Early Colonial History in movies

[piston]

The movie "Black Robe" is perhaps the commercial movie that, in my estimation, comes closest to doing justice to the period (excluding here non-commercial movies such as those of the National Film Board of Canada). It's not historically accurate, of course, because the idea of representing a cultural clash over a half a century is not appealing to movie makers. In this movie, based on Brian Moore's novel, history is collapsed and consists of a collage of episodes from different places and different times, involving different historical actors, all represented as though they were occuring in the span of one or two seasons. Nevertheless, the cultural clash itself, as a central theme, is a most fascinating topic well illustrated in countless scenes.

The two famous critiques of At the Movies differed in their respective opinions, with the negative vote being based, not surprisingly, on the anti-Holliwood character of this work directed by the same person who directed Driving Mrs. Daisy. It was too gloomy, too pessimistic, and everybody dies. Duh! America needs its good triumphing over the evil whatever the topic and the period. But, in spite of its anti-Hollywood approach, it's a splendid movie with lots of fantastic vistas and as much historical accuracy as the "market" will bear.

Here's an 11-minute trailer which was youtubed during Quebec's 400th anniversary celebration, last June.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trxaCCnDxr0

[BWV 1080]

Black Robe is great, by far the best movie about North American Indians


There is a good movie in Spanish on Cabeza de Vaca:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101529/

[stenka razin]

piston, there are some outstanding movies about early Colonial history. I will list some below. Do you have any favorites?

The Last of the Mohicans-1992-Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe

Northwest Passage-1940-Spencer Tracy and Robert Young

The Patriot-2000-Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger

Revolution-1895-Al Pacino and Donald Sutherland

Drums Along The Mohawk-1939-Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda

Devil's Disciple-1959-Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas

[piston]

Hello stenka razin.
Yeah, those are good movies but I would not identify the Seven Years' War, etc., as being "early Colonial," i.e., first half of the 17th century or before.

[Corlyss_D]

A couple of years ago, the History Channel did a big extravaganza called 10 Days that Changed the World. One of them was an encounter between the native population and the settlers in Connecticut I think. Some kind of war ensued between the two, with a kind of ethnic cleansing approach on both sides, but naturally the natives were no match for the technology the settlers could bring to the situation. I thought that was probaby typical if not comprehensive. The tagline for the show was something like "this encounter between these two civilizations set the model for the Europeans future dealings with the native population until the end of the frontier." Personally, I don't think native populations could have fared better given the mindset of Europeans at the time. Of course, something like that could never happen today - too much white guilt - and that perhaps is the problem with underscoring the way the natives were treated. It's projecting today's values back in time and blaming the civilizations then for not behaving the way we would today. I think that's called presentism.

[piston]

True. Presentism does not add anything to one's comprehension of these events. In a similar vein, religious people in New France are now represented in some sources as fanatics who were more interested in collecting souls during Counter-Reformation than in contributing to a fragile inter-racial modus vivendi. Such an argument is presentist in that it fails to make the rightful distinction between fanaticism and mysticism, which is absolutely critical if one is to read history in terms of people with different motivations.

But the Pequot War, if that is the event in question, could have been avoided even by their contemporary standards. It was engineered to remove in a brutal fashion, to cleanse the land in a manner which was in contravention of their own religious beliefs.

Some events ought to be shown in their true light.

[Corlyss_D]

But the Pequot War, if that is the event in question, could have been avoided even by their contemporary standards.

Yep. That's the one. There was some criticism on the website questioning how valid the position presented in the documentary was.