Film biography: a methodological proposal for its analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/Ambitos.2023.i61.04Keywords:
Film biography, biopic, cinema, History, screewritingAbstract
Film biography, for many years linked to historical cinema in terms of theorisation, has gradually begun to be studied as an autonomous historiographical object. Its situation on the borderline between numerous narrative themes and the challenges involved in adapting a historically documented life for the audiovisual medium pose a challenge for filmmakers and researchers. Given the limited time frame of the story, the filmmakers are faced with the task of selecting, structuring and interpreting the infinite number of details of a life. In film biography, historical rigour and the need to dramatise, the real world and the narrative world, particularism and universality converge. Starting from this complex hybridisation of spheres, we propose to establish a possible methodology of analysis, attending to its problematic points under different paradigms of interpretation. One, placing the focus on the fame of the character; the other, in the idea of happiness Thus, we will discuss whether or not the filmmakers should make a judgement on the character, whether there is a historical truth and a narrative truth or whether there is no possible duality, the fair and unfair distortion of that historical truth as a necessity for the drama, how to approach the so‑called theme of the film, and how the concept of happiness permeates every biographical story.
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