Ancient History|Classics|Comparative Literary Studies|Film Studies

Content: How did Hollywood cinema come to dominate representations of ancient Rome on screen and how has its dominance been challenged? How do ideas of the...

Ancient Rome on Film: From the 1950&#039;s to the 21st Century (CLAS0121)

Content: How did Hollywood cinema come to dominate representations of ancient Rome on screen and how has its dominance been challenged? How do ideas of the historical operate in and through such films? Why did the genre of the Hollywood blockbuster decline in the 1960s and re-emerge in the twenty-first century? How is cinema changed by the advent of television, video/DVD, and now the global digital environment? The course will utilise the critical vocabulary of reception studies and film analysis, and engage with issues such as tradition, commodification, technology, contemporaneity (including Cold War ideology, ‘the war on terror’, and nationalism), and recognition capital. Films on the syllabus include Ben Hur (1959 and 2016), Spartacus (1960); Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Gladiator (2000).

Skills: By the end of the module it is expected that students should have the knowledge and understanding to (1) identify and analyse cinema’s distinctive techniques for representing the Roman past; (2) appraise cinema’s techniques of historical analogy; (3) assess their role in the representation and construction of contemporary gender, sexuality, morality, and politics; (4) account for cinema’s transformation of ancient Rome into spectacle and commodity; (5) differentiate between different cinematic styles in their reconstruction and interpretation of Roman history.

Suggested preliminary reading: Theodorakopoulos, E., Ancient Rome at the Cinema: Story and Spectacle in Hollywood and Rome (Liverpool UP, 2010); Pomeroy, A., A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen (Wiley, 2017); Hughes-Warrington, M. History Goes to the Movies (Routledge, 2007); Monaco, J. How to Read a Film: Movies, Media and Beyond, 4th edition (OUP, 2009).
 

Interested MA students who have further questions please contact Maria Wyke (m.wyke@ucl.ac.uk)