QUESTIONNAIRE: AN INTRODUCTION TO FILM STUDIES
NEW EDITION QUESTIONNAIRE
A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film, by John Aberth
Name: Richard Burt
Position: Professor
Name of institution: University of Florida
Course Name and Level on which you are NOT using this book:
Senor Level Film Courses
“The Schlock of Medievalism: Imagining the Middle Ages at the Movies” ENG 4133 Spring 2006
“Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media Theory” ENG4133 Section 0790 Summer 2007
“Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media Theory” ENG4133 Section 6349 Spring 2008
Number of students: 20-25
Course runs from (starting date) ..8/25/201?........... to ...12/9/201?.......................(end date) or 1/10/201? to 5/22/201?
Is the book an adopted text/recommended reading/neither for this course (delete as appropriate)
If A Knight at the Movies is not the main adopted text on this course, are you using another book as the adopted text? If so, please state which book(s), and why you prefer this book to A Knight at the Movies.
I am not using a textbook.
What do you see as the main competing titles to A Knight at the Movies?
Richard Burt, Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008); in paperback, December 2010)
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Nickolas Haydock, Movie Medievalism: The Imaginary Middle Ages (McFarland 2008)
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Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, Cinematic Illuminations: the Middle Ages on Film (The Johns Hopkins UP, 2010)
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Anke Bernau and Bettina Bildhauer, ed. Medieval Film (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009)
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What do you think is different/better/worse about these books in comparison with A Knight at the Movies?
I think A Knight at the Movies has the best title of the lot. In every other respect, however, the book is the runt of the litter. I did not cite A Knight at the Movies in my own book just because I didn’t think it was worth citing. I confess I was shocked that Routledge had published it when I received my copy and began reading it. I happened to being talking with Robert Rosenstone, an historian who works on film who is highly regarded in his field, and he said he had declined to read the manuscript because he thought it was so poorly conceived and written. On the other hand, a colleague in History at UF who teaches courses on the Middle Ages and film does assign Aberth’s book. It may be the case that what I regard as its serious drawback are assets for undergraduate readers. For me, the main problem with A Knight at the Movies is that Aberth’s antiquated old historicist method traps h in a quite unsophisticated critical model for reading the films: how accurate is this film? How anachronistic? Those are about the onlyquestions he can ask. He thinks that the politics of a given film (like El Cid) are also unified; the possibility that a film may be structured by its contradictions seems to have escaped him. Aberth pays no formal attention to the films he discsuses. He does not read them as films. So I think even for undergraduates, the book would be a good example of how not to historicize film or viewed as a point of departure that can lead the students to do better work.
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Price: A Knight at the Movies is £21.99/$34.95 in paperback. Do you think this is about the right price/too low/too high (please delete as appropriate). What do you think could be the highest price that students could afford to pay for the book, if it were the main adopted text for their course?
£21.99/$34.95 for the paperback seems reasonable to me.
What do you think of the contents of the book? We have listed the chapters below.
I take the new edition of A Knight at the Movies will be an entirely new book. Is that correct?
Please comment on: chapters which are fine and do not need changing; chapters which could be improved, for example by updating the examples used (please say how), chapters which could be replaced; chapters which could be expanded to cover additional areas, for example case studies of more recent films or film genres. In addition, are there subjects not covered in the book which should be covered in a chapter in order to match your course syllabus more closely?
The problems I see with the contents are a lack of consistency, ignorance of film, and arbitrariness in coverage.
Certainly Part I should be acknowledge the historical novel as the source.
“Literary Minded” is inexact.
And why are the novels discussed by not the film adaptations?
The War Lord by Franklin Schaffner is an adaptation of a play. Why is it not included in the “Literary Minded” section? Ditto for Anoulih’s Becket.
I suggest the book be divided in two rather than three parts, Part I entitled “Adapting Historical Literature to Film” and the contents of Part three included in Part One or set apart as one to one case studies of adaptation.
The title of Part Two, “The Cinematic Treatment” displays Aberth’s ignorance of film. A “treatment” is a technical term used in film making for a summary of a film that precedes the writing of the screenplay. Aberth is not talking about treatments in this technical sense. As a metaphor, the term “treatment” makes no sense either since all of the films being discussed in the book may be considered treatments. Part Two is mrely a hodgepodge of themes with films attached to them.
The title of chapter six “Our Nation's Heroes” is confusing. The readers of the book will presumably be British and American. But “Our” implies that all readers share belong to the same nation. And only Braveheart’s William Wallace is a hero of hone of the nations among the book’s readers, namely, Scotland.
Similarly, “From Page to Screen” is not helpful as description of literary adaptation since films based on historical sources also move from page to screen.
Since the contents focus so much on literary texts, I suggest the subtitle of the first edition be changed accordingly.
I would drop the final chapter on Henry V. A lot has already been published on that film in Shakespeare on Film anthologies (such as Shakespeare, the Movie).
I would also omit chapter 7 on The War Lord by Franklin Schaffner because it is a bad, quite boring film. So is Kristin Lavransdatter.
The choice of films seems unnecessarily dated as well. Why not include the recently released Robin Hood directed by Ridley Scott? Or The Reckoning? Or Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf?
Prologue
Part I: For the Literary Minded
1. The Bogey Monk: Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo
2. Redemptive Violence: The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller, by Gustav Flaubert
3. The Rebellious Lovers: Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
4. Soaring Pride: The Spire, by William Golding
5. The Unhappy Wanderer: Narcisus and Goldmund, by Hermann Hesse
Part II. The Cinematic Treatment
6. Our Nation's Heroes: Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Eisenstein, El Cid by Anthony Mann, and Braveheart by Mel Gibson
7. The Beseiged Loner: The War Lord by Franklin Schaffner
8. Lovable (and Un-Lovable) Outlaws: The Adventures of Robin Hood by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley and Flesh and Blood by Paul Verhoeven
9. Welcome to the Apocalypse: The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman
10. The Case for Animal Accountability: The Advocate by Leslie Megahey
Part III: From Page to Screen
11. The Medieval Detective: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and Jean-Jaques Annaud
12. The Incurable Romantic: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott and Richard Thorpe
13. Woman of the Century: St. Joan by George Bernard Shaw and Otto Preminger
14. The Two Henry's: Becket by Jean Anouilh and Peter Glenville, and The Lion in Winter by James Goldman and Anthony Harvey
15. The Soldier King: Henry V, by William Shakespeare, Lawrence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh
Afterword
Appendix: An Interview with Charlton Heston
This would be a nice additon.
Is there anything else that we could improve in a new edition, not covered by the questions above? Examples could include a more substantial editorial introduction to the book, and/or editorial introductions to each thematic section. Please give details.
Having “a more substantial editorial introduction to the book, and/or editorial introductions to each thematic section” seem like excellent suggestions to me. Right now, I don’t even see clearly what the themes of each section are, nor is it clear why Aberth has organized the book thematically.
Thank you for taking time to complete this questionnaire.
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