ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which two historic period dramas engage with elements of both past and present to construct the dining room as an authentic and meaningful space in period film. In the light of new technological developments, such as improved lighting technology, it considers the use of props and objects and dining etiquette in The Go-Between and Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon where there is a different aesthetic an attempt to leave the studio behind for a real location and a greater emphasis on the seductive potential of the mise-en-scene. In filmic depictions of historical events, it became the responsibility of film directors and their team to recreate these aspects of dining rooms and dining. The dining rooms in these period costume dramas, despite the attention to detail and the understanding of behavior can never be accepted as equivalent to real lived experience of the past but they can convey something of its essence.
