Each year the history club at Messiah College sponsors a couple of “movie nights.” The students ask a professor in the department to pick a movie to view and offer a short (15 minutes or so) lecture on the movie the that helps to place it in historical context. Since I am not a big movie-goer, when asked by the students to join them for movie night I often struggle to come up with an appropriate film.
No longer.
AHA Today has posted a list of 100 movies that have been featured as part a series called “Masters at the Movies.” The series has been running in Perspectives on History since 2006. Today’s post not only lists the titles of 100 movies, but also links to historical commentary on each of them. This is a small goldmine for any historian who teaches with film or has to come up with a movie for a history club movie night.
Here are just a few films covered:
Wall Street
Birth of a Nation
Amazing Grace
Eyes on the Prize
Dr. Strangelove
Godzilla
Glory
Billy Elliott
The Women
A Streetcar Named Desire
Patton
La Dolce Vita
The China Syndrome
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Flags of Our Fathers
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