Ancient Rome at the Cinema
Story and Spectacle

By Elena Theodorakopoulos

Subjects: Bristol Phoenix Press, Classical Studies and Ancient History, Film History

About the Book
Contents
Reviews
Author Biography

Ancient Rome at the Cinema is a lucid study of the worlds created in Roman historical epics. Based on analysis of the visual and narrative fabric of seven films set in Ancient Rome, Ancient Rome at the Cinema demonstrates how cinematic versions of Ancient Rome have been able to captivate us, and inscribe their versions of the city and its history onto our imagination.

Theodorakopoulos uses film theory and criticism to examine the ways in which historical drama creates the past through story-telling and visual effects. Particular emphasis is put on the tension between narrative and spectacle which is an inherent feature of cinema, and a long-standing preoccupation of film critics and theorists from the 1930s to the present. The book also examines the techniques and the rhetoric of realism which feature especially prominently in historical films.

'Theodorakopoulos ist eine weitgehend kohärente Auseinandersetzung mit wichtigen Erzeugnissen des Antikfilmgenres gelungen, wobei gerade die Heterogenität der Beispiele aus dem Mainstream-Kino und dem Autorenfilm die Untersuchung bereichert. Durch ein gut strukturiertes Theoriekapitel, in dem die Autorin auf wichtige Theorien zum Medium Film, zum Historienfilm sowie zur Thematik der Metahistorie eingeht, werden die Betrachtungen zu den einzelnen Produktionen gut vorbereitet. Die Bezugnahme auf unterschiedliche Theorien aus den verschiedensten interdisziplinären Bereichen an der Schnittstelle zwischen Medien- und Geschichtswissenshaften macht diese Publikation auch für den Einsatz im didaktischen Bereich wertvoll.'

(H-Soz-u-Kult)

Elena Theodorakopoulos is a lecturer in Classics at the University of Birmingham. She has recently co-edited The Rhetoric of Advice in Greece and Rome (2007) with Diana Spencer and has written chapters for The Sites of Rome: Time, Space, Memory (2007), edited by D. Larmour and D. Spencer, and Blackwell Companion to Catullus (2007), edited by M. Skinner.

Publication Details:

BIC Code:

1DST, APFG, APFN, HBJD, HBLA, HBLC

Imprint:

Bristol Phoenix Press