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Reviewed by:
  • Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film
  • Paul Sturtevant
Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman. Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. 445 pp. $60.00 cloth; $30.00 paper.

Since the 1990s, the subfield of the study of the depiction of the Middle Ages in film (also known as “medieval film,” “cinematic medievalism,” [End Page 337] or similar) has garnered a large amount of academic attention and activity. The monographs and collections released in this subfield generally take one of two approaches: either they address a small subset of the large corpus of medieval films distinguished by topic (examples include Hollywood in the Holy Land [ed. Haydock and Risden, 2009] or Cinema Arthuriana [ed. Harty, 2002]), or, less often, they attempt to address the entirety of medieval film through a particular theoretical perspective (for example, Movie Medievalism [Haydock, 2008], or Medieval Film [ed. Bernau and Bildhauer, 2010]). Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film is, as its name implies, of the latter type, and remarkable in the breadth and scope of its ambition and accomplishment.

The monograph is split roughly into three parts. Part I (Chapters 1–3) presents a broad exploration of the theory and the methods of cinematic medievalism. Its introductory chapter lays out many of the core issues central to the study of the medieval film today: in particular, the interaction between medieval past and medievalist present, and between fantasy and history. Chapter 2 presents what the authors call a “sociological stylistics” of the medieval film, regarding many aspects of “the cinematic codes that have developed over the last century for representing the Middle Ages” (24). Particularly interesting is their Barthesian semiological “mythology” of the medieval film, addressing the genres, formulae, and conventions that filmmakers use to indicate “the Middle Ages.” Chapter 3 addresses the vexed question of historical accuracy in medieval film through the lens of postmodern deconstruction.

Part II more closely examines examples of medieval film in light of their sociopolitical contexts and messages. Chapter 4 focuses on the representation of medieval political authority, from the complex antiestablishment messages of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a favorite of the authors), to conservative, nationalist, or dynastic discourses in Excalibur, Becket, and The Lion in Winter. Chapter 5 considers three Joan of Arc films, particularly the “shifting and unstable” (109) interpretation of her life (and associated myth) that constantly remakes Joan as a saint for all times, places, and political ideologies. Chapter 6 then addresses the projection of modern politics into a medieval setting: Camelot is seen as a nostalgic American bourgeois fantasy, Braveheart as an instance of the real political impact of medieval film. Chapter 7 examines three films that depict the Crusades within the context of the politics of the times in which they were made. Each film uses the past to argue, [End Page 338] through allegory, the hope that peace may yet be achievable in our time, to “stare down the apocalypse with wishful thinking” (241).

Part III addresses films that grapple with anxieties of modernity: consumerism, commodification, and the failure of signification. Chapter 8 examines three films that demythologize the familiar Arthurian legends, which dismiss and lay bare “our desire for origin, for truth, for stability, for history” (286). Chapter 9 examines Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring and New Zealander Vincent Ward's The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey as reflections on the breakdown of society when faced with nuclear or ecological apocalypse. The final chapter addresses the most recent wave of cinematic medievalisms: big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas that use the Middle Ages to promote capitalist, materialist desires in young people.

As should be obvious, the scope of this monograph is impressive, covering both a geographically and temporally wide swath of films. Finke and Shichtman bring to bear a range of methods for examining their subjects, giving due attention to the aesthetic and political, to audience reception and cultural context. However, as a result of this scope, the book at times feels unfocused. In reading it, I found many enjoyable and well-considered passages, such as their analysis of knight-as-rockstar in A Knight's Tale...

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