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ZITVISION What was it about Joshua Logan and closeups? He must have believed CinemaScope, TODD-AO and Panavision were meant to climb on top of the faces of his stars and expose every pore and blemish. (Can anyone legitimately claim Marilyn looked ravishing in Bus Stop?) Forgot why I hadn’t much cared for Camelot back in 1967; re-viewing it via a very decent Blu-ray, the misgivings came back all too quickly: Richard Harris, who really gets into his role as King Arthur and does a laudable job with Lerner & Loewe’s “verbiage with pitch,” has so many closeups I had no option other than to turn away for relief. Logan’s incessant zooming in on kissers, provided by the over-accommodating cinematographer Richard Kline, dislodges us from the fairytale world, robbing us of the luxury of gazing at John Truscott’s “designer” look which received enormous pre-release attention. But the Los Angeles Times’ Charles Champlin is correct in stating, and in spite of winning acclaim for art direction and costumes, “this is a film whose principle disappointments were visual.” During its opening version of the song “Camelot,” the mythological is set in a denuded frostiness without a flash of magic; the king’s lumbered quarters are junked up warehouses with antlers sprouting from the walls and creepy ornamentation hanging on pillars; the great hall and round table are Zeffirelli dreams of Faustian proportions stripped of color. (Lancelot’s horse is just about the only vital contrast in the entire picture.) Merlyn’s sylvan hideaway, with squirrels and foxes and an owl, throws us back to the ass-squirming of Brigadoon. Truscott’s apparel is the gamut of drab yet sticking out are some of the ladies’ headgear suggesting spreading vaginas waiting for entry. Maybe we would have noticed the Freudian (s)lips had Lance not performed a near-kiss of a resuscitation (yet another closeup) to save a bruised Bruce after a joust. Vanessa Redgrave has the acting chops and extrovert sensuality Julie Andrews lacks, and Franco Nero’s Lancelot as a fleshed-out Alain Delon is acceptable. The musical highlight is “If Ever I Would Leave You,” lip-synched by Nero who, dubbed by American Gene Merlino doing both Howard Keel and Harve Presnell in Italian accent, convinces us he’s mouthing his heart out to Vanessa. (They were having a hot affair while filming and fifty years later they finally married.) The song is used with snippets of their forbidden trysts, one of them capturing luminous Vanessa tiptoeing late-night through passages to her lover’s lair as a surprize. By my measure it’s one of the few good numbers Logan ever spliced together. His first movie musical South Pacific and his last one Paint Your Wagon, with those singing sensations Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg, are his worst bummers and easy to hate. Camelot is less odious; despite our bouts with the inflated studio-recorded chorus rarely used to get the extras’ mouths moving, despite the chills produced by the sets and the close range facial binges, the principals make us appreciate the Broadway originals didn’t reprise their roles, otherwise we’d be inundated with and swatting away Richard Burton’s pockmarks and plugging our ears to reduce Andrews’ piercing immaculateness. In Panavision, with 70mm blowups.(Opening 10/27/1967 at the Palace in 35mm, in week four switching to 70mm; total run 47 weeks.) Oscar wins for best art direction/set decoration (Truscott supervising), best costume design, best music scoring for a musical picture (Alfred Newman). Nominations for cinematography, sound. ROLL OVER IMAGE / POSTER
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER (Revised 11/2014) All Rights Reserved.
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