SWORD OF LANCELOT
US, 1963, 116 minutes, Colour.
Cornel Wilde, Jean Wallace, Brian Aherne, George Baker, Adrienne Corri, Mark Dignam, Reginald Beckwith, Joseph Tomolti, Graeme Stark.
Directed by Cornel Wilde.
Sword of Lancelot came at the end of a number of popular films on King Arthur in the 1950s including Prince Valiant, The Knights of the Round Table. This was the period of Camelot which was filmed four years later. The film was directed by Cornel Wilde who had been a popular Hollywood star in Forever Amber, The Greatest Show on Earth in the 1940s and 50s. However, in the 1950s, he turned to directing and made a number of strong dramas and action films for the next twenty years, Maracaibo, The Naked Prey, Beach Red and No Blade of Grass amongst others.
Wilde is Sir Lancelot while his then-wife, Jean Wallace, who appeared in most of his films is Guinevere. Brian Aherne is King Arthur.
The film is a mixture of the British and American styles with so many of the supporting cast being British. However, it is an enjoyable variation on the legends.
1. An enjoyable spectacle? What qualities were to the fore in this production? poorer aspects?
2. How interesting is such a spectacle in its comparisons with modern attitudes towards chivalry, barbarity, heroism, love, morality? Did the film explore these themes well?
3. Why do audiences respond to the Legend of King Arthur? The heroism and idealism of Camelot? How much of a reality was this? How much of the legend appeared here? Nobility of Arthur and his knights, the days of chivalry and heroism? How obvious was it that the legend went sour? Guinevere and her love, Lancelot’s betrayal, wars and death?
4. How attractive a hero in this film was Lancelot? Where was his heroism best manifest? His French background, his skill at the tournament, his response to Guinevere, his chivalry, his loyalty to Arthur, his role in the court as cheerful and supportive, his gradual growing in love with Guinevere? temptation to betray Arthur? change in his life with deaths and destruction, the change in his character,his surrender to Guinevere, his final surrender to Arthur? Hie capacity to wait for Guinevere, and Arthur's death? His response to the end of Camelot and his attack on Mordred? His reaction to Guinevere being a nun?
5. Guinevere, attractive heroine, how strong willed, her backggound and the tournament for her hand? Her political role in a united England? Her dependence on Lancelot? Her love for him and her love for Arthur? Her playing with Lancelot and leading him on? Her seduction of him? The reality of her being burnt and rescued? Audience response to this barbarity? the change and the possibility for loving Lancelot and yet his surrender of her to the convent? Was her final change in the convent credible?
6. How was King Arthur portrayed in this film? As popular belief has it? How real as a king of united Britain did he seem? How unreal in his idealism? His relationship to Lancelot and his knights? Mordred and the kingdom? The feeling in his being betrayed by Guinevere? His attitude towards her burning? The irony of his death by Mordred and the destruction of his dream?
7. Was Mordred a convincing villain? Why?
8. How interesting were the subplots eg Sir Gawain and his vengeance for his brother's death? (And the quality of George Baker's performance?)
9. How interesting were the minor characters in their illumination of Lancelot and Guinevere? Sir Tors?
10. How well filmed were the fights, the initial tournament and the way it was seen through the combatants’ eyes? Battle with the Vikings and the elaborate strategy and its execution? the confrontation with Gawain and Arthur? The final battte? Realistic and violent? Suitable for this film?
11. How wel1 did the film portray details: the love between Guinevere and Lancelot? Mordred’s plots, the Vikings and their brutality, the gossip in the court to Arthur’s ear?
12. How much of a matinee film was this? How much of an adult spectacle?
