99 Films & TV Shows Set In Italy During The Middle Ages
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The Name of the Rose
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 14th CenturyWho, in the name of God, is getting away with murder? โ 14th-century Franciscan monk William of Baskerville and his young novice arrive at a conference to find that several monks have been murdered under mysterious circumstances. To solve the crimes, William must rise up against the Church's authority and fight the shadowy conspiracy of monastery monks using only his intelligence โ which is considerable.
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Caravaggio
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 17th Century The 16th CenturyHis passion came with a price โ As influential Italian artist Caravaggio dies in exile in 1610, he recalls his short life, from his childhood to his initial artistic failures to his later triumphs as he catches the eye of a sympathetic cardinal to his destructive relationship with a dashing gambler.
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The Venetian Woman
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyVenice, sixteenth century. Giulio, a foreign gentleman spends a memorable night in the city where he meets and beds two beautiful women. They are Angela, a widowed lady, and Valeria, whose husband has left for Florence.
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Otello
๐จ๐พ Cyprus ๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyBased on Shakespeare's play, Verdi's opera depicts the devastating effects of jealousy, "...the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds upon". Believing Otello has promoted the fast-rising Cassio over himself, Iago plots to destroy both Cassio and Otello. Iago convinces the jealous Otello that his beautiful wife Desdemona is unfaithful, and that Cassio is her lover. Jealousy is followed by tragedy, then retribution, "Has Heaven no more thunderbolts?"
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Ladyhawke
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 13th CenturyNo force in Heaven will release them. No power on Earth can save them. โ Captain Etienne Navarre is a man on whose shoulders lies a cruel curse. Punished for loving each other, Navarre must become a wolf by night whilst his lover, Lady Isabeau, takes the form of a hawk by day. Together, with the thief Philippe Gaston, they must try to overthrow the corrupt Bishop and in doing so break the spell.
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Flesh + Blood
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyBetrayed by power. Corrupted by love. Bound by honor. โ A band of medieval mercenaries take revenge on a noble lord who decides not to pay them by kidnapping the betrothed of the noble's son. As the plague and warfare cut a swathe of destruction throughout the land, the mercenaries hole up in a castle and await their fate.
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Nothing Left to Do but Cry
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th Century The 15th CenturyA teacher (Saverio) and a schoolkeeper (Mario) get lost in the Italian countryside. They find themselves in the late 15th century, they met Leonardo da Vinci and try to teach him how to play cards, they try to stop Columbus, they sing beatles's song etc...
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The Annunciation
England ๐ซ๐ท France ๐จ๐ฟ Czechia ๐ฎ๐น Italy The 18th Century The 17th Century The Middle Ages Ancient HistoryThe Annunciation (in Hungarian: Angyali รผdvรถzlet) is a Hungarian film directed by Andrรกs Jeles in 1984, based on The Tragedy of Man (1861) by Imre Madรกch. When Adam (Pรฉter Bocsor) and Eve (Jรบlia Mรฉrล), having succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, are cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam holds Lucifer (Eszter Gyalog) to his promise, reminding him that "You said I would know everything!". So Lucifer grants Adam a dream of the world to come. And what a bizarre dream: Adam becomes Miltiades in Athens; a knight called Tancred in Byzantium; Kepler in Prague; Danton in revolutionary Paris; and a nameless suitor in Victorian London. Guided by a deceptively sweet but ultimately contemptuous Lucifer, Adam confronts an endless procession of the horror of the human story ... rapists and concubines, betrayal and savagery, mindless cruelty and fanaticism.
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History of the World: Part I
๐ซ๐ท France ๐ฎ๐น Italy The 18th Century The 15th Century The 1st CenturyTen million years in the making. The truth, the whole truth, and everything, but the truth! โ An uproarious version of history that proves nothing is sacred โ not even the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the Spanish Inquisition.
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Flavia the Heretic
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 14th CenturyShe Launched A River of BLOOD โ After a cult besieges her convent, a young nun goes with an army of Muslims to destroy the convent and kill who wronged her.
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Giordano Bruno
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 17th Century The 16th CenturyFlying from his enemies in the Catholic Church, the free thinking philosopher, poet and scientist Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) has found some protection in Venice. But the Roman Inquisition, fearing his influence in Europe, wants to bring him on trial for 'heresy'.
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The Nun and the Devil
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyIn the convent of St. Archangel, there is a struggle for lust & love. โ It's 1577. The Mother Superior at the convent of Archangel is seriously ill. The determined and calculating Mother Giulia plots to become the next Mother Superior. She receives tough competition from tormented lesbian Sister Chiara and the lusty Sister Carmela.
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Brother Sun, Sister Moon
๐ป๐ฆ Holy See ๐ฎ๐น Italy The 13th CenturyThis is a dramatization of events in the life of St. Francis of Assisi from before his conversion experience through his audience with the pope, including his friendship with St. Clare.
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The Decameron
๐ซ๐ท France ๐ฎ๐น Italy ๐น๐ณ Tunisia The Middle AgesRibaldry! Rakes and libertines. Raised skirts and lowered lashes. A blush on every cheek. Pasolini. Filming The Decameron. Bringing life to art...and art to life. โ A young Sicilian is swindled twice, but ends up rich; a man poses as a deaf-mute in a convent of curious nuns; a woman must hide her lover when her husband comes home early; a scoundrel fools a priest on his deathbed; three brothers take revenge on their sister's lover; a young girl sleeps on the roof to meet her boyfriend at night; a group of painters wait for inspiration; a crafty priest attempts to seduce his friend's wife; and two friends make a pact to find out what happens after death.
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The Conspiracy of Torture
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyIn 1599 Italy, Beatrice Cenci is the teenage daughter of the crazed landowner and nobleman Francesco Cenci who keeps his daughter locked up in the dungeon of his castle and sexually abuses her as well. Beatrice then plots with her stepmother, her besotted servant Olimpio, as well as a local bandit, named Catalano, to plan Francescoโs murder.
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Romeo and Juliet
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 15th CenturyNo ordinary love story... โ Director Franco Zeffirelli's beloved version of one of the most well-known love stories in the English language. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love against the wishes of their feuding families. Driven by their passion, the young lovers defy their destiny and elope, only to suffer the ultimate tragedy.
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Spirits of the Dead
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 19th Century The 15th CenturyThe ultimate orgy of evil โ Three directors each adapt a Poe short story to the screen: "Toby Dammit" features a disheveled drugged and drunk English movie star who nods acceptance in the Italian press and his producers fawn over him. "Metzengerstein" features a Mediveal countess who has a love-hate relationship with a black stallion - who it turns out is really her dead lover. "William Wilson" tells the story of a sadistic Austrian student with an exact double whom he later kills.
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Galileo
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturySomewhat overshadowed by Joseph Losey's 1975 film on the same subject, the 1968 Italian/Bulgarian biopic Galileo is a worthwhile picture in its own right. Irish stage and screen actor Cyril Cusack is well-cast as Galileo Galilei, famed astronomer and unintentional icon-buster. Stirring up controversy with his theory that the Earth is not the center of the Universe, Galileo is given a going-over by the Vatican legal system.
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The Taming of the Shrew
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyThe motion picture they were made for! โ Italy, 16th century. Petruchio, a choleric, lying and poor rural landowner from Verona, arrives in Padua in search of fortune and a wife, while Baptista, a wealthy merchant, announces that he will not allow Bianca, his youngest daughter, to marry until the temperamental and unruly Katherina, his eldest daughter, does.
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The Man Who Laughs
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyA 1966 French-Italian film version made in Italy, titled L'uomo che ride, directed by Sergio Corbucci. This version features elaborate colour photography but a very low production budget. The main action is shifted to Italy and moved yesterwards in time, with the deformed protagonist meeting Lucrezia Borgia instead of Queen Anne. In this version, Gwynplaine is renamed Angelo (played by Jean Sorel). His disfigurement is represented as a single broad slash across his mouth, crude yet convincing. The story (which is attributed, in the movie credits, to the director, producer and others involved in making the film, but not to Victor Hugo) is a swashbuckler pitting the disfigured acrobat against the henchmen of the Borgias. At the end, Dea (actress Lina Sini) miraculously acquires her eyesight and Angelo undergoes surgery that completely reverses his disfigurement and renders him perfectly handsome.
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The Devil in Love
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 15th CenturyYou never saw a guy so all fired up with burning passion... โ Two devils from Hell are sent to Earth to cause trouble. Belfagor and his faithful sidekick Adramalek must start a war between Rome and Florence in 1478.
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The Agony and the Ecstasy
๐ป๐ฆ Holy See ๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyFrom the age of magnificence comes a new magnificence in motion pictures. โ Charlton Heston stars as Renaissance artist Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 โ 18 February 1564), who begrudgingly paints the Sistine Chapel for imperious Pope Julius II in this epic adaptation of Irvine Stone's novel directed by Carol Reed. While the novel covers Michelangelo's life from birth to death, the film focuses on the battle of wills between the perfectionist artist and the impatient Pope who commissions (and eventually commands) him to paint the famed chapel.
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Othello
๐จ๐พ Cyprus ๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyThe greatest Othello ever by the greatest actor of our time โ The 1965 version of the Shakespeare play.
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The Mandrake
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 16th CenturyA young man hatches a plan to sleep with another man's infertile wife. Based on the play by Machiavelli.
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Marco the Magnificent
๐ฎ๐น Italy ๐จ๐ณ China ๐ฒ๐ณ Mongolia The 14th Century The 13th CenturyA story of endurance, savagery and heroism โ Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new invention: gunpowder.
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