I am particularly fond of Medieval movies so I was very keen to do this list. As I progressed through my research I was shocked to realize how few of them are accurate historically. For that reason this is a list of 9 movies when I would have preferred to do 10. For the purposes of this list, the Medieval period is considered to have run from the 6th century to the 16th century. The films selected here are not always 100% accurate but are the best of all movies of this genre for being as accurate as possible; do not expect to see the Knight’s Tale here.
King Henry V of England (Kenneth Branagh) is insulted by the King of France. As a result, he leads his army into battle against France. Along the way, the young king must struggle with the sinking morale of his troops and his own inner doubts. The war culminates at the bloody Battle of Agincourt. This film is based on the Shakespeare play of the same name and it contains brilliant battle scenes.
1327: after a mysterious death in a Benedictine Abbey, the monks are convinced that the apocalypse is coming. With the Abbey to play host to a council on the Franciscan’s Order’s belief that the Church should rid itself of wealth, William of Baskerville, a respected Franciscan monk, is asked to assist in determining the cause of the untimely death. This film depicts the turmoil that the Franciscan religious order was going through at the time and – like all work by Umberto Eco – is extremely well researched.
This is a historical epic concerning the birth of the Islamic religion and the story of Mohammed, who, in accordance with the tenants of Islam, is never seen or heard (any physical depiction of Mohammed is considered a sin within Islam). In Mecca in the 7th century, Mohammed is visited by a vision of the Angel Gabriel, who urges him to lead the people of Mecca to cast aside the 300 idols of Kaaba and instead worship the one true God.
This is an epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz (“El Cid” to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honor, still succeeds in taking the initiative and driving the Moors from Spain. While aspects of this film may be slightly off (such as calling for Victory for Spain, which – as a political entity – was of little relevance at the time), it is nearly unique in its accurate portrayal of the time of the Crusades.
Andreiv Rublev charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, a period marked by endless fighting between rival Princes and by Tatar invasions. Tarkovsky is well known for his beautiful cinematography and that is definitely visible in this film.
The story takes place in 16th century England. But men like Sir Thomas More, who love life yet have the moral fiber to lay down their lives for their principles, are found in every century. Concentrating on the last seven years of English chancellor’s life, the struggle between More and his King, Henry VIII, hinges on Henry’s determination to break with Rome so he can divorce his current wife and wed again, and good Catholic More’s inability to go along with such heresy. While there is a slight bit of confusion over relationships in the movie, it is an extremely accurate portrayal of the time and situation the Saint Thomas More found himself in. You would be far better watching this than any of the “Elizabeth” movies of late which lack the accuracy and integrity of Zinnemann’s work.
In this movie, Martin Guerre returns to his hometown in the middle of France after being away at war since he was a child. Nobody recognizes him, and the people who knew him suspect he is not Martin, even though he knows intimate details about his family and friends. This film is based on true events and was remade more recently as Sommersby featuring Jodie Foster and Richard Gere.
In 1183 Henry II summonses his sons Richard, John, and Geoffrey to join him and his prison-bound wife Eleanor at Chinon for a family Christmas, along with King Philip II of France and his sister Alais, Henry’s mistress. Philip is insisting Alais now marries John as agreed years before else he wants her dowry, the lands of the Vexen, back. As Eleanor has already given the province of Aquitaine to Richard, the outcome of this may decide the very future of England. Starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole, this is a film you must see.
You can’t get much more accurate than acting out the authentic court transcript of the trial of Saint Joan of Arc. This is a very old silent film, but it is ranked as number 1 for its attachment to the true story without the deviations or ulterior motives that many other portrays of St Joan have, and the fact that the lead actress (Maria Falconetti) gives what many consider to be the greatest acting performance ever recorded on film. If you haven’t seen this one, you should.
Synopses Courtesy of IMDB
not the best list. but I will give it the benefit of the doubt. weak list considering IMDB roolz. I am drunk. LISTVERSE is the bestt!!!!!!!!
But… Braveheart was such a great movie!
Regarding the Message, yes it was a fairly accurate picture of the beginnings of Islam but only in a sanitized sense. What the movie failed to show was all of Muhammed’s nasty teachings and brutalities…ie. His marriage to a 6 year old girl and laying her when she was 9, his teaching of beating of wives, his murderous doctrine of jihad (not just an internal struggle as liberals would love you to believe), hist teaching of death to those that leave islam, his murder of 900 innocent Jewish civilians….and on and on it goes…
It isn’t an accident that Islam was spread with a sword and maintains it brutal hold on its people with such feriousious teachings!
Good list otherwise!
64. Devon – April 15th, 2008 at 2:13 am
easy explantation:
all of the stuff you wrote are blatant lies.
you fail miserably. this is a list with movies which are historically accurate.
you probably also believed the english did do prima nocte in braveheart?
Good list and I even agree with the place order, but I’m surprised you didn’t include “Becket”
Finally, a silent movie makes #1 on a movie list!
What a useful list! Of these, I’ve only seen Henry V, The Name of the Rose, and The Return of Martin Guerre. All good, though Guerre was a little dry. I was beginning to believe movies based on the medieval period had to be inaccurate. I love Braveheart and 13th Warrior despite their problems. Kingdom of Heaven’s numerous inaccuracies actually distracted me from the bad acting and good costumes. King Arthur was revoltingly bad in almost every way. I’ve already posted on listverse about Timeline. Single most infuriating disappointment in film treatment of books!
Maybe we need a least historically accurate medieval movies list!
@robneiderman: “Maybe we need a least historically accurate medieval movies list!”
I nominate “Men in Tights” to top THAT list!
you forgot monty python and the holy grail!
I hope you guys aren’t suggesting Braveheart as historically accurate.
William Wallace as the true father of the King Henry, his love affair with the princess that was actually quite underage in the real history, Scottish men wearing kilt at the time they actually started wearing one much later.
It amazes me how so often you set yourself up as an authority. Such as “It’s much better than the Elizabeth movies.” Yes, A Man For All Seasons is a great movie. So is Elizabeth. Yes, there are changes made to it, but to simply dismiss it. Also, Henry V, is also great, and accurate to Shakespeare, a lot more than actual history.
IMK, did you see La Passion Béatrice in on Comm Ave in Boston behind BU engineering building? because i swear I had the same experience, no one said a word – neither did I until I got home.
It is a very memorable film that doses away with any notions of the middle ages being chivalrous.
ouiareborg: in the context of this list (where accuracy is the key) – the Elizabeth movies are both inferior to A Man for All Seasons. That is not setting myself up as an authority – it is stating a fact. You could say that I “simply dismissed” Men in Tights too – how is that any different? This is not about great filming or acting, it is about historical accuracy. Both Elizabeth films fall flat in that area.
Missing – Stealing Heaven. Story of Abelard and Heloise.
ouiareborg:
What *is* an authority, then? How does one set oneself up as an authority? What are critics but people with opinions, who can write (some of them) and maybe some credentials?
Really, I’ve always hated that dismissive thing, which is accusatory at the same time: “you set yourself up as an authority.” It’s one thing if someone claims authority in matters which DO and should require some kind of official standing… but in terms of taste—don’t toss that accusation around. It’s silly.
Jamie is intelligent, has done things with his life, accomplished things, and is well-educated. To me his opinions are worth something, and particularly so on certain subjects. If you don’t like his opinions, fine… but don’t try to belittle someone by tossing out that “you set yourself up as an authority” line… as if to say, “your ideas are no better than mine, so how dare you express them, since they disagree with mine.”
yes, i think your word about those 9 movies is correct.
yes, you are right.
Kingdom Of Heaven
You really REALLY have to be joking.
Name of the Rose is 100% fiction. Entertaining and a great film, but, fiction.
The Message. Quote “…Mohammed is visited by a vision of the Angel Gabriel …” One of these is not a historical figure. The other is of very dubious origin.
El Cid : “….it is nearly unique in its accurate portrayal of the time of the Crusades….” Oh, give me a break. Hollywood schmoos like never before.Wonderful entertainment and only marginally more accurate than…….
A Man for All Seasons.
As for The Passion of Joan of Arc, wonderful. Amazing and historically as accurate as a one armed blind man trying to hit a bulls eye with a cross bow in a strong gale on a foggy autumn morning.
P.
The list is really incomplete there are tons of fairly accurate movies how about:
Becket
Masada
Lawrence of Arabia
Thirteen Days
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Camille Claudel
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Amadeus
Gandhi
Schindler’s List
Pollock
Gettysburg
billdakelski: Did you miss the title of the list? Half of the films you mentioned are not based in the middle ages. In fact, did you read the list at all? The Passion of Joan of Arc is number one on it.
Winslow Theramin: I just saw Ran today. Such a gorgeous movie. I thought they did a great job portraying its time period, and it was a good interpretation of King Lear.
One crucial omission is Alexsander Ford’s KNIGHTS also know as KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK CROSS and KNIGHTS OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER made in Poland in the late 50′s. It’s a magnificent (and magnificently accurate) historical epic with some of the most amazing battle scenes ever filmed. It’s available from Amazon. The picture is a little soft and the aspect ratio has been reformated from cinemascope to 1:85-not the best presentation, but it’ll do until a proper restored version is available.
thanks
I miss seeing Robin and Marion on the list. Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn star as the legendary pair about 20 years after their legendary time in Nottingham. Robert Shaw plays the sheriff. The film’s climax is a prolonged duel between Shaw and Connery that defines medieval personal combat. That and Audrey Hepburn is as hauntingly beautiful as ever.
It’s interesting that so many people mention Holy Grail. My high school European History teacher told us that it was the most historically accurate (in terms of how people lived, and the level of dirt) of any movie set in the time period.
Don’t know about “El Cid”‘s accuracy in its depiction of the Reconquista, but for starters, the historical Cid, Ruy Diaz de Vivar, wasn’t placed atop his horse after his death, to face the Moors one last time. I’m also surprised that this film doesn’t drive the Spaniards insane, given the mispronounciation of names (“Donna” instead of “doña” to mean “Lady”, and Sophia Loren gets the French version of “Ximena,” which was pronounced “she-MAY-na”) and its reliance upon the plays of Guillén de Castro and Pierre Corneille. Then again, I admit that the incident at Corpes and the Cid’s wrestling the lion, from the original Cid poem, weren’t necessarily going to make for good cinema.
Great list! I own all but 2 (The Message and Andrei Rublev) A Man for all Seasons is one of my all time faves and Lion in Winter still makes me weep.
A couple of very accurate and enjoyable historical movies that weren’t mentioned:
The Advocate (The Hour of the Pig) A young lawyer leaves the craziness of Paris to relax in the country only to find it equally weird.(1994)
Lady Jane (1986) about the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey.
Although this is Tudor and not Medieval.
you missed “the Warlord” with charlton Heston srt in england after the Norman Invasion
The Last Valley – Michael Caine and Omar Shariff-hundred years war time frame
What about Black Arrow? Or Ladyhawke or Ivanhoe?
91 – The Last Valley is set in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) – still, it is a great movie with meticulously accurate costumes, weapons and props. 87 is right on, though – you have to watch for the prevalence of filth, the lack of hygeine and basic health care/dentistry. Oh – and though Name of the Rose is one of my personal favorites, the young lady had a very nice and anachronistic full-body tan.
“A Knight’s Tale?” Are ya’ll joking? Please say yes – the social structures, their formal etiquette and rigid stratification of that time according to the historical record have to account for something. I never got to the jousting scene as the film was basically unwatchable.
Sorry Heath fans.
You do not mention the O’Toole + Burton film “Beckett” – any reason for this omission?
Excellent selection.
Some of these responses are amusing. The movies are about entertainment. If the history is a little dramatized or off at least you had fun watching it. If it gets a young person to get online or read a book about it, that’s even better.
For anyone interested when your done with the movies read:
A Distant Mirror – Tuchman
Medieval People – Cantor
The Last Knight – Cantor
The Face of Battle – Keegan
Easy reads and just for starters.
Hello, I also see that you left out Becket, which in my opinion is every bit as accurate as A Man for All Seasons and the Lion in Winter. I also know of a great Polish film which would round out your 9 list and make it a 10. It is called “Knights of the Teutonic Order” and it is based on the classic novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz Krzyzacy. Set in Poland during the Crusades. It is far more accurate than in the name of the Rose. I see that one other person before me has also recommended it.
If you like this list, you should check out Historybusters, They list over 1,000 Historically “Accurate” Films
is the movie “kingdom of heaven” historically accurate?
Shakespeare in Love should’ve made the list, it’s fictional, of course, but everything was still very accurate. The theater back then was exact as well as Marlow’s and Shakespeare’s relationship. It should’ve been in the top five actually.
where is “Kingdom of Heaven”? it’s probably the most historically accurate film in the last decade at least
I am wondering if anyone can recommend a movie with an historically accurate depiction of Elizabeth I? I am particulary hoping to find a movie about her rise to power. I want to drill down on some history assignments with my homeschool student and I thought a movie would be fun.
where’s Der Untergang? sorry i don’t know its name in english
The Name of the Rose is one of the most beautifully shot movies I’ve ever seen. The cinematograpgy… ahh. Just so stunning.
Hi guys, i’ve been spending hours searching over the internet for a movie a saw many years ago about the crusades. Probably also of your interest.
What i can remember of the movie is that there were some knights, i think, that were on a journey carrying a coffin, perhaps of some other knight, holy person i guess, and they walked on water in one of the scenes, there is also an enigmatic knight with leper from st augustine’s order showing up, and… well, i’m sorry, i can’t remember more, i tried to find in many other sites movies related with these tips but without success. Any flashbacks about what this movie’s name can be? I’m not sure also if it is in italian…
Any sugestion would be very apreciated. Thank you and regards.
Thanks so much for doing this list! I’m looking for good movies from this time period for my history class, and hardly any are accurate. Thanks a lot, this is really helpful.
Well some of the movies are about XVI and XVII centuries, thats clearly not Middle Age…
@dangorironhide [13]: Braveheart is HORRIBLY innaccurate. Just do a modicrum of research, and you’ll see.
The biggest problem of calling these accurate is the fact that they are not. (Well at least the two I’ve watched in The Lion in Winter and the Name of the Rose)
Since I’m more familiar with the Name of the Rose, I’ll focus on that.
First off, you can never put historically accurate with Sean Connery together.
The guy acts like the same character all the time and it’s wonderful when it works like in this movie but that’s like saying other movie versions other than The Bounty are accurate in portraying the events of the Mutiny on the Bounty.
Not only was Sean Connery out of place but the character he’s playing is also more fictional than real.
Yes the backdrop and the details were awesome for the movie but it certainly is not taking the dry Alexander-like approach to movie making and is much closer to accuracy in the way JFK is directed. (Different genres but for those who understood the difference in criticism between those two Oliver Stone movies, the point stands.)
However, I’m not so much critiquing the adjectives used for this list as much as it never draws the line for what measurement of accuracy is in place.
Things like Flesh + Blood and The Devils isn’t here for example. Is it because they miss a generation or two? Is it because they were too violent? Is it because they tried to fictionalize the settings in a more direct way than these other movies.
No one knows. The reader is just left to believe that these movies were “accurate”.
The film “Amadeus” isn’t historically correct. There’s no evidence to support the claims that Salieri would have been so envious of Mozart, nor that Mozart himself would have been the giggling half-wit as in the film.
Actually, Henry wanted to annul his marriage, on the grounds that the Pope shouldn’t have allowed him to marry Catherine in the first place. You’re correct about about Elizabeth films. If I have to see a posh woman in armour with flaming hair fanning behind her as she rides a stallion one more time, I think I’ll scream. Firstly, she has a midlands accent, so it was probably less “Let us go for a spot of tea!”, and more “Awright, skip?” Furthermore, she only had her hair down in public at her corination. And, lastly, she rode side-saddle and wore a dress. It would have been scandelous of her to do otherwise. These directors try to portray her as warrior Queen, when she was definitely no Boudica. She was more of a Churchill.
I love "A Man for All Seasons" but correct it isn't. If all you know about Thomas More is what is in this movie, you would have the impression that he is a great hero of freedom of thought. When he was in power, he persecuted non-Catholics and sent many to their deaths. He was unfairly treated, but he was not the saint he is made out to be in the movie.
The 'side-kick' in The Name of the Rose has a lame American accent, considering it's Medieval Europe……..
The Seventh Seal should be on this list. Also The Virgin Spring.
Excaliber is a great movie set in the middle ages. Maybe not "historically accurate", but captures the period.
A correction in 2 Alais was supposed to marry Richard, but he did not want to since she was his father's mistress. Unless that is how it is shown in the movie and then it would not be so accurate as you believe it to be.
how did you forget kingdom of heaven??!!
i would certainly add : 'DANTON' (Wajda, 1982) starring G.Depardieu, probably the best film ever made on French Revolution. Impressive.
Ther are much more historically accurate movies you should watch :
- Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
-Ti kill a king
-Il Mestiere delle Armi (very cool !)
-Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (of Luc Besson)
name of the rose = one of my favorite movies. i love murder mystery’s. i especially loved this one because it actually made me THINK to figure out the ending.
I have seen a few of these movies. I should note that Franciscans are Friars not monks.
I;ve been really eager to watch some silent films for a while, but I don’t know where to go to watch them or buy them? They just look so macabre and mysterious, especially with the ‘vampire’ look of women at the time.
Can anyone give me suggestions on how to go about this?
check out Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, also Turner Classic Movies is a really cool TV channel that plays lots of silent films
I appreciate this list, but your inclusion of the 16th century is crazy. The Renaissance began in the 14th century and took off in the 15th century, so to say the 16th century is “medieval” shows you really don’t know what you’re talking about.