Filming the Middle Ages Kindle Edition

Filming the Middle Ages uncovers the hidden history of the medieval in film. It shows how, from the earliest silent films to recent blockbusters, medieval topics and plots set between 500 and 1500 AD have played an important but overlooked role in the development of cinema. _Bettina Bildhauer provides incisive new interpretations of classics such as Murnau’s Faust and Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky; and rediscovers some forgotten works of genius like Douglas Sirk’s Sign of the Pagan or Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet. Both art house films like The Seventh Seal and The Passion of Joan of Arc and popular films like Beowulf or The Da Vinci Code are shown to cleverly use the Middle Ages to challenge modern ideas of historical progress, to find alternatives to a print-dominated culture, and even to question what makes us human. Filming the Middle Ages pays special attention to animated and detective films of the medieval, and even more radically, demonstrates that the invention of cinema itself is considered a return to the Middle Ages by many film theorists and film makers. Read more