Released in 1981 making it forty years old this year. It’s long, two hours and twenty minutes. It tells the King Arthur story beginning with Uther Pendragon’s visit to Igraine, where with Merlin’s magical help he begets Arthur. We have a young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, in front of a big crowd and being acclaimed king. We have Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere. We have Mordred’s treachery leading to Arthur’s death at the battle of Camlan. In short all the significant stories from Malory’s La Morte d’Arthur are presented.
The movie has a few costume problems. Everybody wears shining armor, plate armor, all the time. Makes it hard to tell who is who since they all look alike, and wear helmets that obscure the actor’s faces. Arthur gets marred wearing shining plate armor. In real life plate armor doesn't breath, making it sweaty as well as heavy. I am sure armor would have been kept on hooks in the armory and only donned to go into combat, not worn around the house. The other trouble is, in Arthur’s time (late 400’s to early 500’s) armor would have been either old Roman armor or chain mail, or boiled leather. Plate armor would not be developed for another thousand years.
Nigel Terry plays King Arthur, Helen Mirren plays Morgana, and Nicol Williamson plays Merlin. Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson have bit parts, so small that I never recognized them while watching the movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment