"This book will entertain and intrigue historians and film buffs alike. In a wide-ranging critical study of the creative process that tackles head-on the exchange between historical fact and artistic license, Bartlett shows how twentieth-century cinema’s variously imagined Middle Ages speak as much to modern sensibilities as to any reconstructed past."

"Bartlett here trains his medieval historian’s eye on eight iconic films, pointing to historical accuracies and inaccuracies, and telling readers why these matter. One major recurring theme is how filmmakers can create a persuasive and engaging movie set in a distant era for modern viewers. Rich in anecdotes, this well-written and beautifully illustrated volume is chockablock with film, literary, and cultural references, not only to those in the past but to other historical periods right up to the present. Bartlett’s book will appeal to fans, students, and teachers, but for scholars already familiar with these films, there is still plenty to be learned."

“Informed criticism where these films inevitably fall factually short. . . . Bartlett’s knowledge of the Middle Ages is beyond reproach. He focuses on one film at a time, though deftly interlacing and comparing them when it reinforces his point. An intriguing and detailed discussion."

"Images of another sort are central to this book, which considers Braveheart (1995), The Name of the Rose (1986), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Andrei Rublev (1966), El Cid (1961), The Seventh Seal (1957), Alexander Nevsky (1938), and Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924). If you are part of a small group, you could propose a reading of the book and a viewing of the films over several months."

"Bartlett’s keen interpretive eye, not to mention his command of twentieth-century history, enables him to draw out the unspoken themes, often broadly political, to which an anxious director hoped an audience—or politician—might be alert. . . . Bartlett’s twin capacity both to judge, with sovereign authority, the historical authenticity of a film and to explicate the tacit meaning of a script sets his study apart from the considerable scholarship on film set in the Middle Ages, which Bartlett also commands. It is a testament to this volume to say that medievalists will learn much not only about the cultural representation of the medieval period but about the Middle Ages as well."

"With The Middle Ages and the Movies: Eight Key Films, Bartlett provides an engaging study of some quite disparate movies, which often share little in common apart from a medieval setting. This intentionally heterogeneous group of films comes from several countries and was released over the course of more than seven decades. After a preface stressing the great extent to which the movies’ cultural origins and the film medium itself shape these movies, the book proceeds in reverse chronological order from the 1990s to the silent era."