ABSTRACT
Genre criticism necessarily tends toward the taxonomic, meaning accounts of heritage cinema such as Higson's often discount variations and transformations within the genre. Consequently, heritage may be seen more usefully as an aspect or mode linked by common elements. Mannerism suggests a meta-aesthetic style. By aligning heritage cinema with mannerism, Vidal conjoins historical art movements including cinema's own past. Heritage film's belated, nostalgic air in presenting the country house was first employed in the 1981 television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. The adaptation looked to cinema in establishing itself as more aesthetically driven than most contemporary television productions. As heritage films developed over the 1980s, this cinematic genre presented heritage as visually signifying the nation. Heritage cinema, with its focus on the past and frequent resort to the country house, simultaneously suggests a past national essence, one defined through a world of manors and objects, and articulates national distinctiveness by defining these icons through implied differences with others.
