Re: Pedagogy and films

Dave Postles (pot@leicester.ac.uk)
Thu, 12 Oct 1995 17:54:01 +0100

For many students in secondary schools and even universities (whose
first-year classes often operate at a level less challenging than many
high school classes), even inaccurate portrayals in films provide some
rudimentary mental images, which allow history professors to open a
dialogue about a period. My introduction to the French Revolution came
through Ronald Colman and Charles Laughton in "Tale of Two Cities", viewed
in a decrepit neighbourhood theatre when I was in Grade VI. The film
prompted the interest to read and study further and, ultimately, to be
able to criticise the film both as a representation of the Revolution and
of the Dickens novel. Sometimes a set of inaccurate, even misleading,
but engaging images provide the raw material for further study and
discussion.
Robert N. Berard
Mount Saint Vincent University
Halifax, Nova Scotia
rberard@is.dal.ca

--