Abstract
Representing history is a difficult work for historians as for filmmakers. Through pictures, sounds, music, montages and mise-en-scene, is it possible to represent the world, and especially history? We will try to analyse the representation of history in film, particularly in the fiction, by focusing on films that deals with the Vietnam war. This aim asks the question of the difference between documentary and fiction: the mise-en scene of the war tries to re-create an historical atmosphere but imagine some characters and facts that never existed. If in Rambo, we just have to follow the exploits of Sylvester Stallone, Platoon of Oliver Stone or Full Metal Jacket of Stanley Kubrick, that also deals with Vietnam War, need in contrary that the spectator realize than the characters are used to give the point of view of the filmmakers. Fiction suppose than the spectator identify himself to the main character(s) and use to judge affectively each of them. Representing history in fiction means that filmmakers mix a mise-en-scene of the war with a chaste and distant vision of the events. The major scenes deal both with an unspeakable experience and this kind of distance that exist through the esthetisation of the mise-en-scene. I will focus on the film of Stone Platoon, because it remembered for the striking realism with witch it recreated the Vietnam War from the point of view of the U.S. soldier, also because Stone lived this war when he was young.
