Color in the Epic Film: Alexander and Hero1

Authors

  • Robert Burgoyne University of St Andrews

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22475/rebeca.v1n2.282

Abstract

A key feature of the epic genre since the appearance of the tinted and stenciled Italian epics of the 1910’s, color technology and design constitutes a direct line of formal innovation that extends from the earliest iterations of the epic film to the exalted color symphonies of the present. The significance of color in the epic, however, has largely been ignored. In this essay, I argue that color design complicates the traditional understanding of epic form as a conservative, nation-centric genre, governed by what Gilles Deleuze calls a critical-ethical horizon. The recent epics Alexander and Hero provide a case in point: in each film, color design articulates a range of messages that provide a new way of understanding these works, and that illuminate the use of color in the long history of the epic genre.2

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Author Biography

Robert Burgoyne, University of St Andrews

Robert Burgoyne é titular em Estudos Cinematográficos na Universidade de St. Andrews. Trabalha o cinema e a representação histórica com ênfase em particular na ligação entre memória, emoção e reconstituição em filmes históricos. Entre suas publicações mais recentes estão The Hollywood Historical Film (Wiley Blackwell), The Epic Film in World Culture (Routledge), e Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History: Edição Revisada (Minnesota)/A Nação do Filme (UnB).

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Published

2016-07-25

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 2 (2012): REBECA 2

Section

Dossier

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