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Teaching Delivery: This module is taught in 10 weekly lectures.Ìý

Content: How does cinema reconstruct Roman history? What distinguishes cinematic histories of Rome from other historical forms? This course will explore the early experimental period of filmmaking, its turn to antiquity to legitimate the new cinematic medium, its relationship to painting, historical fiction, and theatre, and its distinct methods for bringing antiquity into the modern world (embodiment, colour, music and movement).Ìý It will also address the development of the star system, sound technology, the classical Hollywood style, and the emergence and operation of genre. The course will utilise the critical vocabulary of reception studies and film analysis, and engage with issues such as sources, narrative structure, and ideology (including gender & sexuality, colonialism and religion). Films on the syllabus include The Last Days of Pompeii (1913), Ben Hur (1925), Cleopatra (1934) and Quo vadis (1951).

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: Pomeroy, A. (2017) ed A Companion to Greece and Rome on Screen; Wyke, M. Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (Routledge, 1997); 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)