Download (3483kB) - Greenwich Academic Literature Archive ...

Appendix 2 shows the number of Civil War films produced each year by Hollywood, from1946-75, which, as far as can be ascertained, fit the criteria set out in Chapter I. Appendix6 lists the films in chronological order. Appendices 1 and 5 do the same for the period1908-45. Appendix 7 lists the films from 1976-99.There are a number of problems in establishing a Civil War filmography. The first is thatthere is no agreed definition of what constitutes a Civil War film. In the early silent daysthe films focused on the war itself and rarely, until The Birth of a Nation, portrayed theAnte Bellum or the Reconstruction periods. With the advent of the Civil War western,most of the films focused on the post-war period and were located away from the South.Some historians talk about the 'Civil War era' and include the various versions of UncleTom's Cabin and the revived plantation films of the Sexploitation era, while othersinclude only films that involve an historical figure or event. It depends on the focus of theresearch. A film historian who is interested in race relations may not include westerns - oronly those that have Native Americans as the racial 'other' - or a film historian interestedin westerns will exclude films where the story is located in the South.A second problem relates to identifying films that are about the Civil War. Copies of manysilent films have been lost and are only known through indirect sources - magazines,letters, memoirs, etc. Use can be made of film reviews to identify films but the name of thefilm must be known beforehand. The two most comprehensive sources are the New YorkTimes and Variety. Bound copies of their reviews going back to the early silent days areavailable in the British Film Institute library.It was only with the establishment of the Hay's Office in 1922 that some central co-ordination existed across the industry. This was strengthened in 1934 when adherence tothe Production Code became mandatory. However even copies of subsequent films havedisappeared as there was no policy in Hollywood to retain a copy of each film until theearly 1950s. 1160