MY FAVORITE 'OLD' BROADWAY MUSICAL!!!
Most Broadway musical lovers of experience and age love the classics - "My Fair Lady", "South Pacific", "The King and I", "The Sound of Music" "Carousel" etc and while all those musicals are terrific, my all-time favorite is "Camelot". There is a bittersweet, romantic, nostalgic, magical aura around this film. I hate that TV and cable TV don't show it. It's a wonderful film. I just saw it for the second time after many years. My first viewing was as a teen and I remember loving it but it was so long I didn't stay up to watch all of it. It is a long and talky movie but it has so many great moments. Love the color, costumes, songs and the whole lavish production.
I like to think this is a love story involving three people, in a kind of loving but very sad menage-a-trois. King Arthur and Lancelot were friends. Lancelot was willing to die for Arthur, having sworn his life and loyalty to him as Knight. His affair with Guenevere was not a deliberate act of betrayal. It was natural and it just happened. Why ? Guenevere bemoans losing her youth and "maidenhood" in her opening scene "Where are all the simple joys of maidenhood ?" Forced to marry a king as a young girl, she will not enjoy the happiness of youth as she will have to take up the responsibility and duty of being wife and Queen. Lancelot fulfilled her innermost desires. King Arthur was taught by Merlin only to be a king but Merlin failed to teach him to be more "human" and to be a husband and lover. Because Arthur was never there for her, Guenevere turned to Lancelot. Everyone knows this is the real reason. King Arthur loved Guenevere and Lance so much that he tolerated the affair and said nothing until it became public and he was forced to take legal action. The story is heartbreaking because Arthur's dreams of an ideal society are never fulfilled. He spent his entire life making this dream possible - the Round Table, a civilized world, law-abiding people, etc, "Might for Right" but it all comes crashing down on him by the end. The musical is faithful, in part, to the T.H. White novel. The ending in which Tom (Thomas Malory") is sent on a mission to tell the Camelot legend is faithful to the book. The musical is wonderful and lavish, maybe overly so. The excesses of this film's look and production killed the story and drama. Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Harris carry this film well though.
"Ask everyone if he's heard the story, and tell them loud and clear if he has not, that once there was a fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot"....