esrosedotblog

TODAY'S MOVIE

CAMELOT (1967): NYTimes1176BestFilms. I have searched the archives to determine why this film was included on both BestLists. I cannot come up with anything. All the reviews and even the little outline describing the film are negative.

The whole thing is leaden. It is long. Long and leaden. I suspect that it is long and leaden because the actors move and talk so slooooooowly. All Brits save one; I will attack him below. The late Richard Harris looking wistful, Vanessa Redgrave, David Hemmings. And not one of them can sing. There is something about classical Brit theater training that might be great for stage but becomes long and leaden on screen. Add music and it is, well, did I mention that it was long and leaden?

And, into this now wades Franco Nero; an Italian with an opera bouf accent playing Lancelot. They compensate by making him a Frenchie who wants to be on the roundtable. French Italian. He is long, leaden, and lousy. John said that he has hair on his shoulders* but I skipped the 'sex' scenes.

Add to this the extremely dated Lerner and Lowe music which is long and leaden and loud. If there were not enough of it, there is an overture and and entre'act. And, by the time they got to this musical they were wrung out and had become parodies of themselves. And so on. How entertaining can this moaning and groaning be? I mean mine, now, in this summary.

I do need to mention the production itself. Not one scene in it shows any restraint whatsoever. Where they could do more, they did. It is all super-camp England down to the dressy costumes. Lancelot's armor is a drag queen's wet dream. And I bet that it was. All it lacks is tits.

I knew this would be a tough one to see. I was right. I am committed to 'seeing' all the BestFilms no matter what. Today I hit 'what'. I have to admit that I had a heavy hand on the FF. I give it a 1 out of Netflix5. There is no zero.

* John saw the remastered version of this monster in or around the PS Film Festival last winter. It did not improve with size of screen. This is where he got the Nero hair placement notes. Actually, we decided that Nero was some street punk that Joshua Logan had picked up on a vacation to Rome. He was, we hypothesize, given this plum part as compensation for his ten long and leaden days with Josh.