Film Fatale: Mid-Century Medieval is Back
Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum
Gather round ye olde fashion girls and online historians: we’re having a medieval revival. When Pinterest predicted Castlecore as a major trend of 2025, you might have rolled your eyes - but now as you make your chainmail headpiece (or buy it like a quitter) are you still in doubt? No, you’re not. You’ve got to finish that European 4-in-1 weave because you’re wearing it to the Medieval Women exhibition at the British Library before seeing a rendition of Macbeth at your local independent theatre where they’re selling homemade mead. You’re feeling an almost paranormal force driving you toward everything that evokes the Middle Ages, and so be it.
The first thing I do when I enjoy a style, an era, or anything really, is to look for films that evoke that very thing so I can immerse myself in it – when it comes to ‘medieval films’ it really just depends on what you’re looking for. You could have 1980s medieval movies where everything is soft focus and dark fantasy-adjacent, as seen in Excalibur (1981), a more serious and historically accurate take in a film like Andrei Rublev (1966), or a very soothing, silly, and enjoyable 90 minutes like The Princess Bride (1987).
The fascination with medieval history is consistent over generations (we’re not the first and we won’t be the last). This time period can feel like fantasy; artwork showing freakish beasts, tales of knights in search of magical artifacts and of course all the different types of beautiful hats. It’s hard not to become invested in medieval lore when all this is going on. But in recent history, no one loved the Middle Ages – or at least the imagined aesthetics of the Middle Ages – more than the people of the 1960s and 1970s, and it especially showed on the screen.
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Before reaching the movies, the medieval-adjacent love blossomed in fashion. Often dubbed Mid-Century Medieval, the 60s and 70s thankfully merged their kitsch flares and mini skirts with elements of Medieval/Renaissance iconography: dresses that ended in the shape of a castle’s parapet, balloon sleeves, coloured tights accompanied by knee-high boots and vibrant, crushed velvets that looked like they were taken straight from the local jester. Everyone wanted to look like the protagonist of a psychedelic fairytale, and they did – especially those who attended the first Renaissance faire in 1963 California. Not just focused on the aesthetics, many of the Hollywood attendees were “blacklisted as communists, leaving them unable to find work in the film industry.” The first Ren faire was a revolutionary place for expression and craftsmanship – a kind of Woodstock for out-of-work actors.
But for the Mid-Century Medieval Appreciators in the film industry who still could get work, they were in for a fantastical winner. The creases in the long-sleeve empire waist dress were made to be smoothed out by the heat of studio lights.
Everyone had a crack at it: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Canterbury Tales (1972), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), and of course the best Disney film Robin Hood (1973). But a film from the time that sticks out to me is Perceval (1978) directed by Éric Rohmer, a medieval flick directed by the great French director who specialised in portraying relationships, love, and nature. But there is a catch: Perceval, based on the unfinished verse in an Arthurian tale by Chrétien de Troyes named Perceval, the Story of the Grail, can only be watched at X2 speed.
That’s a joke, but it is what I had to do to get through the film, and I hated myself for it.
I felt less like a fair maiden and more like the town dunce as my finger reluctantly trailed over my laptop’s touchpad and inched my cursor closer and closer to Settings > Playback Speed > 2. I thought about not telling anyone, lying to you, and saying I J’adored it. Rohmer did it again! But I’m not a liar, and thoust had spent 3 coins for a reason. The film looks beautiful and has all these Mid-Century Medieval elements I was sniffing out, but the narrative bored me. The protagonist is a little weasel who needs to leave women alone and whilst at first I was enjoying the bards who sang almost everything that was happening - it started to remind me of this scene in The Simpsons. I didn't care about the characters, and although this was probably the Brechtian intent, I need to care about someone to enjoy myself.
“When it comes to fashion and art that never claim to be truth, it makes me love medieval revivals all the more.”
Nevertheless, the reason why I watched this film and why I do believe it’s worth sitting through is because of the incredible set design and costuming. Filmed on a soundstage, Perceval fully leaned into the artifice that Mid-Century Medieval evoked: aesthetics over historical accuracy and the uncanniness (not derogatory) of ancient architecture and clothing styles being replicated in the modern day. Perceval rides his horse around sculpted metal trees and enters castles made of cardboard. Although I’ve never been to one, the flatness of it all reminds me of a Medieval Times restaurant – a cheap rendition of an era when people wore fine jewels and lived in towers.
In more recent decades, this hyper-stylised and historical-kitsch look can be seen in the marriage scene in Anna Biller’s The Love Witch (2016) that had everyone I knew in a chokehold for years after its release. Just like Perceval, both films pluck what they please when it comes to the visual motifs of the medieval. The filmmakers create a fantasy that feels achievable and call it history.
Just like a film that's on the more experimental side, all of these historically inaccurate creations can really piss people off - and fair enough if people are trying to rewrite history for their own agenda but when it comes to fashion and art that never claim to be truth, it makes me love medieval revivals all the more. The inaccuracy feels like the naughty jester poking around and saying whatever they want.
When I was a kid, I would get upset about things like this: I could never be a princess, engage in alchemy, or even be a humble peasant. I wanted the real thing, not cheap materials and potion-making sessions in the living room that were interrupted by my dad turning the football on TV. Back then, I didn’t understand the beauty of seeing an era aesthetically reimagined by generations before me. How each person interprets the medieval ages is unique because of this visual amalgamation of renditions – and that’s how it should be, unless you’re a historian.
If you asked your local YouTube essayist: Why are we having another medieval revival? They would say it was because we yearn for simpler times and want to touch grass so bad but don’t even realise it so start compulsively making chainmail. I would agree with this, but I also think medieval-inspired creations deserve more thought than just a lust for simpler times. I mean, do the medieval times seem simple? It was more of an era of intellectual revelation and an intense lifestyle than counting flower petals in a field.
Maybe that’s what I’m looking for as I purchase a corset on Vinted whilst The Black Cauldron (1985) plays in the background: both the hope that there’s more out there to be discovered and paying an ode to all those who have had medieval preoccupations before me.
