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This chapter examines the most well known of all the popular genres associated with Scotland, the costume drama (sometimes referred to as the period drama, heritage or historical film). Initially, the debate surrounding costume drama is introduced — in particular the contested term ‘heritage cinema’ — and the role that costume dramas made and set in Scotland increasingly play in this debate. Because of the popularity of this particular genre, however, the chapter look at example featuring a female protagonist, The Governess (1998). In The Governess, the wilderness of Scotland is represented as a fantasyland, but its mythical resonance as a place somehow ‘before history’ actually facilitates the construction of a diasporic history, or ‘heritage’, that stands apart from concerns of British or Scottish identity. Thus, the setting of Scotland is integral to the film's deployment of its feminist reworking of history (a process typical of the contemporary costume drama), in this case to explore a diasporic Jewish identity that does not belong to the same historical traditions as those normally encountered in the wilds of cinematic Scotland.

Sofia Coppola, one of the most visible indie directors in recent years, is clearly embedded in the ‘commerce of auteurism’ (Corrigan 1991), as she actively participates in constructing her public image. Building on existing scholarship on the filmmaker as illustrative of the new critical paradigm in studies of women’s film authorship, the first section of this chapter looks at the promotional and critical discourses surrounding her films to trace the various processes of authentication and de-authentication of Coppola as an auteur (family connections, the privileged position in the American film industry, her filmmaking style marked by a focus on flat affects and the mise-en-scène’s surface details, as well as her interest in postfeminist/neoliberal femininity which has divided critics, especially with her 2013 feature film, The Bling Ring). In the exploration of Coppola’s authorial status, the chapter sheds light on the issue of genre, arguing that her engagement with familiar conventions is far more complex than current analysis of her work has acknowledged. This is particularly evident in the case of Marie Antoinette (2006), a film which has been read variably as a costume drama and/or as a historical biopic. In establishing a dialogical relationship between biopic and costume drama scholarship, the chapter centres on self-conscious devices deployed in Coppola’s film, which are mobilised not against but through a logic of a feminised consumerist culture. The aim is not to reject the supposed ‘feminising’ aspects of the costume drama or to masculinise them in framing the film as a ‘self-conscious’ biopic, but rather to investigate the gender anxieties that underlay the labelling of genres by film criticism.

This chapter explores the renewal of French historical drama and heritage film. French cinema has always sought inspiration in historical events to form the basis of powerful narratives. In the 1980s, a range of films explored and renewed the approach to this cinematic genre by developing a trend of spectacular mainstream heritage films, known in France as 'les films du patrimoine'. Towards the mid-1990s, these lavish costume dramas became less popular in France, and some commercial flops made producers more wary of investing large sums in them. In the new millennium, however, the heritage drama seems to have been revamped to produce a series of innovative films that combine compelling elements of national identity and transnational features often borrowed from New Hollywood. These films are often described as popular in the sense of being 'seen by a large number of people', and 'reaching a broad public'. Le Pacte des loups/Brotherhood of the Wolf (Christophe Gans, 2001) illustrates the emergence of this trend perfectly, by combining popular cultural myths with the high production values of recent European superproductions in a competitive global market.

The Scarlet Empress (1934) redeploys costume drama as farce and as a critique of despotism. The chapter analyzes how Marlene Dietrich does not so much play the role of Catherine the Great as replace the historical figure with her own Hollywood star persona. The power structures of despotism and the lawlessness of the sovereign are thereby parodied: promiscuity becomes the bond Dietrich’s Catherine has with her subjects and the studio-enhanced beauty of her appearance is substituted for the separateness of the royal person. With its spectacular yet rickety film sets, The Scarlet Empress is not an apologist’s chocolate-box rendition of European monarchical government but instead conveys its émigré makers’ sense of its pomposity. Rather than exposing what lies behind the spectacle of power, the film considers what becomes of power when it is nothing but spectacle and appearance.

Chapter 4, the last on Spain, deals with post-colonial TV, a subject as yet little studied. Having explored the halting media relationship between the Spanish metropolis and its one time Moroccan protectorate, the chapter gives a close account of two exceptional series. The first is a lush historical romance set in the 1930s, which takes the woman’s work of sewing as a metaphor for international relations. The second is a gritty police drama exploring the drug and terror gangs in the contemporary Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Both series are shot and set in North Africa, a region that embodies a bloody heritage for Spain and which recent cinema has failed to investigate.

The first full book show by Rodgers and Hart was Dearest Enemy (1925), a story set in the American Revolution with a libretto by Herbert Fields. As a costume drama it eschewed conventional Broadway qualities of the period such as a jazz-influenced score and a chorus of scantily clad girls. Nevertheless, it attracted positive notices and brought Rodgers and Hart to the attention of producers. The show featured Helen Ford in the lead role, and this chapter considers the possibility that she and Rodgers were involved romantically. The discussion also focuses on the way Rodgers and Hart crafted their material, establishing methods of Broadway score-writing that would be formative to their later style. In particular, Rodgers adopts a way of using song structure to establish character, and together they borrow references and traits from past musical theater idioms, especially the work of Gilbert and Sullivan

Chapter six departs from the practice of exploring horizons of identity to test the limits of nostalgia and solastalgia as a critical approach to reading fiction and film, by looking at how both the colonial future and past are remembered. The chapter includes several close readings including a concluding rumination on the political uses of cinematic murder. Films considered in this chapter include colonial era government produced propaganda documentaries and the work of Wang Tong and Lin Zhengsheng.