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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 didn’t much care 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 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 junk warehouses with antlers sprouting from the walls. The great hall and round table are a Zeffirelli dream 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. Possible we would have noticed the Freudian lips much more had Lance not performed a near-kissing miracle to save a blooded-up Bruce after a joust. Vanessa Redgrave has the acting chops and extrovert sensuality Julie Andrews lacks, and Franco Nero’s Lancelot is all in all acceptable. The musical highlight is “If Ever I Would Leave You,” lip-synched superbly by Nero who, dubbed by Gene Merlino doing both Howard Keel and Harve Presnell, 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 visually used to capsulize the forbidden romance between Guenevere and Lancelot, with luminous Vanessa tiptoeing late-night through the passages of the castle to her lover’s lair, and by my measure it’s one of the few good 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 prints, 70mm blowups from 35mm. (Opening 10/27/1967 at the Palace with 35mm, in week four switched to 70mm print; 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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