This book aims to redefine the relationship between film and revolution. Starting with Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on the American and French Revolution, it argues that, from a theoretical perspective, revolutions can be understood as describing a relationship between time and movement and that ultimately the spectators and not the actors in a revolution decide its outcome. Focusing on the concepts of ‘time, ’ ‘movement, ’ and ‘spectators, ’ this study develops an understanding of film not as a medium of agitation but as a way of thinking that relates to the idea of historicity that opened up with the American and French Revolution, a way of thinking that can expand our very notion of revolution. The book explores this expansion through an analysis of three audiovisual stagings of revolution: Abel Gance’s epic on the French Revolution
Napoléon, Warren Beatty’s essay on the Russian Revolution
Reds, and the miniseries
John Adams about the American Revolution. The author thereby offers a fresh take on the questions of revolution and historicity from the perspective of film studies.
About the author
Hanno Berger, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
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