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Back to Hollywood's America
Hollywood
and the American Revolution
There are certain subjects that
rarely succeed at the box office. Until the mid-1970s, and the
smashing success of Rocky, sports movies almost always flopped
with the general public. In recent years, western and swashbuckling
adventure films have often been box office duds. But one genre
has consistently failed. Hollywood has never made a film about
the American Revolution that has lived up to expectations. Curiously,
Hollywood has made more successful movies about the French and
Indian Wars, including The Last of the Mohicans, than it has about
the American Revolution.
Altogether, Hollywood has made
fewer than a dozen movies that deal more than superficially with
the Revolution. These include:
- 1776 (1972), a musical about the nation's declaration of independence
from Britain;
- Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), which looks at a young couple in upstate
New York who face Indian raids instigated by the British.
- The Howards of Virginia
(1940) the story of
a Virginia couple of differing social backgrounds and attitudes
toward the Revolution;
- The Patriot (2000), which centers on a hero from the French and
Indian War who reluctantly becomes involved in the Revolution;
- Revolution (1985), the tale of a trapper drafted to fight for
the Continental army and a rebellious daughter from a Tory family;
and
- Sweet Liberty (1969), a comedy about a movie company's attempt
to adapt a college professor's historical novel.
The reasons for the failure of
Revolutionary war movies seems obvious. Modern-day audiences find
it difficult to identify with characters from the 18th century,
who wear powdered wigs and knee breeches, use formal speech patterns,
and write with quill pens. In addition, we live in a cynical age,
and hate being reminded of more noble times. There is a tendency
to regard Revolutionary war movies as excessively patriotic and
overly romanticized.
The latest Revolutionary war epic,
The Patriot, starring action hero Mel Gibson, illustrates
the difficulties Hollywood faces in bringing the Revolution to
life. One challenge Hollywood confronts is finding a story line
that will engage a modern audience. The creators of The Patriot
draw upon a number of Hollywood formulas that some would consider
time-tested and others would call hackneyed.
One formula, which might be called
"Little House on the Prairie in Flames," depicts a family
caught up in wartime upheavals. Drawing on devices that date back
to 19th century melodrama, The Patriot focuses on the trials
and tribulations of a motherless family of seven. The youngest
of the family's children, desperate for her father's love and
traumatized by her mother's death, is mute for much of the movie.
The fiancé of the eldest son is murdered by the villainous
British. The love object of the film turns out to be widower's
sister-in-law, allowing the family to be reunited in the end.
A second formula, which might
be summed up by the phrase "Braveheart in a Three-Cornered
Hat," transports an action hero into the Revolutionary era.
According to the conventions of the Hollywood action film, the
action hero is a reluctant warrior who is eager to avoid involvement
in a conflict. Not until he suffers a deep personal loss does
he seek revenge. The Patriot depicts Benjamin Martin (the
character played by Gibson) as a hero of the French and Indian
War and a widower who feels profound guilt over the violence he
committed in that conflict and devotes himself to raising his
children. Only when a Colonel named Tavington kills one of his
sons does Martin take up arms against the British. In Hollywood
action films, the hero, who is motivated less by principle than
by a desire for vengeance, triumphs over incredible odds. The
Patriot's plot is built around these these clichés.
A third formula grows out of the
conventions of the Hollywood war movie. Three wars have profoundly
shaped Hollywood's depiction of warfare. In World War II films,
the enemies are portrayed as viciously sadistic brutes, utterly
lacking in moral scruples. The Patriot nazifies its villains,
who are preposterously evil. They burn plantation houses, impress
slaves, murder civilians, including children, and burn down a
colonial church. Nothing like that last event occurred during
the Revolution-though a similar incident occurred during the second
world war.
World War II combat films typically
took a ragtag assortment of men of diverse ethnic backgrounds
who are gradually molded into a dedicated fighting force. Similarly,
in The Patriot, the Mel Gibson character recruits a ragtag
militia including hard-drinking backwoods settlers, artisans,
a minister, a French soldier, and even a slave.
The Civil War has also profoundly
shaped the way Hollywood treats military conflict. The Patriot
seeks to suggest that the Revolution was in some sense a war about
liberating slaves and even purports to have its hero visit a maroon
(fugitive slave) colony. Gibson's character was modeled in part
on Francis "The Swamp Fox" Marion, who was a slaveholder.
But the film suggests that this character was antislavery, and
that the African Americans who worked on his South Carolina plantation
were free laborers. In fact, it was the British who promised slaves
their freedom if they joined the Tory side.
A third war that has profoundly
shaped Hollywood's presentation of military conflict is the Vietnam
war, and especially the massacre of civilians at My Lai. Recent
war films-including The Patriot--usually feature a scene involving
the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
Yet despite its parade of clichés,
The Patriot does point to certain often neglected aspects
of the Revolution. It shows that the war was very much a civil
war, pitting neighbor against neighbor. It also focuses attention
on the war in the southern colonies, where the conflict was most
violent. And finally, the film suggests how important guerrilla
warfare and foreign assistance were to the American victory. |
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