Film Series: Walpole, Art, and History

Horace Walpole’s interest in constructing history through the arrangement
of his extraordinary collections at Strawberry Hill is echoed in this
varied series. Each of these films explores the cinematic representation of
historical figures and events in radically di≠erent ways. The series begins
with Lotte Reiniger’s short silhouette animation Aschenputtel (Cinderella),
shown in homage to the accompanying exhibition Mrs. Delany and her
Circle, and Jan Svankmajer’s short film The Castle of Otranto, based on
Walpole’s novel of 1764. From the groundbreaking reconstruction of
history in Culloden to the swashbuckling and bodice-ripping in Rob Roy
and The Private Life of Henry VIII, the series o≠ers both entertainment and
the invitation to consider how all histories are constructed.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005), directed by Michael
Winterbottom (rated r; 94 minutes). A film about the making of a movie
version of Lawrence Sterne’s eighteenth-century masterpiece, it cleverly
dissects twenty-first-century conventions of cinematic adaptation.