Middle Ages in film

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Medieval films imagine and portray the Middle Ages through the visual, audio and thematic forms of cinema.

Contents

[edit] Background

The 20th century is not the first to create images of life during medieval times. The Middle Ages ended over five centuries ago and each century has imagined, portrayed and depicted the Middle Ages through painting, architecture, poetry, music and novel. In the 20th century, film has defined Medieval history perhaps more so than any other medium. While the conclusions of academic research and findings of archeology have advanced knowledge of the Middle Ages, nothing has had more widespread influence on more people than the images created by film. Just as most peoples perceptions of the American Wild West were drawn from cinema, versus source material or academic research, so too most peoples perceptions of the Middle Ages were influenced by the powerful narratives and images of film.

If film was the most influential medium, Hollywood was the most influential image maker. Hollywood films reached a global audience through big budget productions, and equally big distribution and advertising channels. Hollywood adapted works of the Romanticism movement to the screen, seamlessly forging a bridge between Romanticized historical novels, operas, paintings, and music of the 19th century onto film in the 20th. The ideals of the Romantics were fully realized on the screen in such influential works as Ivanhoe (1952) and El Cid (1961) which belong to the same late Romantic culture in their music, imagery and themes.

Strong cinematic images of the Middle Ages can be found in European films. Influential European films included Fritz Lang's two-film series Die Nibelungen: Siegfrieds Tod and Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache (1924), Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), while in France there were many versions of the story of Joan of Arc.

The first Medieval film was also one of the earliest films ever made, Jeanne d'Arc released in 1899. The first Robin Hood film dates to 1907 and was called Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

[edit] Historiography and Historiophoty

The historiography and historiophoty of medieval film is one of a new, evolving and dynamic field of study. The two terms were discussed in depth by noted historiographer Hayden White in an issue of The American Historical Review devoted to the subject, in which he elaborates a theory that one of the main sources of friction between History and Film is the problem of translating from a written discourse (hence the -graphy) to a visual one (-photy); he proposes that the problem can be resolved by the recognition that written History itself is a subjective and selective process.[1] Taking up the gauntlet thrown down by White's earlier writing, the French historian Marc Ferro had already devoted his seminal work Cinéma et Histoire to precisely this question, which he theorised in Chapter 16 of this work, in which he asks "Can a filmic writing of History exist?"[2]

Although in general terms the relationship between film and history has been a subject of interest since as long as films have been made, it was only in the last decade of the 20th century that medievalists paid attention to film as a serious means of learning about the Middle Ages. As Arthur Lindley said in 1998 "One could note the absence of books by medievalists as well as books of any kind devoted to medieval film," however he prophetically observed "The situation may be beginning to change". This change took place in part by the recognition of the complex relationship between historiography and cinematic history, since it was not until the publication of Norman Cantor's monumental Inventing the Middle Ages in 1991 that any serious work had been carried out on the influence of historiography on Medieval History. The work is among the first to challenge the hegemony of Medieval historians over the history which they narrate, and opens the door for historiophoty by the proposition that "we cannot interpret medieval culture, or any historical culture, except through the prism of the dominat concepts of our own thought worlds."[3]

Until the publication of K.J. Harty's book The Reel Middle Ages (1999) there had been no comprehensive survey of medieval films, and John Aberth's book A Knight at the Movies (2003) can probably be called the first book in English dedicated solely to the subject of history and medieval history on film. One year later, in 2004, the eminent French historian François Amy de la Bretèque published his L'Imaginaire médiéval dans le cinéma occidental, in which he proposes a number of useful theories to finally break out of the circle of historiography vs historiophoty. One of the most pervasive of these, and one picked up in Robert Rosenstone's History on Film/Film on History (2006) is that both History and Film are ways of narrating the past, both equally susceptible in theory (though not in practice) to perversion. As Rosenstone observes, "we always violate the past, even as we attempt to preserve its memory in whatever medium we use... Yet this violation is inevitable, part ofthe price of our attempts at understanding the vanished world of our forebears."[4]

Historiophoty today, therefore, is an ongoing process which recognises the inherent problems in bringing history in general- and medieval history in particular, given its vulnerability to be hijacked by the fantasy genre- to life on the screen. One of the major breakthroughs has been in finally overcoming the reluctance to accept film as history by the recognition that it is not a 'type' of history, but rather that cinema makes use of its own cinematic techniques in order to narrate its history, proposing not a challenge to historical records but simply an alternative way of narrating them.

[edit] Select films

At over 900 films listed by Harty in 1999, it is beyond the scope of this article to create a complete list. Listed here are some of the best and most significant films in both quality and historical accuracy.

Sorted by date.

Date Era Title IMDB Country Reviews Notes
1928 1431 The Passion of Joan of Arc [1] France [2] Joan of Arc. The film was so powerful that it was initially banned in Britain.
1938 13th c. The Adventures of Robin Hood [3] USA [4] Prince John and the Norman Lords begin oppressing the Saxon masses in King Richard's absence, a Saxon lord fights back as the outlaw leader of a rebel guerrilla army.
1938 13th c. Alexander Nevsky [5] USSR [6] Russians defend against invading German Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades of the 13th century.
1957 13th / 14th c. The Seventh Seal [7] Sweden [8] about a knight returning from a crusade playing a chess game with death during the Black Plague.
1960 13th c. The Virgin Spring [9] Sweden [10] Story of Christian medieval Swedish family whose daughter is raped by vagabonds. Directed by Ingmar Bergman.
1961 11th c. El Cid [11] USA [12] Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero.
1964 12th c. Becket [13] UK [14] Based on Jean Anouilh's play about Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket and King Henry II of England.
1965 11th c. The War Lord [15] USA [16] Based on Leslie Stevens' The Lovers. Charlton Heston is a knight invoking the "right" to sleep with another man's bride on their wedding night.
1966 16th c. A Man for All Seasons [17] UK [18] The story of St. Thomas More.
1966 15th c. Andrei Rublev [19] USSR [20] Life of Andrei Rublev the great 15th century Russian icon painter (Andrey Tarkovsky).
1968 12th c. The Lion in Winter [21] UK [22] King Henry II's three sons all want to inherit the throne. His sons and wife Eleanor of Aquitaine variously plot. Based ten years after the events of the Revolt of 1173-1174.
1976 7th c. The Message [23] UK/Lebanon [24] Also known as Mohammad, Messenger of God. Tagline: The Story of Islam.
1982 16th c. The Return of Martin Guerre [25] France [26] Fictional story, based on actual trial records about an impostor in 16th century Southern France.
1986 14th c. The Name of the Rose [27] France/Italy/Germany [28] Based on the novel by Umberto Eco.
1988 14th c. The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey [29] New Zealand [30] Seeking relief from the Black Death, guided by a boy's vision, people dig a tunnel from 14th century England to 20th century New Zealand.
1989 1415 Henry V [31] Shakespeare's Henry V, Battle of Agincourt. Directed by Kenneth Branagh.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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