The history film has played an exceptionally powerful role in shaping our culture’s understanding of the past, an influence that derives not simply from the cinema’s unequaled ability to re-create the past in a sensual, mimetic form, but also from its striking tendency to arouse critical and popular controversy that resonates throughout the public sphere. American films centered on the past have often met with a dramatic public response; they typically are both celebrated for their verisimilitude and decried for their departures from accepted historical facts.