Thursday, November 22, 2007
Campelot: Junk Food for the Holiday
The reason for my Thanksgiving viewing of Camelot had its roots in watching Becket a few weeks prior. Man, did Burton and O'Toole cut it up as ol' Henry and Tom! Early/mid sixties mainstream America must have felt cultured with the currency of some ideas and some ye olde Anglo history. But where was Richard Harris? Of the sixties over-amped drinking Brit bad boys he was my favorite. ("Because it took so long to baaaaake it and I'll never have that recipe again Oh No...") So in tribute of these hard drinking U.K. rodent pack icons and because I have really been enjoying DVDs that have faithfully remastered with lovely sixties high key lighting (Intense blue eyes of actors in Camelot made even more so) and presented in original screen aspect ratios. And also, I had never seen it. So Monday Camelot went to the top of the que for Thanksgiving day screening.
Warner Bros. was in transition when Camelot was produced. Jack Warner hadn't let go entirely. It seems obvious that this was a last hurrah to try to bring the studio the glory and success it had with My Fair Lady. But the sixties were definitely in full effect. Film-making techniques could become very self-conscious. Joshua Logan uses the zoom like an adolescent would discover a fountain pen and some of the songs would jump cut between six or seven locations, as a way to remind you that this is a movie and no longer a stage play. The numbers would never seem to end with the sound and picture editors shouting out a "one more time" for reprise or coda. My mom was wondering what they were trying to do. Mondo montage for the musical probably seemed like a good idea back in the sixties.
My mom and I watched together up until the point where Lancelot became knight. Priscilla's reaction was "Why aren't there any stars in it" True, Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, and David Hemmings aren't exactly perennial A-listers. But each, in their own way, left something eternally campy and memorable to their role. Harris, especially in the soliloquy at the end of the first act, never fails to make me smile when he goes for the rafters. (..and what's with the bad eye shadow he seems to be wearing in about half the film?) Redgrave is directed to look great in hairstyles, gowns, and whenever possible, "tasteful" big movie nudity. Nero's Lancelot is driven by his native Italian phonetic English with a French faux accent, pompous egotism, and, of course, rich baby blues. David Hemmings as Mordred is maybe the role that delivers best--in a goofy, unbelievable world, he frightens a bit as the bastard child leather clad rocker set on taking the classic romantic triangularity of Jenny and Lance (yes, that's what they call each other" I wonder if there was a script draft where the king was referred to as "Art") and weird Becket-like bonding between Lancelot and Arthur.
Hemming's Mordred is sixties revolution with seventies punk flavor. He is young brash Hollywood watching the round table of Jack Warner, Louis B. and King Cohn get broken and plundred. Camelot was in the transition of Warner Bros. to Warner-Bros./Seven Arts. Warner-Bros./Seven Arts is essential in the history of what we now think of as Independent film and quintessential late-sixties cinema. Check out the imdb list of films they distributed or produced in two short years: Cool Hand Luke, Bullit, Bonnie and Clyde, Petulia, etc. with filmmakers like Altman and Coppola represented. The final verses of the eponymous title could indeed be interpreted as a gulp and goodbye to a film impacted by current zeitgeist but fighting hard to still be old Hollywood an maybe prescient of the "indpendent" director/visionary period to follow in the late sixties-mid seventies: "That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot."
Quick note on the music: does anyone know if "Follow Me" has been recorded by a hard bop outfit? It would swing in that setting like nobody's business.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:51 PM
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