Yes, but what about Marco Polo!?! Gary Cooper stuffing dry pasta in his pocket to take back to Italy, Basil Rathbone looking evilly inscrutable, Alan Hale as some sort of nomadic chief, and best of all the art deco interiors of the Chinese palaces--big, white, and glossy.
This took some deciding, though. I almost voted for The Long Ships (to an Old Norse specialist, awful Viking movies have a special awfullness) or The War Lord in which I believe someone says to Charlton Heston "I hate your knightly guts." Still, I couldn't shake the mental picture of Cooper, contemplating the pasta and repeating to himself "spa-get." No contest.
Of course, he can now tell us all there has been written about Wallace and Robert the Bruce since BRAVEHEART appeared. And, you know, he has had no trouble separating the truth from fiction.
i like your dialogue about medieval movies idea, richard. BTW, my vote for the worse medieval movie made is ROBIN AND MARIAN starring Sean Connery. This from a huge connery fan :)
May I enter a nomination for "Brother Sun, Sister Moon"? I recently had an opportunity to view it for the first time since its original release in the early '70s and wound up rather wishing I hadn't paid to experience it then--especially the Donovan "Do your own thing" soundtrack.
>From my own experience I can only agree with Thorin and Richard. All through my student years (and long after), whenever a non-academic asked me the subject of my research and I answered Eleanor of Castile, the almost inevitable result was a remark about how well Katharine Hepburn had portrayed her. When I explained the distinction people were surprised to learn that there were in fact THREE English queens named Eleanor, but learn they did and generally they welcomed the information (especially when I got to the part about Eleanor of Castile allegedly sucking the poison out of Edward I's arm--see, SOMEBODY loved him!).
And please let me put in a nomination for "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" as the worst medieval film of all time. I recently had an opportunity to see it again for the first time since its original release in the early '70s and found myself wishing I hadn't paid to experience it back then--most especially Donovan's "Do your own thing" soundtrack.
May I nominate Cecil B. De Mille's "The Crusades." It is memorable not only for its conflation of all Crusades into one big mess but most especially Loretta Young as Berengaria spending a brief vacation in Saladin's harem. I defy anyone to beat that! Jo Ann
> Is this the film with a disguised Saladin sneaking into the Christian camp to cure Richard Sanders' very unconvincing Richard? And an otherwise unknown cousin of Richard's named Edith Plantagenet (!!!) in love with a mere knight? Certainly a strong contender in any event...
No, but that is a very fine candidate also. It is _King Richard and the Crusaders_ based on Walter Scott's The Talisman. Richard is played by George Sanders and (I think) Saladin is played by Rex Harrison. Jo Ann
With all due respect to the truly terrible films which others have mentioned, I believe that the worst is still yet to come. "Crusade" with a release, I think, in the spring or early summer of 1997 will be directed by Paul Verhoeven of "Showgirls" fame. The star will be Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is written by Walton Green who wrote the wonderful (NOT!) Island of Dr. Moreau. I really wish I was making this up. I'm not.
> No, but that is a very fine candidate also. It is _King Richard and the > Crusaders_ based on Walter Scott's The Talisman. Richard is played by > George Sanders and (I think) Saladin is played by Rex Harrison. > Jo Ann > You're absolutely right--it is Rex Harrison. JCP
> With all due respect to the truly terrible films which others have > mentioned, I believe that the worst is still yet to come. > "Crusade" with a release, I think, in the spring or early summer of > 1997 will be directed by Paul Verhoeven of "Showgirls" fame. The star will > be Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is written by Walton Green who wrote the > wonderful (NOT!) Island of Dr. Moreau. > I really wish I was making this up. I'm not. > > Eli Lehrer > eal8@cornell.edu > So much for the linear theory of progress in history--first Braveheart, now this. JCP
> May I nominate Cecil B. De Mille's "The Crusades." It is memorable not > only for its conflation of all Crusades into one big mess but most > especially Loretta Young as Berengaria spending a brief vacation in > Saladin's harem. I defy anyone to beat that! Ah, yes, and with C. Aubrey Smith as "The Hermit", tied to a stake on the Saracens' parapet, arms outstretched, crying "In this sign, you will conquer!!"
But my favorite Worst Medieval Movie remains "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." I've never quite gotten over the moment when Kevin Costner's Robin asks a belligerent Will Scarlett, "Why do you hate me? DId I harm you in some former life?"
Let's not forget The Conqueror, starring John Wayne as Ghenghiz Khan. And, if we don't wish to restrict ourselves to purely historical movies, some truly aweful versions of the Arthurian legends have been brought to the screen.
On the other side of the ledger, has anyone else seen Tarkowski's Andrei Rublev? I don't know enough about Medieval Russia to judge it. It seemed to do a reasonable job portraying the period, and is cinematically outstanding, but Rublev's character struck me as a bit too modern.
I would recommend "The NAme of the Rose" for it's accurate (?) portrayal of medieval dentistry. See it on wide screen. Take your orthodntic friends. Otherwise: good philosophy, bad mystery. >
There was also a REAL stinker back in the '50s called "The Viking" with Tony Curtis (of Black Shield fame) and Kirk Douglas with Janet Leigh as the Anglo-Saxon princess they were fighting over. If you look closely at some of the rowing scenes, one of the Vikings has a very visible vaccination scar and another is wearing an equally visible gold wristwatch.
And let's not forget the evergreen "Prince Valiant"!
> > Of course, I am personally above such rancor. I specialize in medieval > Spain, which has scarcely been mentioned since "The Cid," and who can find > fault with anything with which Sophia Loren was associated? But man that scene w/the Cid riding out w/a stake up his back is good but hokey cinema!
> Of course, there was the Spanish version of The Poem of Fernan Gonzalez, > which was so faithful to the medieval tale that I appear to be the only > person still alive to have viewed it. Please, remind me-- I'm not sure which film you are talking about. I love great films about the MA's. >
> In any event, I haven't heard anyone's nomination for the worst medieval > movie ever filmed. I have a special place in my heart for The Black Shield > of Falworth, but I'm sure that there are many others equally, or even more, > despicable. God! tough to top that-- I look fwd to the replies. I think I love truely magisterially bad cinema more than the above!
My vote is with your nomination of "the Viking", especially if that's the flick where they go after the "Golden Bell" in Morocco, as if Vikings just happened to be in the neighborhood.
Although, "Valiant" is pretty horrible, even if you ARE able to look past Robert Wagner's hair (let alone his acting).
Whenever the topic of films set in the middle ages comes up, I feel compelled to write to mention that some years ago Lorraine Attreed and James Powers (Holy Cross College) did a presentation at the AHA on this topic: "Lessons in the Dark: Teaching the Middle Ages with Film" [approximate title]. The presentation included an Attreed/Powers variant on Siskel & Ebert for about a dozen films. I believe the paper has subsequently been published. Bill Schipper and/or Paul Gans, take note: if you're serious about doing that web page, they may be a resource for you. I can send you an early draft of their paper if you like.
John PArson's suggestion of The Vikings is a good one. But this is the best of the Viking movies. There's Eric the Viking, an attempt and failure to recreate the Monty Python Holy Grail or Life of Brian attitude. Then there is the Long Ships, with Richard Widmark as the Viking hero and Sidney Poitier as his northern African, Muslim, bad-guy counterpart, and perhaps the worst was The Norseman starring Lee Majors with a cadre of football players who wend their way to America to free Major's dad from the Indians. This one is so bad that it is a classic. Kelly DeVries
> Glad you mentioned this. It was so bad I had half forgotten it. But THE VIKING is surely the worst medieval movie I have ever seen.
Don't forget some of those 30 minute documentaries on TLC or discovery, I recall seeing knights at the battle of Hastings with glasses.
No, not at all. You have already done more than many. I do a number of similar things. Indeed, I've just shown "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (which most of my class had already seen) and challenged them to find all the sendups of common ideas about things "medieval".
"The Long Ships," which I believe Jo Ann MacNamara already nominated, is the one with the golden bell in Morocco, with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier emoting vociferously but to no effect. The most enjoyable characterization in the film is Lionel Jeffries' mute harem eunuch.
We've also forgotten the horrendous "Ivanhoe" with Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor and Olivia de Havilland.
> John PArson's suggestion of The Vikings is a good one. But this is the best > of the Viking movies. There's Eric the Viking, an attempt and failure to > recreate the Monty Python Holy Grail or Life of Brian attitude. Then there is > the Long Ships, with Richard Widmark as the Viking hero and Sidney Poitier as > his northern African, Muslim, bad-guy counterpart, and perhaps the worst was > The Norseman starring Lee Majors with a cadre of football players who wend > their way to America to free Major's dad from the Indians. This one is so > bad that it is a classic. > Kelly DeVries >
Kelly, the Majors entry was one clunker I had managed to make myself forget all about! Talk about suppressed memories. Right down there with *Plan 9 from Outer Space.... I once taught a course on medieval literature into film and discovered that film and things medieval are apples and oranges. Look at it as several questions--what are bad movies or good movies? what films are bad or inaccurate representations of the history of the middle ages? what films are merely reflections of romantic literature (like Ivanhoe) or other recent texts (Camelot and the Once and Future King, for example--a far cry from Malory)? what modern films contain elements that are instructive for understanding if not the fact, the spirit of the middle ages? In that last category (and at the risk of being misunderstood), I would put Easy Rider (Captain America and his squire Billy go off in search of adventure). In another category I would put a film version of the Song of Roland (dating to about 1978 when I saw it in Chicago) which I remember as a bad movie and a bad representation of the text and of medieval culture in general (perhaps informed by notions that the legend of Roland grew up along the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostella, the film manages to combine elements of the Song of Roland with the Canterbury Tales). Ivanhoe and the Knights of the Round Table were films made by the same man who remade the Prisoner of Zenda in the fashion almost of a medieval scribe--Thorpe put the old version of the film in the moviola and copied it scene for scene. Great medieval films in my book are Lang's two Nibelungen films, Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (imagery modelled on manuscript illumination, filmscript a somewhat modified verse translation of Chretien de Troyes' Perceval) and (in nice contrast to the Rohmer) Bresson's Lancelot du Lac (unhistorical though all these films may be). I always add to that list Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A good medieval film might tell us something visually (e.g., battle scenes in Braveheart) that we might have a hard time imagining about the middle ages, or it might simply be good visually and tell us nothing about the middle ages at all, or, as many have said, it may simply inspire us to go learn more about the period in question (like Lady Jane, a handsome film from about ten years ago showing recently on Bravo).
Paul Halsall's List
This had been a project I had intended to pursue at some point. I
am glad someoen else is. Here is a short list of Western Movies,
and a longer list of Byzantine Movies, courtesy of Elis Eshad
of Israel.
WESTERN
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Dir,
Sophia. Loren
Braveheart, USA, 1985, 178 mins
Dir. Mel Gibson
Star; Mel Gibson
The Lion in Winter, 1968, USA, 134 mins
Dir. Anthony Harvey,
Star, Katherine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins
Sister Sun, Brother Moon
Dir. Franco Zefferelli
Star.
The Name of the Rose, 1984, Italy/France/Germany, 130 mins
Dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud
Star. Sean Connery, Christian Slater
Le retour de Martin Guerre, 1982, France,
Dir. Daniel Vigne
Star. Gerard Depardieu
The Navigator, 1988, New Zealand, 92 mins.
Dir. Vincent Walker
Sub Category - Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Sub Category - Arthurian
First Knight
Comedy
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
BYZANTINE
-Pre-Byzantine
*FABIOLA directed in Italy by ENRICO GUZZANOI (1917)
Chronologically just a short time before the foundation of Byzantium [From Eli
Eshad
Whenever the topic of films set in the middle ages comes up, I feel compelled
to write to mention that some years ago Lorraine Attreed and James Powers
(Holy Cross College) did a presentation at the AHA on this topic: "Lessons in
the Dark: Teaching the Middle Ages with Film" [approximate title]. The
presentation included an Attreed/Powers variant on Siskel & Ebert for about a
dozen films. I believe the paper has subsequently been published.
Bill Schipper and/or Paul Gans, take note: if you're serious about doing that
web page, they may be a resource for you. I can send you an early draft of
their paper if you like.
From Paul J. Gans
I can't help but think of the impact the television show "Roots" had on
America around 1977. Despite its overly simple theme -- All white people
are evil or wimpy, all black people are strong and good -- THOUSANDS of
people swamped their local libraries and geneological societies to find
their own "roots". So from watered-down infotainment can come a real
thirst for knowledge. This is bad?
What about the incomparable "Omar Khyahham" (sp?) starring Cornell Wilde?
When Omar finally gets to the heart of the assassin's stronghold (you know
they're bad guys because they thrown people down holes and stuff), the evil
rotten chief terrorist of the medieval world, The Old Man of the Mountains,
turns out to be Edward Platt, later known as The Chief of CONTROL on "Get
Smart!"
> > The War
> > Lord in which I believe someone says to Charlton Heston "I hate your knightl
y
> > guts."
i do not remember that line, but i must protest at the inclusion of the
warlord in this one. it is a very interesting film which heston made
after his success with ben hur and chose to do things like wear a
bowl-cut harido which his pr men told him wd ruin his rep as a
sex-symbol. aside from the ius primae noctis, for which an interesting
rationale is provided, the film is really quite realistic (the
claustrophobic quarters of a dungeon fortress) and very interesting.
recently rereleased and worth a look.
All this talk about bad medieval movies has called to mind three that I would
like to nonimate:
1) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ca. early 1970's with Murray Head as
Gawain. Recently shown on TNT's Saturday Nitro. OUCH!
2) The Sword and the Sorcerer (sp?) with Miles O'Keefe as Gawain. Great hair
that didn't move...at all!!! Medieval theme taken to the mystic outer limits!
3) Lionheart with Eric Stoltz leading the "Children's Crusade"
However, one of the best I have seen in recent years is Stealing Heaven about
Abelard and Heloise's love affair. Of course, some of it is not "reality"
but then, aren't movies supposed to be like that? :+_)
I had the privilege of seeing "The Poem of Fernando Gonzalez" performed
two Christmas's ago at The Cloisters medieval art museum in New York.
The group doing the medieval play -- complete with costumes and original
music played on medieval instruments -- was, as I recall, the New York
Medieval Ensemble. I'm sure The Cloisters could supply more details if
asked.
The play was completely accessible and, in truth, an absolute delight.
There were probably two hundred people in attendence, including many
children, and everyone had a great time. As you know, the piece is
entertaining and, by turns, both funny and exciting.
This would be a great play to bring to any college campus. For the few of
us interested in the Spanish middle ages, I can't think of a better way
to introduce people to our particular (and peculiar) passion.
> But there are only so many times one can repeat the same basic information
> without growing weary of it to ones very bones. Surely there should be
> someplace where we can go and discuss history at more than a basic level?
> One of the aspects I have most enjoyed about Mediev-L is that it is such a
> pleasant change from the other internet venues where history is discussed.
> Here I am not constantly feeling I ought to respond to correct some
> simplistic factual error, but can sit back and listen to learned
> discussion. Here I can do more learning than teaching. Here I can exchange
> information, rather than (mainly) unilaterally giving it.
>
> The internet doesn't need yet another place to constantly repeat the same
> conversations about "Braveheart". It does need more places where academics
> and knowledgeable amateurs can exchange ideas, and aid one another in their
> research and teaching. Surely it is not too much to ask that there to be
> one place where I can see a subject line like "Robert the Bruce" or
> "Wallace" and not dread its contents?
>
> Perhaps the undergraduates and interested but not yet knowledgeable
> amateurs could shift how they think of this list. It is not like a
> classroom, or any of the other university facilities provided to educate
> students. Rather, it is more like a faculty lounge, or perhaps more
> accurately, a professional historical conference, which are primarily for
> the benefit of historians (academic and/or amateur), not students. But,
> unlike a faculty lounge which has a sign on the door saying "Staff Only",
> or a conference with its fees, anyone is welcome to come here, free of
> charge. Freshmen may rub shoulders with eminent Professors. But consider,
> if you were to find yourself at a history conference, would you really
> expound on your theory of William Wallace based on popular movies,
> historical novels, or popular (as opposed to academic) histories? Or would
> you take advantage of the extraordinary opportunity, and listen? And, as
> opportunity arose, ask advice on how to take your own studies further?
> Then, later, perhaps, after you've done some serious study, venture your
> own theories?
I agree with Ms. Krossa. I would suggest to folks wanting a
more "free-wheeling" conversation that they try the internet
newsgroup soc.history.medieval While not on the level of
MEDIEV-L, it has been the stage where many innocent questions
have been asked and answered. The questions are wide-ranging
and no single person knows all the answers.
I also invite the regular members of this group to participate
in soc.history.medieval as time permits. (Several of you have,
in fact, done so.) It is an excellent place to educate non-
professionals and to help spread knowledge of the middle ages.
It is through groups like soc.history.medieval that we help
create interest in our field.
Be warned though. _Braveheart_ and King Arthur come up regularly
and are dealt with regularly. Indeed, as I recall, Sharon
Krossa was quite active in correcting many myths not too long ago.
To date that newsgroup has had few flame wars and not too many
"nutcases", but both do exist. Don't let that deter you. Just
ignore them.
[more deletions]
----- Paul J. Gans [gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
From owner-mediev-l@UKANVM.CC.UKANS.EDU Sun Nov 17 00:16:06 1996
Received: from piva.ucs.mun.ca (piva.ucs.mun.ca [134.153.2.63]) by piva.ucs.mun.ca (8.7.6/8.7.3) with SMTP id AAA18577; Sun, 17 Nov 1996 00:16:06 -0330 (NST)
Message-Id: <199611170346.AAA18577@piva.ucs.mun.ca>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 22:46:02 -0500
Reply-To: Medieval History
Yes, I'm interested. If I can get their permission to post
the material, I'll set up a web page.