CHESS, PLAGUES AND ‘WATERY TARTS’

Five landmark films depicting the Middle 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, -ing 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 -atharine Hepburn as his wife, 'leanor (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 'co’s surprise bestselling novel of the same name, published in Italian in 1980 and 'nglish 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 art-work 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 'l 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.