From the heroic glamour of Henry V to the heady nationalism of Braveheart, the medieval era has proven a rich source of material for film directors. Robert Bartlett charts Hollywood’s long obsession with the Middle Ages
The 1890s turned out to be a significant decade for William Wallace, Richard the Lionheart and Joan of Arc. That’s because it witnessed the birth of an art form, one that would present their extraordinary stories to a global audience: the moving picture.
The pioneers of this new medium went quickly from single-shot novelty pieces to short narratives, to films an hour or more in length. Meanwhile, thousands of custom-built venues popped up across America, Europe and beyond. In the dying days of the 19th century, a new industry was born.
That industry was greedy for stories, and by the dawn of the 20th century, it was mining many of these tales from the distant past. There has never been a genre of ‘medieval film’ in the way that there has been of westerns or ‘sword-and-sandal’ epics like Ben Hur or Gladiator.
But the past 130 years have witnessed a deluge of movies inspired by the Middle Ages. These have been based on real persons or events, such as El Cid or Joan of Arc; inspired by medieval legends (King Arthur and Robin Hood); or, if we stretch our definition, have been set in imaginary worlds with medieval features, like The Lord of the Rings.
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What kind of Middle Ages do these films present to us? The technology of moving pictures may have been new in the 1890s but cinema was marked by the culture into which it was born: late Romantic European nationalism. This is clear both from the music of early cinema (‘silent films’ were never silent) and from the acting styles of those early films, which borrowed from theatre and opera and often strike modern audiences as melodramatic. It is also evident from the film-makers’ assumptions about heroism, nationalism and romantic love.
These characteristics are clear to see in The Nibelungs (Die Nibelungen), which was released in 1924. Based on medieval German and Scandinavian stories, Fritz Lang’s two-part epic tells the story of the tall, blond, dragon-slayer Siegfried; his love for the beautiful Kriemhild; his tragic death; and Kriemhild’s revenge. It has a specially composed score (the English premiere took place in the Royal Albert Hall, with the music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra).
The actors, most of them experienced stage performers, employ the exaggerated gestures so alien to modern performance. The film’s heroic and Germanic tone, and also perhaps the possibly antisemitic characterisation of the villainous dwarf King Alberich, made it a favourite with the Nazi hierarchy. Lang, the director, who was partly of Jewish descent, wisely moved to Hollywood in 1934.
External threats
Many medieval films are marked by a vocal and emphatic nationalism. In El Cid (1961) the eponymous hero is fighting “for Spain” (a country that did not exist in the 11th century), while the nationalism in Braveheart (1995) was so heady that it was even credited with swinging voters towards the Scottish National Party.
The nationalism in these films is defensive, responding to an external threat, which is usually easier to romanticise than wars of conquest. Laurence Olivier’s Henry V is an exception to this rule, perhaps because it was made in 1944 when an invasion of France could be seen as heroic.
Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938) is a classic example of such defensive nationalist epics, as the stern figure of Prince Alexander mobilises the Russian people against the sinister and brutal Germans who are threatening their land. The prince’s struggle culminates in the Battle on the Ice, which takes up an amazing 30 minutes of the film, all to a rousing score by Sergei Prokofiev.
Alexander Nevsky also provides a classic illustration of how cinema history is shaped by politics. The film was made at a moment when the Soviet Union was anxiously aware of the growing threat from Nazi Germany. Its message of victorious patriotic resistance against encroaching Germans answered the propaganda needs of the time and helped earn Eisenstein the Order of Lenin.
But this was a period of huge instability and, in August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a pact that guaranteed peace between their countries and specified which parts of Poland their nations should swallow up.
In the wake of this geopolitical bombshell, Alexander Nevsky was withdrawn from circulation and Eisenstein was reassigned to work on a Wagner opera. Less than two years later, however, in June 1941, Stalin was taken by surprise when Germany launched its gigantic invasion of the Soviet Union. Eisenstein’s epic was now re-released, and it was not long before an Order of Alexander Nevsky was instituted for heroism on the front. Very few moments in film history show such a definitive correspondence between political events and a film’s fortunes.
Another heavyweight medieval topic that has been shaped by modern politics – and never really found a happy treatment in film – is the crusades. In the Middle Ages these enormous military operations could be given a clear narrative, since most western Christians believed that “God wills it”, as the cry went up when the First Crusade was launched. Knowing that Palestine had been Christian before it became Muslim, medieval chroniclers could depict the crusades as self-defence, as recovery of Christ’s patrimony, and even (in the words of a crusader song) as “a tournament between heaven and hell”.
Film-makers of the 20th and early 21st centuries have chosen not to tread this simple path, since militant Christianity did not appeal to many film-makers and might well be seen as a dubious prospect in attracting viewers. In a remarkable number of medieval films, the crusades function simply as a plot device, removing characters from the scene, presenting their lady-loves with doubts about whether they are alive or dead, and creating the possibility of a longed-for return. Almost every Robin Hood film has King Richard returning from crusade, but few films have him actually on crusade.
Those films that are set in the Holy Land tend to take their lead from Walter Scott, who established the historical novel as a major genre in the early 19th century.
Scott’s portrayal of the crusades in his 1825 novel The Talisman centred on the relationship between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, two rulers of different faiths who engaged in warfare against each other but who are linked by common chivalric values.
Over the course of the 20th century, as the Muslim world was decolonised, as militant Islam grew in strength, and as Muslims migrated to the west in greater numbers, film-makers realised that portrayals of the crusades were going to be yet more difficult, and harder to depict with a clear perspective.
Perhaps this explains the narrative fog that surrounds Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Here it is not clear who the bad guys are meant to be, what makes the good guys good, or even what is going on. It’s clear that Christian extremists are bad and that Saladin is wise and shrewd (as is traditional). This is not to mention the remarkable scene where the main character (played by Orlando Bloom), freshly arrived from France, teaches the local inhabitants of Palestine how to dig a well.
Love triangles
Many films with medieval settings are based on literature rather than history, and these usually have a much bigger role for women, since the literature of the period often involves love triangles or love dilemmas. Tales of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, or Tristan, Isolde and Mark, thus have more in common with the modern bourgeois novel, which is often centred on adultery, than stories of the crusades or national struggles. And, from the point of view of Hollywood, it is an advantage that these stories of knightly valour and romantic love are not tied to any modern nation, and do not skirt dangerously near to issues of western colonialism.
King Arthur films have traditionally been straightforward adventures, with lots of fighting, love interests frustrated but then fulfilled, and plenty of manliness and womanliness. Only in the second half of the 20th century do we see the emergence of ironic, unconventional or critical versions of these tales, such as Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac (1974) or John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981).
The one film subject absolutely dominated by a woman is the story of Joan of Arc. Starting in the late 1890s, there have been countless films about Joan. This is partly because her story is truly remarkable – a peasant girl who inspired the resistance to the English invaders of France and who led “her Dauphin” to be crowned in Rheims, before her capture, trial and, on 30 May 1431, death by fire at the stake.
It is also partly because her trial records form one of the richest bodies of reported dialogue to have survived from the Middle Ages, including page after page of Joan’s own words. Entire films have been made based exclusively on these documents.
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Not everyone is dazzled by Joan’s charisma. In the final volume of his majestic history of the Hundred Years’ War, Jonathan Sumption plays down her role in the relief of Orléans, the turning point of the war, and writes that subsequently she “inhabited a fantasy world of her own”. Yet film-makers have had little time for such concerns, presenting a character who is inspired and inspiring, who is credibly a teenage girl but can also lead armies.
One of the most memorable cinematic interpretations of Joan is Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc. In many ways it is an austere film. Silent and black-and-white (of course), it concentrates entirely on Joan’s trial and execution, is set in stark interiors, and draws its dialogue from the trial records.
Above all, it focuses to an astonishing degree on the faces of the protagonists – the ecclesiastical judges and Joan, played (in what seems to have been her only film role) by Renée (or Marie) Falconetti. The heroine’s face often fills the entire screen, conveying in vivid detail her sense of mission, her doubts and her fears.
In a sense, there is nothing ‘medieval’ about Dreyer’s film. Its greatness (for those who consider it great) lies in the brilliance of the framing, the pacing and the acting. But, on the other hand, its emphasis on intense visionary spirituality, on the power of established religion (not at all the same thing) and on the physical brutality of life, does correspond to important features of the medieval world.
In these respects, The Passion of Joan of Arc can be compared with two other arthouse classics with medieval subjects: Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal (1957) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966). Bergman’s film features a real medieval setting – Sweden during the Black Death – but is populated with entirely fictional characters; Tarkovsky’s movie is based on a real person, the Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev, surrounded by a mixture of real and imagined events. Both films feature central characters who are troubled by religious doubt, men who are making their way through a landscape where they encounter religious fundamentalism and the brutality of power.
Blatant absurdities
A question that is asked of most historical films is: how accurate is it? Medieval historians are sometimes irritated by blatant absurdities, such as the French knights at Agincourt being hoisted onto their horses by cranes, as depicted in Olivier’s Henry V, or by the battle of Stirling Bridge in Braveheart taking place without a bridge. However, given that medieval historians form but a tiny proportion of cinema audiences, another possible response to this question of accuracy is: does it matter?
I would argue that, in one important respect, it does matter – because divergences from factual accuracy can shine a light on the film-maker’s approach to his or her subject. A perfect example is the romance in Braveheart between the Scottish national hero William Wallace, who was executed in 1305, and the French princess Isabella, who was aged nine at the time of his execution.
This impossible affair was not a result of simple ignorance on the part of the film-makers but fits into a larger theme of the film: that the struggle between the English and the Scots extended to a conflict over women’s bodies. The trouble starts when the demonic English king, Edward I, allows English lords in Scotland to sleep with brides on their wedding night. In the first resistance raid, a husband whose wife has endured this kills the lord who was responsible. And Wallace is himself stirred to action after English soldiers attempt to rape his wife.
This portrayal of the struggle in sexual terms extends to the main political players. Prince Edward, son of Edward I, cannot satisfy his wife (his notoriously homophobic characterisation drew widespread protest) but William Wallace can, and impregnates her, thus diverting the bloodline of the English monarchy. This is totally absurd. But it’s not a meaningless absurdity. It has a point to make in the world of the film.
As Braveheart proves, people should not go to medieval films to learn the history of the Middle Ages. But, when they do go, the chances are that what they watch unfold before them will fire their imaginations and stay with them for the rest of their lives (I have clear memories of watching the battle of Agincourt from Henry V as a 10-year-old). It is unclear whether the age of the cinema is over. But the age of the moving image is certainly not. That is how most people will continue to get their picture of the past.
Chess, plagues and ‘watery tarts’
Five landmark medieval films depicting the Middles Ages
The Seventh Seal (director: Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
This film contains one of the most famous images in cinema history – a knight playing chess with Death on a stony beach. It is the starting point for a journey in which the knight (played by Max von Sydow) travels through a Sweden ravaged by the Black Death, encountering on the way a group of actors, a witch about to be burned, a jealous blacksmith and a renegade priest.
Bergman uses the story to present questions of faith, meaning and religious doubt, while his cinematographer creates arresting images that stay in the mind forever.
The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968)
At Christmas 1183, King Henry II and his family gather to quarrel over the succession to the throne. Since about half of all medieval high politics revolved around dynastic disputes, this is no trivial topic, and it is explored with gusto by the stellar cast, including Peter O’Toole as the king, Oscar-winning Katharine Hepburn as his wife, Eleanor (who utters the wonderful line: “It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians!”), and Anthony Hopkins as Richard the Lionheart.
The film was based on a stage play and, despite occasional outside scenes and action, maintains the intimate claustrophobia of sibling rivalry, father-mother competition and the ageing of the powerful.
The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986)
This is an attempt to film Umberto Eco’s surprise bestselling novel of the same name, published in Italian in 1980 and English in 1983, which for a while apparently had millions of people reading (or intending to read or pretending to read) about medieval semiotics (sign-theory).
The film gutted that for the simpler narrative thread of a murder mystery in a monastery, with Sean Connery as the Sherlock-like friar trying to crack the case. A team of expert advisers were recruited to get the details of 14th-century Italy right, from artwork to gesture.
El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961)
A full-blooded three-hour epic, this Hollywood-style treatment of ‘Spain’s greatest hero’ is borne on the broad shoulders of Charlton Heston. It interweaves the historical account of what is known of the 11th-century Castilian warrior, with a much later legendary elaboration about El Cid’s relationship with his wife (played by Sophia Loren).
Most remarkable about the film is the way it avoids presenting a simple Christian versus Muslim conflict, instead making a point that Christians and Muslims can live together in loyalty to the nation of Spain.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, 1975)
The first venture of the comedy troupe into cinema, the film draws knowledgeably on many medieval tropes. Arthurian romance, knightly violence, plague, superstition and filth are all given a characteristically absurdist twist, by exaggeration, anachronism and bathos: peasants argue about “anarcho-syndicalist communes”, the Lady of the Lake is described as a “watery tart”, etc.
The troupe has been accused of “undergraduate puerility”, but the film certainly has its place in the long history of parodic and comic views of the Middle Ages, from Don Quixote to A Knight’s Tale.
Robert Bartlett is a medievalist who has presented a number of BBC series on the Middle Ages. His most recent book, The Middle Ages and the Movies, was published by Reaktion in 2022.
This article was first published in the March 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine