ABSTRACT
It is, I believe, evident that a discussion of fiction and nonfiction in film cannot be separated from the theoretical debates on the question in literature, linguistics, and philosophy, which have their historic roots in antiquity and have developed significantly in the course of the last century. Indeed, the most probing work on nonfiction film in recent years relies on theoretical perspectives that come from outside film studies. Even if nonfiction in film manifests itself in specific ways, particularly because film is an audiovisual, not a literary, discourse, the larger theoretical issues are the same. A review of the critical literature is particularly relevant to examining the nonfictional character of the historical film because historians and film historians have long hesitated to give it that status. Moreover, we are, I believe, at a critical juncture: the beginning of a reexamination of traditional notions of genre that have long held back the serious study of works of nonfiction. I begin the discussion with literary theorist Gérard Genette, who has been instrumental in stirring up debate on the question.
