Blogging Aloud: Medievalist Stained Glass Again

Thanks again to all who've posted comments here. I'm currently paralysed with doubt and counter-examples about this, so instead of reading and writing, I thought I'd blog about it some more.

Over the last few days I've watched The Anchoress, the Disney animated Robin Hood and Bergman's Seventh Seal. How's that for a cultural spectrum? No stained glass in any of these, but the conjunction made me think my question might be more about the representation of religion in medievalist film.

The run-down little churches in The Anchoress and Robin Hood are too humble to have stained glass; and yes, as others have remarked, the Seventh Seal features the painting of the dance of death in the church. (Anchoress and Seventh Seal also focus on carvings of the Virgin and Christ, respectively.) Perhaps there is also a visionary moment in The Anchoress where Christine glimpses the Virgin's face? It looks like an outline in stained glass, but it's the tiniest moment: mostly the camera focusses on the carved statue.

Next on my list of things to re-watch are First Knight, Name of the Rose and the Hunchback of Notre Dame (special thanks to Jonathan for this suggestion: that scene where the light comes through the glass and lights up the floor is fantastic for this project!). I also have to try and track down a copy of Andrei Rublev, which I don't know at all. I'm also reading through Nickolas Haydock's Movie Medievalism, which I'm finding immensely helpful. Haydock is making me think I may have been a bit hard on First Knight. I've often used it in teaching as an example of the limit case: how far can you push the Arthur-Lancelot-Guenever plot until it makes no sense?

A Knight's Tale has, as Kerryn and Andrew point out, a scene where Ulrich rides his horse into the cathedral. For me, that film's a classic case of a secular medievalist film that introduces religion only to mock it as hypocritical and irrelevant (Jocelyne tells the priest not to shoosh her then admires his pretty ring when he admonishes her beauty). But what does the glass in those windows show? Had better look at that again, too.

Mostly, medievalist films are not that sympathetic to religion, are they? Seventh Seal persistently exposes the emptiness of the knight's quest for meaning; and the church hardly comes off looking good in any of these movies. The Robin Hood is an exception: it's a sign of Prince John's final descent that he proposes to hang Friar Tuck; while it's the Sheriff's robbing of the poor box that sends the Friar to jail. There's nothing specifically Christian or sacramental about the church, here, but the film's critique is directed entirely at the usurping John and the flattering Sir Hiss.

OK, still thinking, obviously. The scary thing about this project is that I've now remembered I'm much more comfortable talking about written texts, as opposed to visual or cinematic ones. Aaaaaaggghhh.

Here's the relevant portion of Seventh Seal, about half way through this clip:

Update: Just found the CFP for this year's Studies in Medievalism conference. Their theme? Medievalism and Religion.