075 Camelot (1967)

Retro Grade Podcast

“IN SHORT THERE’S SIMPLY NOT, A MORE CONGENIAL SPOT.“

On this episode, we return to the 1960’s to catch the beginning of the end of the big budget musical era. We watch the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, Camelot, starring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, and David Hemmings. Although this was the 10th highest grossing movie of the year, neither Austin or Jorge have ever heard about it, and had a listener not requested it for their birthday, we may have never seen this 3 hour long musical of the Arthurian legend. Why was this film not a huge success despite the musical being so popular? Why did this drive Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, out of the company he worked hard to swindle from his surviving brothers? Will this break the streak of being the first musical Jorge doesn’t like?

Sometimes describing a film as “interesting,” can be interpreted as a nice way of saying “I don’t like it.“ However, in the case of Camelot, interesting is actually a very fitting description of the film. Even though it has its flaws, it is very entertaining to watch. It has a G rating, but it is one of the most sexually charged G ratings we have ever seen. Despite this film winning some Academy Awards, it was not very well received critically, possibly due to the aforementioned flaws, but perhaps also due to its content vastly differing from the rest of the films of this era. Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the film, is what part of the King Arthur story it chooses to focus on: his wife and his best friend falling in love.

We have different opinions on the quality of the music in this film, but the one thing we do agree on is how it deals with the love triangle trope. Sometimes we like to have sides to root for in the triangle, we want to see our character(s) make the correct choice and celebrate with them. Sometimes you need one or two sides of the triangle to hate, or at least sit back and watch them hate each other. Camelot takes the path less traveled, and presents the love triangle where there is no villain. Only three sides getting hurt, and feeling bad for hurting each other.

We talk about the shortcomings and personal gripes with the film. This is a three hour film with a pacing problem, some of the songs don’t hit as hard as songs from previous musicals we’ve covered, and there is a question of what the film meant to say in the first place. Musicals can afford to be very direct and throw subtlety out the window, but something about the riddles the mysterious Merlin leaves Arthur leave us thinking about what we just saw, and what we were supposed to make of it. It’s not a bad thing to think about a film’s message was, but this is also the same genre of film where we get direct insight on a characters internal thought process, so why be coy about the take away?

Regardless, this was an incredibly fun film to watch and talk about, and a piece of cinema history. They literally don’t make them like this anymore.
Music is from Triune Digital and audio clips pulled from movies we will be reviewing in other episodes.

Artwork by @jannelle_o