Mon 21 Jun 2010
Movie Review: THE SWORD OF LANCELOT (1963).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[10] Comments
THE SWORD OF LANCELOT. Universal Pictures, 1963. Released originally in the UK as Lancelot and Guinevere. Cornel Wilde (Lancelot), Jean Wallace (Guinevere), Brian Aherne (King Arthur), George Baker, Archie Duncan, Michael Meacham, Mark Dignam (Merlin). Director & co-screenwriter: Cornel Wilde.
Everyone reading this knows the story, or you should, so I won’t take the time or space to go into details. But the details do change every time the story is filmed — and how many times has it been? — which is why every time it’s filmed, it’s worth seeing again.
There must be something in the story, the ill-fated love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, that keeps it fresh and entertaining, no matter how times you see it.
I do have a couple of comments, though, and as I keep typing, the couple may turn into a few. The first, though, are the ages of the performers. Brian Aherne was 61 and close to the end of his acting career. Cornel Wilde was 48, and Jean Wallace, to whom he was married at the time, was 40.
They were not youngsters, but even if you were to think them too old — by say 20 years — with their general enthusiasm and zeal for their roles, they can make you believe that they are younger, or very nearly so.
By all appearances, Cornell Wilde was working with a relatively low budget. This is not a lavish, MGM-style motion picture. But I think the non-majestic if not homely surroundings for the interior of Camelot are more likely to have been the case at the time, if Camelot every really existed, than the splendiforous, wonderfully marvelous settings you may see in other movie versions of the tale, if not most of them.
The movie is in color, which is definitely a plus. And the battles on horseback and on foot, with lances, spears, axes, maces and any other fierce-looking weapons the combatants could get their hands on are equally authentic looking.
Not to mention gruesome. One gets the feeling at times that this is the way battles really looked, with swords sticking out of endless bodies on the ground, with the constant danger of being trampled underfoot, if they were not already dead.
Merlin plays a relatively small role, I am disappointed to say, but Arthur seems really delighted to have Guinevere brought to him by Lancelot, and I felt badly for him when things do not work out the way he anticipates. Even worse, his final fate is dealt with off-screen and well after the fact, and I was disappointed in that as well. He deserved better.
June 21st, 2010 at 11:06 pm
This was an entertaining film and Wilde knew his way around history and violence in films. Brian Aherne was virtually type cast as Arthur playing the role in PRINCE VALIANT before this.
Granted everyone is too old, and historically it’s all a good five hundred years off in terms of armor and castles and such, but it is the familiar story well told and well staged, with some good moments like the knights’ reaction when Lancelot introduces soap to the court.
This and KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE are both handsome colorful versions of the tale with attractive casts and well staged battles and if they are both more Howard Pyle than history, who really can complain?
Wilde did two other great films in this period. The splendid war film BEACH RED and the African adventure THE NAKED PREY.
June 22nd, 2010 at 8:35 am
As I recall, it sneaked into U.S. theaters on a double-bill (in my small town, it was paired with KISS OF THE VAMPIRE) and received pretty good critical reviews for being rather grittier than the usual swashbuckler of the time. I believe Sean Connery and Richard Gere were about the same ages as Aherne and Wilde when they made FIRST KNIGHT. KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE and EXCALIBUR are my favorite movie versions. As David suggests, the lavish color and the Malory-era plate armor in KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE recall the classic book illustrations of Pyle and NC Wyeth.
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
EXCALIBUR is the standard all the other versions have to aspire to since it gets the myth and the grittiness right and may be one of the most gorgeous films ever made. KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE is simply the whole thing done with extraordinary MGM style and gloss and almost perfect casting. Robert Taylor was the right age and the perfect casting as Lancelot and Ava Gardner was a Gwen you could imagine kingdom’s toppling for. PRINCE VALIANT is underrated fun and a wonderful recreation of the Hal Foster comic strip in glorious technicolor despite Robert Wagner’s much maligned page boy.
Other than White and Pyle my favorite print versions of the tale are Edison Marshall’s PAGAN KING, Rosemary Sutcliffe’s SWORD AT SUNSET, Mary Stewart’s books, Nicholas Tolstoy’s novel, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s MISTRESS OF AVALON — not counting John Cowper Powys allegorical contemporary tale A GLASTONBURY ROMANCE which deals with many Arthurian themes in modern setting.
The Grail shows up in both Allingham’s THE GRYTH CHALICE MYSTERY and Francis Gerard’s THE SECRET SCEPTRE.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
EXCALIBUR is the next King Arthur movie I will be watching, or rewatching. I had never seen the one with Cornel Wilde before, and even with its limited scope, I was impressed.
Here’s a comment left on IMBD, which speaks for itself, I imagine:
“I’ve seen both Excalibur and The Dark Knight once each.
“Excalibur was a joke. The Dark Knight is cinematic excellence.”
Speaking of the Grail, Excalibur and where one or the other (or both) has shown up in mystery or thriller fiction, I imagine they’ve been major plot points several times over, especially since Dan Brown has come along.
Not that I’ve read any of them, and for better or worse, I seem to have read Dan Brown only before he became famous.
— Steve
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Has anyone seen KING ARTHUR, the one with Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd and Keira Knightley?
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Of the bestseller variety Grail novels the best may be Richard Ben Sapir’s (co-creator of the Destroyer) QUEST with a New York cop named Art and a British agent vying to recover the Grail.
Of more mundane mystery novels Elizabeth Peters HER COUSIN JOHN (THE CAMELOT CAPER) comes to mind, but in general the whole Arthurian thing seems to have inspired fewer actual mystery novels than you’d expect.
As you say though, there are a ton of thrillers in the Dan Brown vein — before and after Brown — on the subject though many if not most of them veer into sf or fantasy.
For something offbeat look up Antony Burgess ANY OLD IRON, about a British Jewish family who has guarded Excalibur through the ages.
Peter David did an interesting fantasy novel (two so far) about a reincarnated Arthur and company, with the ‘new’ Arthur getting elected President. It’s funny and silly and a bit zany at times, but supposed to be, and Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran have a series about Arthur battling the immortal Saladin — talk about mixing historical eras.
The Grail also shows up in Charles Williams (the British one) religious thrillers — which read a bit as if P.G. Wodehouse had collaborated with Sax Rohmer* and Dorothy Sayers — which surprisingly makes for a satisfying read. Williams was one of the Inklings with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
*Rohmer and Wodehouse were best friends and had worked in Egypt as bank clerks together, so a collaboration isn’t as unlikely as it may sound.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:57 pm
KING ARTHUR was ok. It could have used a more charismatic protagonist (Owen did about the best he could with the character as written) and a sharper sense of adventure. Seems to be an axiom in Hollywood now that westerns and swashbucklers have to be dour.
THE LAST LEGION had a similar storyline and a little more spirit of fun.
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I don’t watch dour westerns, but I know what you mean. I suppose it’s the natural course of events, deliberating speaking in non-literary terms, but I (we?) don’t have to like it.
In terms of comic books, it’s pretty easy to put the finger of blame on Frank Miller and his revised dark and gloomy take on Daredevil in 1979, then later with Batman in the mid-1980s.
The noir look and feel took over, and after that very few superheroes were heroes any more, only troubled beings with superpowers.
Trouble is, Miller’s stories were interesting; those written by others generally weren’t, and aren’t. Comic books used to be fun, and they aren’t any more.
Spoken by someone too old to adjust, I suppose. Note the comment above (#4) in which someone on IMDB whom I imagine to be much younger than I am compared EXCALIBUR with THE DARK KNIGHT and quite unfavorably too.
I don’t feel as dour about this all the time, but for some reason I do today.
— Steve
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:32 pm
I did tremendously enjoy and admire the film DARK KNIGHT, but you can’t really compare it to EXCALIBUR save that both films deal with the human side of iconic heroes and villains and both are stylish and dazzling visually.
As for Frank Miller, after what he did to THE SPIRIT it’s going to take a work of genius on the order of the Sistine Chapel ceiling of comics to win me back. If ever a film was misthought, mis directed, and misfiring on all over the place that one did. Samuel L. Jackson’s performance was so bad I haven’t been able to watch him since.
August 12th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Just a gentle nudge to David Vineyard, it is Rosemary Sutcliff without an E. Mind you, others get it wrong too – see http://www.rosemarysutcliff.wordpress.com and the category of entries under Sutcliff Spelling Watch!