Customer Reviews

A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film

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Aberth provides us an excellent survey of cinematic treatments of the medieval era. Each chapter opens with a survey of the history the films cover, tnen proceeds to discuss several key films. The chapters cover King Arthur films, Viking films, Crusade films, Robin Hood films, Black Death films, and Joan of Arc films. Aberth's judgments are pretty reliable, as he favors classic films such as Bergman's Seventh Seal and Dreyer's film on Joan of Arc, but he also finds value in newer films such as Navigator. A very worthwhile study by a historian of the middle ages.

This book may have some use as a reference resource, especially for those readers not familiar with many films about the Middle Ages. Its publication as a serious work of history and film is, however, an embarrassment to Routledge. Though Aberth says he does not simply want to point out historical inaccuracies and anachronisms in the films he discusses, he ends up largely doing just that. Dividing the historical background off from discussion of the films, he uses History (naively considered as transparent and self-evident to the "objective" historian) to bludgeon various films and their directors. These films and film direcotrs supposedly "distort" history in order to "push an agenda." If Aberth knows little about history, he knows even less about film and film history. Reductive readings of the films (often cribbed from other writers) in relation to their moment of production is about all Aberth has to over in a rambling, poorly written, and simplistic excuse for a book (that should never have been published). Aberth offers no explanation of the book's organization, nor does he bother to explain the omission of numerous films from his book. Unfortunately, Aberth has no competitors in English as far as book length studies go. (...)