Biopics And Politics: The Making And Unmaking Of The Rhodes Movies
In 1997 the British Broadcasting Corporation screened a six hour dramati zation of the life of the South African imperialist Cecil Rhodes. Titled sim ply Rhodes, the film was one of the most expensive and ambitious produc tions ever undertaken by the BBC, costing over £15 million and relying on support from American, Canadian, and South African public television. The final script was reportedly reviewed and approved by the Prime Ministers of South Africa and Zimbabwe. The program was eventually broadcast to countries throughout the world, including the United States, Australia, and Zimbabwe, the nation that had once been the colony of Rhodesia. The series was the first Rhodes biography to be filmed in over sixty years, and only the second in the history of the cinema. And yet, though only two Rhodes films have ever been produced, since 1916 at least seven similar projects have been attempted. Why has there been so much interest in producing a Rhodes movie, and why have so few of them actually been made? An analysis of the history of the Rhodes biopics reveals that all attempts to film his life have been affected by the enormous shadow he continues to cast over Southern African politics. Since his death in 1902 Rhodes has become the most potent icon of the peculiar form of imperial ism that took root in Southern Africa in the late nineteenth century, and eventually developed into the modern Apartheid state. Not surprisingly, politicians and administrators with a stake in the Rhodes legacy have influ enced every attempt to film his life. Most of the proposed Rhodes biopics foundered on the ambivalence or hostility of Southern African regimes that feared the political ramifications of bringing his life to the screen. The two Rhodes films actually made only came off because they enjoyed the support
As if Alive before Us: The Pleasures of Verisimilitude in Biographical Fiction Films
Biographical fiction films often raise questions about the accuracy of a story, the plausibility of a mise en scene or an actor's performance. If a genre is understood as a complex system of expectations and production, the idea of cultural verisimilitude becomes a central feature in the genre of biographical fiction film. Film criticism typically considers the problems that such a generic rule causes. In contrast to that approach, this article discusses the pleasures of verisimilitude. Using one of the first Finnish biopics, Runon kuningas ja muuttolintu (1940) as an example, it examines how verisimilitude forms an essential feature of the film, understood as a biography, and how it ensures an enjoyable cinematic experience. Firstly, I shall suggest that the reconstruction of well-known historical moments in the film creates effects similar to those of the cinema of attractions (Gunning): they revitalise bygone days. Secondly, I shall demonstrate how the film challenges viewers to a knowing game (Rosen), a pleasurable quiz in which they can demonstrate their cultural competence. I suggest that these pleasures of verisimilitude, evident at the time when the genre was just emerging in Finland, could also explain the current persistent fascination with biographical films.
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of