Docudrama

A docudrama is a reenactment, or dramatization, of current or historical events. Docudrama combines fictional elements with the re-creation of events and with documentary. It is, as the word suggests, documentary drama, a hybrid of the real and the fictional. Docudrama has also been called nonfiction drama and reality-based drama.

Scholars, filmmakers, and critics disagree about many aspects of docudrama, including what it should be called. They also disagree about the definition of this hybrid. Some scholars argue that the docudrama has received insufficient study. There is, however, general agreement that whatever docudrama is, it is an immensely popular form of information and entertainment and it continues to find a large and avid audience.

It has been noted that, unlike documentary, there is no pure form of docudrama. Most docudramas might be categorized as reconstructions of dramatic stories, including investigative reconstructions. An important subgenre of docudrama is biography, or the biopic. Many analysts consider Disraeli (1929) to be the first biopic. However, there were others that came before, including a French cinematic depiction of the life of Napoleon in 1914.

During the 1930s, when the biographical film was first recognized as a genre in the United States, it became a Hollywood staple and a significant number of them were commercial and artistic successes. Among the films were Alexander Hamilton (1931), Voltaire (1933), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and Juarez (1939). While many of Hollywood's earliest biopics did not depict Americans, that oversight was soon corrected. In the late 1930s, Young Mr. Lincoln and Abe Lincoln in Illinois began a decades-long trend in the American movie industry concentrating on the lives, deeds, and myths of American lives.

The biopic has always found a ready audience. Most docudramas on television today are biopics and appear on two cable networks, E! Entertainment and A&E's Biography, the latter devoted to biopics.