I ran a poll a few months ago about which medieval movie folks wanted to see me to take on next, and the answer (by a thin margin) was Ladyhawke (1985), the classic fairy tale reimagining with Michelle Pfeiffer, Rutger Hauer, and Matthew Broderick. Thank the gods y’all didn’t set me onto Braveheart.
First, you should know that I’m not going to analyze this film’s deeper meanings. That’s not my shtick here. Leah Schnelbach already gave you just such an article, and it’s amazing.
This will stick to historical criticism, and we’ll still have plenty to talk about. Sorry/not sorry.
When I watch a movie for these articles, I take notes as the film proceeds. For Ladyhawke, my notes start off like this:
Medieval cells aren’t built like this at all.
Jeez… these outfits. Patches of mail. Fashion or could they not budget for more?
That’s a very nice Italian town. Aquilla, right?
Yeah. Este Castle in Ferrara.
Such snazzy synthesizers! That’s 80s even for the 80s.
Seriously, what is up with that armor?!?
Is that a double crossbow? WTF? Hahaha
Well, to their credit, the crossbow has a stirrup, which is totally accurate despite the insanity of the double —
Wait. No. Mouse just drew the crossbow back with his hand. OMG. He’s so slight I’m pretty sure I can bench press him. Just no.
Damn everybody is really dirty. Filmmakers really buying into that “no-baths” myth of the Middle Ages, eh?
Ok. Michelle Pfeiffer is amazing. Angelic. Perfect casting. And this has got to be Rutger Hauer’s second-best role (after Blade Runner).
The bad guy’s helm is just killing me. No, ALL his armor is killing me. I think he’s going for a coif, but what the hell is that? And no one wears a sword that way. It’s like a 16th-century executioner’s sword.
“Oh god, is it Lent again already?” Hahahahaha. Screw it. I love this.
Yep. That’s my stream-of-consciousness. Then I go back in afterward and fill it out to something more useful and sensible.
When I wrote Seriously, what is up with that armor?!?, for example, what I really meant was this:
Rutger Hauer’s acting is good here, and I really am enjoying this, but his armaments are all kinds of messed up. I remember liking this get-up as a kid — it’s so black and cool! — but it looks a lot different to me now. Ignorance really can be bliss.
His armor, it seems, consists largely of a single, hilariously wee bit of shielding that’s strapped to the right shoulder of a simple black leather get-up. In technical terms this is a spaulder, and it’s a known bit of armor that’s intended to help protect a fighter’s shoulder. It’s hard to tell, but this one appears to be a padded leather over metal, which is a bit odd, but the biggest problem here is that it’s on the wrong side of his body. I mean, you should wear spaulders in pairs, but if you’re only going to wear a single one it should at least be on your leading shoulder (the one most exposed to attack). Since Hauer is right-handed, a useful spaulder would be on his left, leading shoulder.
His leather armor itself has issues, too, the biggest of which (to me) is that his vital neck protection consists of what’s essentially a low turtleneck. Even if it’s made of Kevlar — and I know this is a fantasy, but it ain’t — this itty bit of armor doesn’t reach more than an inch up his neck. That leaves waaaaay too much neck exposed.
And the neck is like Item 2 on the list of things a swordsman ought to be focused on protecting. Item 1, of course, is his head… which makes this a great place to mention that Hauer doesn’t have a helm, either. Sigh.
Then there’s that sword. The big one. I really dug it when I was a kid, but that was a long time before I actually wielded such things. (This constitutes research for me, by the way, which is another reason to love my job.) What Hauer’s swinging around is a Zweihänder. It’s a real kind of sword, which came into use in the early 16th century. It’s historical. So there’s that.
Of course, Zweihänders are so named because they take two hands to control and Hauer swings his around with one hand like it’s made of plastic. So there’s that, too.
Besides which, Zweihänders didn’t really function like regular swords. They’re so big, so heavy, that they’re really more like polearms. This is why they had such a short life in historical usage: polearms are cheaper and easier to use, so why bother with Zweihänders at all?
Hauer improbably uses his like a sword, though, as I’ve already said. And that would be pretty foolish. In actual military conditions something of that length would be too heavy, too slow, too hard to maintain. It’s more akin to an executioner’s beheading tool than a melee weapon.
Even on a basic level of transport it’s silly. Honestly, you’d be truly foolish to have an exposed sword of that length strapped to the side of your trusty steed — if the blade doesn’t hack up the horse’s leg, its edge is gonna get beaten to hell by road debris and the general elements. But okay, even if we set that aside … how is Hauer gonna pull it out? From tip to Parierhaken (those angled spikes on the side of the blade that are there to help protect the second hand) it looks to be about as long as his leg. Basic anatomy says his arm will have trouble reaching high enough to get the thing free without some unwieldy (and no doubt comical) contortions.
But you know what? It’s still not as bad as that “claymore” that William Wallace wields in Braveheart.
Again: thank you guys so much for not assigning me that one.
All that said, I really enjoyed this film, even after all these years. I like the acting — the main cast is solid, and the surrounding crew is amazing at times — plus the story has so very much to recommend it (see, again, Leah’s article above). And even on a historical level I really love the filming locations, which are often very real places.
Conclusion
Arms and armor: 2 out of 10 wolves.
Everything else: 8 out of 10 hawk(e)s.
Put those pieces together — in that perfect balanced moment between fantasy and history, night and day — and Ladyhawke remains a well-deserving classic.
Michael Livingston is a Professor of Medieval Culture at The Citadel who has written extensively both on medieval history and on modern medievalism. His historical fantasy trilogy set in Ancient Rome, The Shards of Heaven, The Gates of Hell, and the newly released The Realms of God, is available from Tor Books.
Okay, so you’re out to discuss Medieval arms and armor, but what about those Medieval cells that you mention first? How about a photo of a reconstruction, or at least a description?
So basically we are totally NOT in France?
Yup that is definitely a two handed sword, even a non-expert like me can see that, and why no scabbard? I mean seriously.
On the other hand Rutger Hauer looks all dark and dangerous and very handsome so who cares?
Put it all down to the Rule of Cool.
I came here for a discussion on historical cell accuracy! What a let down…
I’d kind of like to know what’s wrong with the cell. I mean dark and dank what more do you need?
1, Something like this maybe? I haven’t seen the movie lately, but I seem to recall the thief character going through a sewer grate.
Even a straight female can totally appreciate Michelle Pfeiffer in this movie. So beautiful and ethereal, so bold and resolute. A wonderful and uncommon combination. Don’t count Isabeau out either as hawk or lady.
@5, yeah Mouse escapes via the sewers, kind a of cliche but what the hey? But I thought he was in the Bishop’s castle dungeon not a prison.
Wow, this was disappointingly short. :(
You know that you’re just goading people into demanding Braveheart next, don’t you? (I once re-watched Braveheart in company with a Scottish medieval historian who had one finger on the pause button and the other on a stack of reference books. It was an adventure.)
@heather Rose Jones — I can only imagine that was a weeks-long process.
@8, did you also have smelling salts and brandy on hand to restore him/her?
What would a scabbard for that sword look like? Would it only protect the part below the vertical bar?
My understanding of the zweihander was that it required two contemporary contexts to be worth using. First, armor must be sufficiently advanced that one can forego a shield without it being suicide. Advanced plate armor is the obvious means for this (and where the historical German 2-handed soldiers came from), but was by no means the only one. For instance, apparently there were 2-handed swords in use by the Byzantines (in strictly limited numbers, and I have no clear idea of the time frames involved, but there are definitely pictures of medieval Roman soldiers with 2-handed swords), suggesting that their lamellar-plus-mail was good enough to allow them to skip the shield on occasion.
The second consideration is that pikes and other polearms must be common on the battlefield. The zweihander did its best work as a way to break polearm formations, chopping the enemy weapons to bits and then smashing the guys holding them. Pike and halberd formations were very common in Europe at the time of the zweihander proper, and zweihanders would be used as part of a mixed formation with polearms of their own to allow German forces to defeat other pike formations in a head-on clash.
They are very fast weapons, and practically every part of one is lethal. They are deadly against un- or light-armored targets, and effective even against plate-armored foes with things like half-swording and pommel strikes considered. Games like the Dragon Age series make it seem like two-handed weapons are some kind of slow, lumber things that require a big wind-up, but as far as I can tell there was never any such weapon. Even things like maces and warhammers would be relatively quick, though they might be slower to recover and attack again with given the way they are balanced. 2-handed swords especially weren’t all that heavy, with the only truly awkward ones being strictly display or parade pieces. Throw in the incredibly good leverage that their design allows and they may well move faster than a comparatively light one-handed sword can match.
Assuming the circumstances are right to make zweihanders worth using, the biggest downside is cost, not just for the weapon but for the wielder as well. It would take considerably more training (and thus more money) to make somebody proficient with a zweihander than with a pike, and when you throw in having to supply (or pay enough that the soldier can supply himself) both plate armor and a specialist sword, it becomes sufficiently prohibitive that only a major power can afford to raise these troops, and even then only in small numbers as supplements to the bulk of the forces in the army. I imagine that the prevalence of firearms is what mostly did in the zweihander, as it rendered plate armor less efficacious and made cheap masses of gunners far more effective than small numbers of highly trained specialist swordsmen.
Regarding the armor in Ladyhawke, between this film, Willow, and Gladiator, many of my early days RPG character portraits wound up having very fake-looking equipment, simply because these were the only even vaguely interesting sources of armor visuals available to me at the time. I still remember late 90’s internet searches trying to find screenshots that really showed aesthetically pleasing arms and armor that fit with my idea for my characters. These days, of course, there are innumerable artist drawings, historical images and museum pieces, reenactment and reconstructional archeology examples, and film and video game screenshots that make this whole process so much less painful. Twenty years ago, though, this was one of only a handful of films that really excited the imagination in a way that could inspire entire character concepts just from set-piece images.
If I were able to go back in time, though, I’d consider suggesting to myself that I check out one or another version of Ivanhoe. Speaking of which, it would be great to see an examination of each version of that film, especially with an eye for what each production gets right (and wrong) from a historical standpoint.
Nothing about that really dodgy, pseudo-“British” accent that Matthew Broderick keeps affecting (when he remembers to do so)?
6, Good to know I got the right movie then.
11, I believe the current claim is something like a half-scabbard on the back, but I’ve no knowledge of the authenticity.
For those curious, here’s something from Rutger Hauer’s site:
When doing sword fights there are two elements that vary. The skills of the opponent. And the skill of the sword as a tool.
Three different swords were made for different use.
The steel sword looks the best but is too heavy to really fight with. It is made with hardened steel, a process that is hardly known anymore.
It drains more energy and it is impossible to initiate blows and then stop them at impact, which is a major technique in the choreography or sword fights. In closer shots the steel version literally outshines the plastic version or the titanium composite version.
Plastic is just for wider shots and looks, and useless and dangerous for fighting.
What craft again here. We practiced them with vigour.
The titanium version was sweet and light but would break on occasion. 911. Paramedics.
The steel version as well as the titanium would bend and get a nasty swordfish look after too much “work”, which enabled it to open up any flesh it would connect with….. ouchouch fingers and gloves.
Because of my background and ability to remember sequences and also because of Angelo, my stunt opponent, we were able to be creative and get more interesting moves. Loved it so.
Okay, here’s a question for all the sword experts here. I told someone that Wonder Woman could not pull her sword from the back of that fancy dress without destroying the dress if she could pull it out at all, and they said I was wrong. So?
15, I’d worry more about her backside myself, if nothing else, it’d be very uncomfortable.
I love this film. :D
I’m not sure what your definition of “helm” is, but Hauer’s character does wear a helmet of some kind when he goes into battle at the climax of the film. He apparently just doesn’t bother with it when he’s doing casual fights.
Didn’t Judith Tarr also specifically call out the horse in this movie, or was that just Friesians in general?
So from your comments you want to review Braveheart next I take it.
This was a fun movie, which I remember fondly, but upon reflection, there is not much I remember, except being fond of it.
By “cell” I thought the author meant monk’s cell, but looking at the scene, I see he meant prison. The issue I see is all that iron. The cages would be a fantastic investment of effort to spend on mere prisoners. This isn’t the eighteenth century.
Think of the amount of weapons you could make with that much iron.
Medieval prison cells were pretty uncommon. The rows of cages folks tend to imagine is a later invention. Locking folks up in confinement just wasn’t an economical proposition for the most part. When we do see them, though, they’d hardly be so heavy in the use of iron, as @21 observes. Think more in terms of a cramped cellar space with a door. (Even worse is an oubliette, but the film didn’t try to show that.)
The idea of the sewer system beneath the cell was also pretty unlikely: sewage systems, such as they were, didn’t bother with providing aid to the prisoners! But, hey, they had to figure a way for Mouse to get out. :
Maybe it’s an old Roman sewer?
@@@@@12. Porphyrogenitus Not to ignore the rest of your interesting comment (it really was), but your suggestion that he review “Ivanhoe” is excellent. Love to see him review the version I saw growing up, from 1952 with Robert Taylor!
@8 I thought I was the only one who did that. Although, given how many of the same people we know, I bet I can pick out who you watched it with. (Effrick?)
The costuming and sets have some howlers, but the dialogue just sparkles. We quote Ladyhawke almost as much as The Princess Bride in our house. As for Matthew Broderick’s delivery, it sold me on the notion that this was a translated fable from an old troubador’s songbook. Actually, no, it isn’t, but it makes brilliant use of medieval themes: the drunken friar, magicandscience as a single unit, vows, curses, the clever fox mouse who is not wise, the rascally servant, breaking an enchantment, corruption in the clergy–remember the woman dressed as a hawk?–trial by combat, the valiant knight, the damsel bold to claim her freedom, the quest…
I thought the spaulder was a place for the hawk to perch without driving her talons through his shoulder. (I haven’t seen the movie in a long time, so I don’t know if it was used for that.)
One of the best stories I heard about this film is that the first hawk used absolutely fell in love with Rutger Hauer, and when he held her she would fluff up her feathers and make chirping noises. She looked so silly they had to get a different bird in.
But that would have been perfect!
I rewatched this a few years ago, and still enjoyed it. The score is very very dated and honestly was kinda annoying the first time I saw this in the theater as a kid. If they remade the score I think it would improve the movie.
I once came up with a “dream cast” list for Lord of the Rings, a year or so before Peter Jackson began production of his version, and I think Rutger Hauer would have been superb as Denethor.
So, the zweihander was actually meant to be gripped below (or would it be above?) the crossguard? Was that part of the blade really, really dull, or did they just wear really thick gloves to protect their hands from getting sliced up?
@15: This video addresses the difficulty of drawing a sword from the back.
Thing is, the sword the guy is using in that video is a lot longer than the one Wonder Woman uses (not a zweihander, of course), and Wonder Woman is not using a sheathe, IIRC. With a sword like the one she uses, it is possible to draw it without destroying the dress, look at these people doing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM8dMHnElG4
They’re wearing shirts, more constricting than Diana’s dress and they don’t destroy their clothes (though yes, I’m sure those swords are dull), and they’re also less nimble than she’s supposed to be.
You need really long arms….. And a woman’s curves really aren’t conducive to hiding a piece of long straight steel down one’s back.
Speaking of Rutger Hauer, another candidate for this series might be (the very aptly named) Flesh+Blood. It’s a bit late, being set in 1501, and it’s a very, very hard R, but it’s also everything you would expect from a Paul Verhoeven film.
@31: It is possible to half-sword with bare hands if you know what you’re doing, but wearing gauntlets would certainly make me far more willing to do it. It kind of makes my skin crawl just thinking about holding the blade in my bare hand, but it can be done. If you grip the hilt with both hands it gives you amazing leverage for swinging the sword. If you grip it above the crossguard it makes it almost into a short spear and a great thrusting weapon. If you grip it closer to the point it becomes almost like a very long-hilted dagger, great for executing downed opponents even in advanced plate armor. Of course, you can grip it solely by the blade as well, turning the crossguard into a war pick or warhammer and the pommel into something of a mace.
@24:
I’d love to see either (or both) the 1982 CBS or 1997 A&E versions be reviewed and analyzed on this site.
Another movie I’d love to see looked at, but as far as I can tell it’s currently completely unavailable, is Hearts & Armour, which was kind of an Italian Excalibur wannabe using Orlando Furioso as its source material.
i never really place much stock in a modern (academic’s) assessment of medieval weaponry and swordsmanship; no one uses it nowadays (LARP society’s really do nothing more than interpret), & so no one alive can categorically say what using a two-handed, broad, or bastard sword would be like in battle – i mean the things existed and WERE used, regardless of how long they were in use for.
Musashi was known to have promoted training with the longer and somewhat cumbersome daito type blade, specifically because it was so big and unwieldy; he felt using such a big weapon would make you that much more proficient with the “normal” sized shoto style.
It cannot be claimed with any degree of certainty that this view was not in play in at least some circles at some times in Europe.
And there seems to be a common view in ‘historical assessment’ of movies like this – even in this very article – where the analyst has the position that “only a few people used this weapon/object/item for only a short period, so therefore it’s appearance in this movie is inaccurate/incorrect/anachronistic.” The ‘common’ view on horns/wings on viking helmets is a perfect example: we haven’t found one in archaeological digs yet, so they must have existed.
@31 – below the Parierhaken (those points on the side of the blade), a zweihander’s blade was unsharpened (we call this a ricasso). The limited use of a sword like this was apparently to break up a formation of pikemen: you’d hold the sword by the end of the grip in order to get maximum reach to smash your way through the barrier of pikes. Once up close, you would shift your grip up to have a hand on the ricasso and another on the grip: this would shorten the blade length and make it more usable in close quarters. It’s cool stuff, though certainly not what we see in Ladyhawke.
@36 – “an Italian Excalibur wannabe using Orlando Furioso as its source material.” OMG. I must find this.
@37 – You’re right that we don’t *know* all things for absolute certainty. Rather than throw our hands in the air and declare the pursuit of knowledge useless, though, we historians trudge on and assess the accumulated knowledge of the historical period — their manuals of arms, their reports of conflicts, their art (in all its myriad forms), their archaeological remains (curators do the Lord’s work), their physical remains, and our own experiences with experimental reconstruction (to name a few) — and do our best to make sense of it.
I meant HEARTS and Armour, of course. (And just corrected my previous post.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086074/?ref_=nv_sr_1
@@@@@ 34. DemetriosX
That was one hell of a movie, and also an excellent choice for this topic. Granite-level R though, as you noted…
As a bit of an aside, K.J. Parker’s The Company is about a group of veterans who used to be linebreakers — soldiers who specialized in breaking through pike formations to create an opening for the rest of the troops to follow. I think at least one of them used a zweihander.
I was never really a fan of “Ladyhawke” – too many modern intrusions into the medieval tale; the same reason I disliked “A Knight’s Tale,” although I can see why others might love it.
As for future columns, I’d be interested in your take on “Ivanhoe” – the novel and/or the various movie adaptations, with the jousting, the trial by combat, the Saxon v. Norman politics, etc.
Regarding neck protection, would you consider watching Record of Lodoss War (the anime) and saying if their plate armor looks realistic?
34. I agree that Verhoeven’s Flesh + Blood deserves a mention here. Fantastic movie, though deserving of many trigger warnings. Rutger Hauer at his best, with fairly accurate medieval arms and armor.
I don’t care how you slice it, young or old, this movie was and is solid medieval, swords and sorcerer, bliss.
A two-handed sword figures in one of the greatest of medieval movies, The Warlord, starring Charlton Heston. Who immediately suggests another title, El Cid.
The cheesy, bombastic music in Ladyhawke always gave me heartburn. (The Alan Parsons Project? Really? Though I’m sure it made the movie more accessible to teenagers at the time.) I was also annoyed by the depiction of the Catholic Church, even though I’m not religious.
I don’t care about any of the complaints–I LOVED this movie when I watched it decades ago
I liked Ladyhawke when it came out, despite the heavily synthed soundtrack. It was meant to be a bit of fluff — more of a daydream or flight of fancy than anything other, and certainly never expected to be around decades later, nor receiving this level of scrutiny.
And of course it’s very easy (and fun in a sort of smash-all-the-things way) to point fingers and jeer at all the inaccuracies and anachronisms.
But really: Doing a review on the movie, announcing that it’s going to avoid any of its “Deeper meanings… Sorry/not sorry.” and then simply snarking about the armor, the weapons, and a couple aspects of set design? C’mon. This is phoning it in.
Yes, it’s fun to snark and all, but I’ve never understood the element of geek culture which finds it necessary to rip apart and disparage something that’s fun and beloved simply to parade one’s knowledge of a topic. Nobody watching Ladyhawke in the ’80s thought the armor, weapons, or sets were historically accurate, any more than people in the ’40s thought Hope and Cosby’s On the Road to movies were accurate or filmed on location.
Ladyhawke was meant to be a fun, light, romantic comedy. Over-analyzing its set and costume design is akin to writing a review disparaging a space opera because FTL travel doesn’t actually exist, and we’ve no evidence there actually is life on other planets or not.
Give me a good story, any day, and I’ll forgive the actor for not being able to ride, or the author for introducing a blade that didn’t exist until a half-century later. Gods know I’ll forgive speech anachronisms, so long as they’re not too glaring. I’d rather not try to read an entire novel in hackneyed Middle English, thankyouverymuch. (Just please don’t have the King lean back on his throne, and ask “Aiiiight. ‘Sup?” and I’ll manage.)
Ladyhawke…hmmm…well, let’s say I’m not overly mad about it, sure it’s innocent enough and I quite like innocence in Films sometimes, but the music is atrocious, just spoiled the movie. The movie’s one saving grace is the legend that is Mr Rutger Hauer. Rutger, despite his immense talent, and his unusual, yet to-die-for looks, has not been in very many movies that have been what you call outstanding. My favorite Hauer Classic is definitely the Hitcher. He’s such a sexy villain in the Hitcher.
Rutger deserved better than many of the movies he’s been in. Surviving the Game was great though.
@46: “I was also annoyed by the depiction of the Catholic Church, even though I’m not religious.”
Oh God, Taras, no. I’m a medieval historian, and a theologian, but the depiction of the Catholic Church, in Ladyhawke, (while completely OTT) is utterly medieval. Just read Dante. Or Peter Damian!
This is so funny–I love Ladyhawke and I’ve watched it countless times, but I would have sworn until now that the bad guys were all wearing mail shirts with some kind of cloth coat over it–never realized that it’s actually all cloth with little patches of mail attached. I guess that’s the magic of a childhood favorite.