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Camelot (film)
1967 musical film directed by Joshua Logan
Camelot is a 1967 American musicalfantasydrama film directed by Joshua Logan and written by Alan Jay Lerner, based on the 1960 stage musical of the same name by Lerner and Frederick Loewe. It stars Richard Harris as King Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Guenevere, Franco Nero as Lancelot, David Hemmings as Mordred and Lionel Jeffries as Pellinore.
In April 1961, Warner Bros. obtained the rights to produce a film adaptation, with Lerner attached to write the screenplay. However, it was temporarily shelved as the studio decided to adapt My Fair Lady first. In 1966, development resumed with Joshua Logan hired as director. Original cast members Richard Burton and Julie Andrews were approached to reprise their roles from the stage musical, but both declined and were replaced with Harris and Redgrave. Filming took place on location in Spain and on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, California.
Camelot was released on October 25, 1967, to mixed reviews, but was a commercial success, grossing $31.5 million against a $13 million budget and becoming the tenth highest-grossing film of 1967. It received five nominations for the 40th Academy Awards and won three: Best Score, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design. It also won three Golden Globe Awards, for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Richard Harris), Best Original Song (for "If Ever I Would Leave You"), and Best Original Score.
Plot
As King Arthur prepares for battle against his former friend, Sir Lancelot, with his son, Mordred, raising an army against him back in England, he reflects on the sad circumstances which have led him to this situation.
He recalls the night of his marriage to Guenevere. It is an arranged marriage, and he is afraid of what lies ahead ("I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight"). Guenevere herself is worried about marrying a man she has never met and longs for the romantic life of Camelot never really existed, so everybody can invent his own. Josh Logan has his Camelot, and I have mine. Jack Warner spent $14,000,000 bringing Logan’s to the screen, and I wouldn’t have. I think around $2,500,000 would have been about right, and a lot of that would have gone to pay the salaries of Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave, who are just about the best King Arthur and Queen Guenevere I can imagine. Anyway, once I’d hired them I would have set them up in more modest surroundings. Arthur’s castle would have shrunk to Arthurian proportions (since his legend originated before English kings had much in the way of castles, and he should be happy he’s not out in the rain with King Lear). The king and queen would have led earthier lives. Let Guenevere get a little chicken fat on her fingers, dipping into the pot down at the corner pub, I say, and let Arthur down a flagon of ale and gnaw on a haunch of beef. Make that several flagons, since Harris has the part. These humbler surroundings might have permitted the characters to move forward into clearer focus. The twists and turns of Arthur’s chivalric philosophy might have been followed more easily. The agony that Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot undergo during their triangular love affair might have been more immediate. Of course, my movie would have made a lot less money than Josh Logan’s. Logan is the old pro, the “South Pacific” man, and when you’re spending $14,000,000 as Warner Bros. was, I guess you want to hire a director who’s been there before. Logan has, and millions of moviegoers will agree with his lush, expensive “Camelot.” The pity, I think, is that the weight of that rich production occasionally smothers a good script, charmingly directed musical numbers and, stunning performances. Still, you’ve got to hand it to Vanessa Redgrave: She wears that million-dollar wardrobe as if she’d been practicing all her I’ve been planning to watch Camelot ever since I started this review of Arthurian films, but I kept putting it off. It didn’t really appeal, to be honest. I think I was expecting it to be something like Merrie England epic Knights of the Round Table, but even longer, and with songs. Well, it is long, and it does have songs, but nothing I’d heard about Camelot had quite prepared me for how visually splendiferous it is. Adapted from Lerner and Loewe’s Broadway musical, and directed by Josh Logan, it opens in the pre-dawn mist outside the walls of Joyous Garde, where Arthur’s army is besieging Lancelot and (we assume) Guinevere. Arthur (Richard Harris) is thinking back on the sequence of events which led to this sticky situation. The story begins properly with a flashback to his first meeting with Guinevere (Vanessa Redgrave) in the snowbound forest outside Camelot. The snowbound forest is a studio set, and an absolutely gorgeous one: completely artificial, but absolutely magical. I can’t find any still images which begin to capture the size of it or the beautiful, wintry, ochre light which seeps between the trees to colour the snow. You get a better look at in this scene. It’s the kind of scene that lets you know at once you are in capable hands, and the capable hands in question belong to production designer John Truscott, who also designed Paint Your Wagon, The Spy Who Loved Me, and… nothing else, because he had a reputation for being extravagant and spending too much money, apparently. I can’t imagine how anyone got that idea…. Camelot is based on TH White’s The Once And Future King. The screenplay owes more to White that I had expected, and the snowy forest looks very much in keeping with his vision. Once the action moves to Camelot it feels altogether less British: the castle is glorious, but it looks sort of Spanish, and that’s for the very good reason that .