Film och historia. Historisk Hollywoodfilm 1960-2000

Sammanfattning: The hypothesis put forward in this thesis stipulates that films always say more of empirical value about the time in which they are produced than they do about the periods they depict. The aim is not only to prove that such an idea is valid, but also that it might be transformed into a new and applicable theory in studies of film and history. Here, this is done in contextualized analyses of the production and reception of historical Hollywood films made between 1960 and 2000. General approaches analyzing how theories and narrative strategies have evolved over time are continuously combined with close-readings of each respective context and film. It is suggested that historical films function as fictions because they function and not because they are true. In order to validate this and other similar ideas, Swedish film reviews published at the time of the films’ premieres function as metonymic exemples of European perspectives on America in general and Hollywood in particular. The Swedish reception is then put in relation to international theories and debates. Such a comparative strategy constitutes a specific attempt to better understand the academic terra incognita undoubtedly still existing between film scholars and historians when audiovisual media are discussed as historical source material. More than anything else, these conflicting opinions depend on whether you concentrate on the period represented in the film, or focus on the time during which the film was produced. If the latter perspective is chosen, as is the case in this contextualized study, it is proposed that empirical anlyses of audiovisual media, such as the historical Hollywood film, undoubtedly will make significant contributions to our future understanding of both film and history.