Forgive me, but I once got the chance, thanks to an immensely talented student, to design a course on Film History for the high school where I taught Advanced Placement European History. I’ve never worked quite so hard on a project and never loved working that hard quite so much.

The course was approved and adopted by the panel that resembles, I suppose, the faculty at Hogwarts, by which I mean UC Berkeley, but it was a great sadness that there was no room in my schedule to teach it. Film history is a passion of mine.

But when I taught my students AP European History. I would sometimes use film excerpts to make a point that was beyond me to teach. There is no shame in that. Even if the film--Amadeus is an example—wasn’t 100% historically accurate, if it gave them a sense of the times we were learning—an emotional connection–then that was enough and more than enough.

I was reminiscing about  a few of their favorites. And mine.

Dali’s cameo in Midnight in Paris. This is when they “caught” my love for the Lost Generation.

In Amadeus, the “improvement” on Salieri’s march. I adore this scene because someday nearly all my students would meet someone far more gifted than they thought they were. Thanks to them, I’d already made acquaintance with people far more gifted than I thought I was.

2003’s Luther relieves us of the idea that he was so constantly dour. He was a brilliant teacher.

The absurdity of the Cold War was something students instantly grasped, thanks to Dr. Strangelove:

Where did nationalism come from? Shakespeare put these words into Henry V’s mouth at Agincourt, but they explain the idea exactly:

The horror of World War I? Australia’s Gallipoli remains one of the finest war/anti-war films ever made. Peter Weir, director. Here’s, Mel Gibson’s runner is trying to stop a costly Australian attack against the Turks.

And this battle scene from Weir’s Master and Commander teaches us that Napoleonic warfare could be just just as terrible:

What kind of leader was Elizabeth I? The Tilbury speech—an this is verbatim, not the work of screenwriters—is from the mini-series The Virgin Queen. This is extraordinary political leadership. We could use an Elizabeth.

For a sense of what it was like young in a fascist dictatorship, this thrilling dance sequence—just before the police raid—from Swing Kids:

And belonging to fascism was never better captured—until perhaps Jojo Rabbit– than in this scene form Bob Fosse’s Cabaret:

How terrifying was Stalin? The Boss loved movies, so this film is about his movie projectionist. From The Inner Circle.

How terrifying was Henry VIII? I guess no powerful man’s temper tantrums can be shrugged off. This one couldn’t. From the classic A Man for All Seasons.

And, as to royalty, there can’t be a better way to demonstrate the disconnect between the Bourbons and their people than in this scene–thanks to music by Bow Wow Wow–from Marie Antoinette.

What scenes like these—-and there are many more—teach both teachers and students is that history isn’t the province of textbooks reduced to chaff by center-right selection committees. It’s about the people we recognize, if only for an instant, in a few feet of film. This is the medium, after all, that so often gives us the chance to recognize ourselves, even if the selves we see shock us suddenly with shame. Film can lead us, too, toward the people would like to be. That’s when the learning comes, in that moment of recognition when we see ourselves, when we become actors in the past that belongs to all of us.