ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a central problematic of historical representation in the cinema: is it possible to construct a properly historical character in film?
The term character seems hardly appropriate since it is defined in many dictionaries as “one of the imaginary persons who figure in a work of fiction.” The term historical actor presents a similar problem since the actor plays a role, and the theatrical notion is not applicable to history except, one assumes, as metaphor: the role played by Napoleon in “exporting” the French Revolution. In defense of the epistemological break between history and fiction, historians have resisted conceiving of history as narrative because they associate narrative with the creation of imaginary worlds. They are not given therefore to examining the nature of those narrative agents that act upon and are acted upon in the course of historical events. It is no wonder, then, that historians confronted with representations of historical figures in film are highly skeptical. They consider cinema as a spectacle irremediably tied to the imaginary, particularly because of the feature that characterizes all visual representation of historical action: doubling. There is
the doubling of mise en scène, in which a set in a theater or a location in a film, so clearly part of the here-and-now of the act of representation, are intended to stand in for the real place in the past. Similarly, there is the doubling of the actor and his role: the actor belongs to the moment of performance, the role to the person or social entity that acted in the historical past.
