ARTHURIAN MOVIES
That’s yer Camelot…
Movies inspired by Arthurian legend have been around since the silent era, though it was not until the ’50s that the craze really took off, mostly thanks to titles like Knights Of The Round Table, The Black Knight and Prince Valiant. Serials about Sir Lancelot and his son Galahad also enjoyed success, though interest was already waning by the time Lancelot And Guinevere and The Siege Of The Saxons appeared in 1963.
Ever since John Boorman filmed Arthur’s tale in 1981’s Excalibur, periodic makeovers have become the norm. First Knight (1995) saw Richard Gere compete with Sean Connery for Julia Ormond’s affections, while 2004’s muddy King Arthur offered a supposedly more accurate retelling of the legend. Thirteen years later though, not even David Beckham’s cameo could stop King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword suffering box-office oblivion.
Disney’s 1963 animation The Sword In The Stone added music to the mix, as did the 1967 film adap of Broadway smash Camelot. There were songs too in Monty Python And The Holy Grail, later moved to the stage as Spamalot. In 1999 meanwhile, Quest For Camelot saw Celine Dion’s ‘The Prayer’ nominated for an Academy Award.
The small screen has been kind to Arthur’s wizardly mentor, whose incarnations have included Barnard Hughes’ Mr. Merlin, Sam Neill in the 1990s miniseries Merlin and Colin Morgan in the 2000s BBC show. He has turned up in Once Upon A Time, MacGyver and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, while a 1989 Doctor Who episode suggested Merlin and the Time Lord were one and the same. Next up: Gustaf Skarsgård in Frank Miller’s Netflix show Cursed.
Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court spawned a parallel line of timetravel adventures, which has variously seen Will Rogers, Bing Crosby and Dennis Dugan (in Disney’s The Spaceman And King Arthur) use 20th Century science to thwart the king’s enemies. last year’s The Kid Who Would Be King put its own spin on the idea by having a contemporary schoolboy use Excalibur against an Arthurian sorceress. NS