History 104 Film List

A brief synopsis of these films can be found online by searching the titles through either IMDB or Wikipedia.

The Quiet American

Rules of the Game

1917

Ridicule

Scandal

Happy Valley

Breaker Morant

Casablanca

This Sporting Life

Manchurian Candidate

The Lives of Others

Battle of Algiers

Madness of King George III

Rob Roy

ll Quiet on the Western Front

Mrs Brown

The Queen

Sapphire

Thirteen Days

Bicycle Thief

East/West

Dr. Zhivago

The Suffragette

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

The Bunker

Pearl Harbor

Tora Tora Tora

The Leopard

Diplomacy

Hard Days Night

Saving Private Ryan

Sophie Scholl

Wilde

Victim

Empire of the Sun

Brassed Off

Oliver Twist

Marie Antoinette

Gandhi

Lagaan

Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence After Arabia

A Night to Remember

My Beautiful Launderette

Gallipoli

Regeneration

Darkest Hour

Pride and Prejudice

This is England

The Full Monty

EUROPA, europa

The due dates for your two reviews of the films are, respectively, March 19th and April 16th. Each review should be at least 3 pages (750 words), though you may write more. In what you write about the film, while you can include a brief summary of the story line (or plot), what you are really meant to do is explore what you learn about the past—or this particular event/person in the past. How does this film connect to the course? What does this film tell you about this particular event or person? Does it enable you to visualize how people at the time lived, thought, acted, or believed? Does the film in any way make you aware that you (or we) are seeing or understanding things differently than the characters in the film? Is the film an informative window upon the past, explaining and/or highlighting a notable conflict or person? In doing that, does the film give us heroes or villains? Is it true to the historical record or play fast and loose with the actual events?

I am much more interested in what you see, think, and write so please be sure to put that forward in your papers. While I respect the work of film critics, please make sure that if you look at their writing about a particular film, you do not use their writing either as a substitute for watching the film or for doing your own writing about the film. Please email your work to me either as an email or as a Word document attached to an email. Please put His 104 Film Essay in the subject line of your email.