El Cid

I would like to take a moment to talk about epic film. In the case of El Cid, it seems that epic films are more often based upon epic tales that have already been written than are original tales that stand on their own. El Cid had already been written down, based off of a real figure that lived during the 11^th century AD, long before Charlton Heston became the Spanish hero in the more modern adaptation that we watched in class. This makes it somewhat difficult to analyze culturally. We can analyze the original text, like we did to Roland, in terms of the culture that produced it in medieval Europe, but we can not do the same to the film version of El Cid because it was made in 1961. For the purposes of analysis, however, I will look at it as a text produced during the time of the action rather than as a mid 20^th century film.

Many comparisons can be made between El Cid and Roland. Both take place in medieval Europe. Both heroes display aspects of idealized virtue, including fealty to king, perfect judgment, a master in battle (able to take on 13 men in El Cid’s case), and perfectly devoted to god. They were produced in a warrior culture that valued these things, and the result is that both tales feature a hero assisted by god and close to a king. El Cid has a courtly relationship with Jimena, and displays all the chivalric behaviors that knights of the time held. Following the rules prescribed for knights courting woman.

Mention of the epic villains should be made here as well. The Moors and their plotting can be easily paralleled with Ishtar’s plotting against the heroes in Gilgamesh and Ravana going up against Rama. Indeed, these epics bear so much similarities, that outside of plot, setting, and culture, they have almost all the same features.