. But just how accurate were these depictions of Ancient Rome? In Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen: Myth versus Reality, Gregory S. Aldrete and Graham Sumner provide a fascinating examination of 50 films set in Ancient Rome, analyzing each for its historical accuracy of plot, characters, costumes and sets. They also divulge insights into the process of making each movie and the challenges the filmmakers faced in bringing the Roman world to vivid cinematic life. Beginning with the classics from the dawn of cinema, through the great golden age of sword-and-sandals flicks in the 1950s, to the dramatic epics of the modern day, Aldrete and Sumner test the authenticity of Hollywood’s version of history. Featuring remarkable custom-made paintings depicting characters as they appeared in film and how they should have appeared if they were historically correct, Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen delivers an invaluable perspective of film and history. This unique collaboration between professional illustrator and award-winning Roman historian offers a deeper understanding of modern cinema and brings Roman history to life.

Projecting the Past
Projecting the Past

Author: Maria Wyke

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1317796071

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Brought vividly to life on screen, the myth of ancient Rome resonates through modern popular culture. Projecting the Past examines how the cinematic traditions of Hollywood and Italy have resurrected ancient Rome to address the concerns of the present. The book engages contemporary debates about the nature of the classical tradition, definitions of history, and the place of the past in historical film.

Classics on Screen
Classics on Screen

Author: Alastair J. L. Blanshard

Publisher: Bristol Classical Press

Published: 2011-12-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780715637241

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Cinema loves Greece and Rome. Hollywood epics, animated movies, avant-garde features - all have turned to classical antiquity for inspiration. On the silver screen, we see a world of virtuous Christians, depraved pagans, gladiators, charioteers, Spartan warriors, and muscle-bound demigods - a potent mix of sex, violence and art. So pervasive are these images that this cinematic output dominates the public understanding of the ancient world. Through analysis of ten influential films, this book examines the representation of Greece and Rome in both popular and art-house cinema, arranged by cinematic genre. Key scenes are discussed and each film is located in its historical context.

Big Screen Rome
Big Screen Rome

Author: Monica Silveira Cyrino

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2009-02-09

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1405150327

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Big Screen Rome is the first systematic survey of the most important and popular films from the past half century that reconstruct the image of Roman antiquity. The first systematic survey of the most important and popular recent films about Roman antiquity. Shows how cinema explores, reinvents and celebrates the spectacle of ancient Rome. Films discussed in depth include Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Terry Jones’s Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Contributes to discussions about the ongoing relevance of the classical world. Shows how contemporary film-makers use recreations of ancient history as commentaries on contemporary society. Structured in a way that makes it suitable for course use, and features issues for discussion and analysis, and reference to further bibliographic resources. Written in an energetic and engaging style.

Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film
Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-12-18

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 9004686827

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Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film is the first volume exclusively dedicated to the study of a theme that informs virtually every reimagining of the classical world on the big screen: armed conflict. Through a vast array of case studies, from the silent era to recent years, the collection traces cinema’s enduring fascination with battles and violence in antiquity and explores the reasons, both synchronic and diachronic, for the central place that war occupies in celluloid Greece and Rome. Situating films in their artistic, economic, and sociopolitical context, the essays cast light on the industrial mechanisms through which the ancient battlefield is refashioned in cinema and investigate why the medium adopts a revisionist approach to textual and visual sources.

From Silver Screen to Spanish Stage
From Silver Screen to Spanish Stage

Author: Stuart Nishan Green

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2011-05-31

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0708323448

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This is the first book-length English-language study of a group of five artists closely linked with the Spanish avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s, now known as the 'Other' Generation of 27. In the same way that their contemporaries of the celebrated Generation of 27 (which included Federico Garcia Lorca) attempted a revolution of the arts through poetry inspired by European modernism, the 'Other' Generation of 27 attempted to renovate Spanish humour, first in prose, and then in the theatre and cinema. This book demonstrates how these humorists drew on the humour of Chaplin, Keaton, Lubitsch and the Marx Brothers for their stage comedy, and how they stretched the limits of the stage at the time by incorporating cinematic techniques, such as flashback, voice-overs and montage, in their search for new dramatic forms.

Savior on the Silver Screen
Savior on the Silver Screen

Author: Richard C. Stern

Publisher: Paulist Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780809138555

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Savior on the Silver Screen examines nine movies about the life of Jesus - ranging from the traditional to the provocativeand explores how the image of Jesus in each reflects the time and culture in which the film was produced. The selections encompass silent, foreign, epic, and musical films. Both entertaining and insightful, Savior on the Silver Screen is structured for easy use in classroom, small group, and individual settings and includes rental information and practical tips for using the book. For each film there is an introduction, pre-viewing and post-viewing questions, and a discussion of its major features. -- Provided by publisher.

Imagining Ancient Cities in Film
Imagining Ancient Cities in Film

Author: Marta Garcia Morcillo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-02-11

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1135013179

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In film imagery, urban spaces show up not only as spatial settings of a story, but also as projected ideas and forms that aim to recreate and capture the spirit of cultures, societies and epochs. Some cinematic cities have even managed to transcend fiction to become part of modern collective memory. Can we imagine a futuristic city not inspired at least remotely by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis? In the same way, ancient Babylon, Troy and Rome can hardly be shaped in popular imagination without conscious or subconscious references to the striking visions of Griffiths’ Intolerance, Petersen’s Troy and Scott’s Gladiator, to mention only a few influential examples. Imagining Ancient Cities in Film explores for the first time in scholarship film representations of cities of the Ancient World from early cinema to the 21st century. The volume analyzes the different choices made by filmmakers, art designers and screen writers to recreate ancient urban spaces as more or less convincing settings of mythical and historical events. In looking behind and beyond intended archaeological accuracy, symbolic fantasy, primitivism, exoticism and Hollywood-esque monumentality, this volume pays particular attention to the depiction of cities as faces of ancient civilizations, but also as containers of moral ideas and cultural fashions deeply rooted in the contemporary zeitgeist and in continuously revisited traditions.

An Amorous History of the Silver Screen
An Amorous History of the Silver Screen

Author: Zhang Zhen

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 0226982386

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Shanghai in the early twentieth century was alive with art and culture. With the proliferation of popular genres such as the martial arts film, the contest among various modernist filmmakers, and the advent of sound, Chinese cinema was transforming urban life. But with the Japanese invasion in 1937, all of this came to a screeching halt. Until recently, the political establishment has discouraged comprehensive studies of the cultural phenomenon of early Chinese film, and this momentous chapter in China's history has remained largely unexamined. The first sustained historical study of the emergence of cinema in China, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen is a fascinating narrative that illustrates the immense cultural significance of film and its power as a vehicle for social change. Named after a major feature film on the making of Chinese cinema, only part of which survives, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen reveals the intricacies of this cultural movement and explores its connections to other art forms such as photography, architecture, drama, and literature. In light of original archival research, Zhang Zhen examines previously unstudied films and expands the important discussion of how they modeled modern social structures and gender roles in early twentieth-century China. The first volume in the new and groundbreaking series Cinema and Modernity, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen is an innovative—and well illustrated—look at the cultural history of Chinese modernity through the lens of this seminal moment in Shanghai cinema.

Silver Screen to Digital
Silver Screen to Digital

Author: Carlo Montanaro

Publisher: John Libbey Publishing

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0861969685

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An era has ended. After one hundred and twenty-five years, a change has taken place in cinemas. The thousands of figures formed by silver and coloured pigments can no longer be viewed through transparent film, instead, everything has become digital, compressed, virtual and built into the rapid alternation of millions (hopefully, for quality's sake) of dots, or pixels within a very neat and minuscule grid. But projection is just the last link in a chain that is transforming the most direct language invented by humanity over the centuries. The other links – shooting, editing, special effects, re-elaboration and sound reproduction – have by now undergone radical transformations that have often signified progress. Perhaps, it is worth the trouble, then, having accepted this transformation-revolution once and for all, to understand where we started out from, how cinematographic language was born and how its grammar first and later its syntax evolved thanks to technological development. Without lightweight equipment for sound recording, sensitive emulsions, portable and compact lighting, it would not have been possible, at the end of the 50s, for example, to create identifiable "currents" of experimentation and concept under such titles as free cinema or nouvelle vague, which were largely based on footage from life and no longer reconstructed in the studio. That which filmmakers today can achieve even more effectively thanks to a range of digital technologies, paradoxically, involves working with even more-minimal equipment such as a smartphone in front of green or blue screens, against absolutely virtual backgrounds. In short: no more silver and more and more pixels.