In “Theory Number Five: Anatomy of Nostalgic Films: Heritage and Method (1977), one of the first writings to address nostalgic representations of the past in cinema, Marc Le Sueur notes that nostalgia is “a concept of history,” for which “few have attempted to establish the general principles of operation” (p.189). This is not a conservative phenomenon, but rather a way of engaging with the past and bringing into the present what other approaches to history ignore, as he further emphasizes. His conception prefigured two dominant trends in nostalgia research in film studies. While the first examines the use of intertextual devices and flashbacks to evoke nostalgia (Lurry 2000, Wollen 1991), the second aims to evaluate the relationship between nostalgic film and history (Boym 2001, Dika 2003, Grainger 2002, Hutcheon 1989, Jameson 1985). . While the former identifies useful tools for cinematic analysis of cinematic texts, the latter is more relevant to media and cultural studies, as it evaluates nostalgia in relation to our historical consciousness. The film “The English Patient” (1996), written for the screen and directed by Anthony Minghella, presents its audience with a complex mise-en-scène seen through the filter of nostalgic memories and demonstrates those vital issues of cinematic nostalgia at various levels. Therefore, in this essay, I will examine how nostalgia in the film helps to reflect on issues of the “present,” subverts undisputed history, and offers competing mythologies of the 1930s. The film tells the story of a badly burned plane crash. victim, initially reluctant to reveal any personal information and known only as "the English Patient". In the final days of World War II,......middle of paper......cinema of the 90s. In R. Murphy, 2000, ed., British Cinema of the 1990s. London: British Film Institute Publishing, pp. 100–108. Provencal, V., 2002. Sleeping with Herodotus in The English Patient. Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne (SCL/ÉLC), 27 (2), [online] Available at: [Accessed 17 January 2014].Rubenstein, R., 2000. Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in women's fiction. New York: Palgrave. Sprengler, C., 2009. Nostalgia Projection: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Cinema. Oxford, New York: Berghahn BooksWollen, T., 1991. Over Our Shoulders: Nostalgic Film Fictions for the 1980s. In J. Corner and S. Harvey, eds., 1991, Enterprise and Heritage: Crosscurrents of National Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 178–93