ABSTRACT
Historical films are complex and intriguing entities that lend themselves perfectly to postmodern interpretation. Ostensibly, such films propose to depict the past in an “authentic” manner-and are often marketed, received and critiqued in such terms-yet what they actually offer is a vision of the past fashioned in the spirit of the decade of their making. The present is inevitably present in historical films; this much is obvious from the speed with which they date and take on a look “of their time.”1 Furthermore, historical films are replete with inter-textual references: to the pre-existing literary texts from which they are usually adapted; to previous adaptations of the same source; to other films within the same genre; and to interpretations of the historical period in question via multifarious different cultural genres. Such films are, in effect, historiographical documents, which interact in complex ways with other artifacts in order to fashion the past according to the aesthetic tastes of a particular, fleeting moment.
