Well, I learned my lesson rewatching "Dr. Zhivago" (the 1965 entry in my "imaginary movie project"): A beauteous movie-star woman in a dramatic geographic location is just necessarily going to have hot sex with the best-looking man.
It doesn't matter that Guenevere is married to the king, and he's pretty nice and means well and all and he's not horrible looking (though what's up with the eyeliner?)...
Franco Nero comes to town...
... and sex must be had with that guy. Not just flirting and teasing, as you might think as things crank up in the first hour of this 3-hour monstrosity, when hordes of extras are cavorting and frolicking about how it's "the lusty month of May... when everyone goes blissfully astray" and "tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear" and "When every maiden prays that her lad will be a cad"...
No, they're going to get naked under immense fur throws in various castle rooms. Somehow it takes years — AKA 2 more hours — for the rumors about the queen's adultery — AKA treason — to mature into evidence that will stand up in court so that she'll be sentenced to burn at the stake.
I don't know what year this story is supposed to take place. The historical Arthur, if he existed, lived in the 6th century, but the Lerner & Loewe musical filmed here was based on T.H. White's book "The Once and Future King," and that is set in the 14th century. But it makes more sense to say that the movie is set in the mid-1960s. It's less the Renaissance than some absurd hippie Renaissance fair. There's a celebration of free love and a celebration of very idealistic law, and those 2 things come into conflict, apparently because WOMAN is the source of chaos, and what are you going to do? Burn her at the stake? They almost do! It's scary! But (spoiler alert), Lancelot swoops in and rescues her but then she can't have a happy ending. Vanessa Redgrave must cry and emote her face off then withdraw into life as a nun, and Arthur gets the happyish ending of imagining that in the future he'll be remembered and his idea of peace and love will rise again.
Was I inspired, when I was 16, to leave the theater carrying forward the doctrine of "Might for right" and "Justice for all"? How can I remember, half a century later? I do vividly remember one thing above all: The gigantic closeups of faces lit to cause a glistening of a single drop of mucus hanging from the nostril.
In Arthur's last speech, he observes that each of us is "less than a drop in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea, but it seems that some of the drops sparkle — some of them do sparkle!" Today, I'm distracted thinking some of the mucus drops did indeed sparkle, but I'm guessing that — at 16 — that I wanted to be one of the ones that sparkle. It's such an abstract aspiration!
I'm sure I didn't think I hope I get a boyfriend as handsome as Franco Nero (who ended up married to Vanessa Redgrave). I thought of him as belonging to the older generation. King Arthur belonged more to the Age of Aquarius — even though Richard Harris, at 37, was 11 years older than Franco Nero. Harris was playful and childlike or angsty and confused and occasionally high-minded. A hippie! Come on, Guenevere, pick Arthur!
Eh, it's just a love triangle. That's what I think today. We're given no reason to give a damn about King Arthur other than as an insufficiently loved husband. Determined to watch the 3 hours to the end, I held on to the idea that the theme was Order and Chaos. The Men, as a Brotherhood were Order, and the Woman was Chaos. But it's not as though that's a key to open up vistas of meaning. It's more of a sop to get me through hours of clattering armor, rolls and flows of Redgrave hair, moony eyes, and glistening mucus drops.
I do like the poster:
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101 comments:
Ridiculous.
Remember that is also probably inspired that whole silly Kennedy/Camelot thing.
I used to have a theory that Lerner and Loewe had a big surprise hit with "My Fair Lady," so they rushed to crank out another one. Both starred Julie Andrews on Broadway, so my parents were hooked. I'm not sure the timing really makes sense (that is, did they aleady have Camelot basically written?). It's basically music that can hook me, and the music is much, much better in MFL. Is the female lead also more admirable and plausible?
On second thought, we'll not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
Lusty Angle-Land never ceases to enjoy their sex. It is like their favorite game. With Soccer being so dull, it's no wonder that they need more to enjoy as competitive sport. But how did this become part of the JFK legend? Was it Jack's many lovers?
Nothing like Hollywood to teach us proper behavior.
A lightweight religion with heavy burdens.
I'm surprised that Hippie 16 y/o Althouse went to this "old persons movie". Did a relative drag you to it? I've never been able to get through 15 minutes of it. Maybe if Burton had reprised his Broadway role, and they'd cast Liz taylor. but i doubt it. I've always thought of L&L as sort of second tier Rogers and Hammerstein. Except for My Fair Lady, and Gigi sorta of, their films are boring with the a few good songs. I hope you avoided "Paint your wagon" because that is the worst ever.
This from Wikipedia:
"1967 film Camelot. The original cast album was America's top-selling LP for 60 weeks."
Good God. Must be a shock to anyone who thinks musical taste has gone downhill in the last 50 years! I can sorta see why the Beatles were so beloved by the Boomers, it was a rebellion against this kind of dead, fake operatic music.
All good stories are about passion and chaos.
A bunch of rational people chasing win-win situations does not work for entertainment.
Camelot, the musical, and T.H.Whites "Once and Future King" also are tongue-in-cheek, a fairly gentle satire of Malory and chivalric romance in general. Much more gentle than Cervantes, who was also a fan of the genre.
As for mad goings-on, the King Arthur business is not a patch on the real heavy duty stuff of chivalric romance, where actual madness is often a critical component.
Most people who read the post are now wondering, "Does YouTube have a full, live version of Richard Harris singing MacArthur Park?" Yes:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQmZNbVBeIk
I love dead, fake operatic music.
What, after all, is different in "Camelot" from "Carmen" in the category of "fake"?
Bizet did just as artificial a job on Spain as Lerner and Lowe did on King Arthur.
But "Carmen" is brilliant regardless.
Kitty Carlisle told a story about when she was still a singer. Fritz Loewe was a rehearsal pianist at the time. He told her, "One of these days I'm gonna write the best goddam musical ever". And he did, although Camelot and Brigadoon weren't it. Gigi wasn't bad, though.
The Kennedy/Camelot connection came from a magazine interview Jackie did in 1963. She compared the Kennedy Administration to the fictional place and people just went with it. The irony is that the King Arthur story is a warning (put not your faith in princes, even well meaning ones) not a guide book.
It was Jackie herself who pushed the Camelot crap, right after the assassination.
Lopes got there firstest with the mostest.
I can sorta see why the Beatles were so beloved by the Boomers, it was a rebellion against this kind of dead, fake operatic music.
The Kennedy myth-pushers all loved it. Jackie might have first said it, but everyone else breathlessly ran with it.
So much of modern life is crappy filler.
"I'm surprised that Hippie 16 y/o Althouse went to this "old persons movie". Did a relative drag you to it?"
No, I went with my girlfriends. I'd have to reconstruct why we wanted to see this. First, I did have the original Broadway cast album and knew it very well and liked it. Second, it was probably the subject of some articles in the pop music magazines we read (mainly "16"). Third, the poster shows a current 60s vibe, and the Arthur character, as I say in the post, was appealing within the hippie aesthetic. Fourth, it was an antidote to LBJ/Vietnam horribleness (and it had a social meaning of returning to the days of JFK).
Everything in "Camelot" is satirical of course. It is deliberately absurd.
From the opening song onward.
and it had a social meaning of returning to the days of JFK
So you were warned that it would be, to use your word, "ridiculous."
The historical Arthur, if he existed, lived in the 6th century,
More likely the fifth century. By the beginning of the sixth the Saxons had conquered England. The notable event of Arthur’s war leadership was his defeat of the Saxons at “Mount Baden” that stemmed the Saxon invasion for a generation (and no one — to my knowledge — has definitively located where amount Baden was located). I’ve read a text that argued that Arthur was not a king at all, but “Dux Bellorum,” a war duke, or temporary leader of a unified levy from the disparate (and probably desperate) petty kingdoms. Plausible. Absent a time machine we will never know.
As to the movie, I thought Hemmings made a really wonderful villain.
I was too young for Camelot. But Hair made a big splash soon thereafter.
’"Tis true! ’tis true, the law has made it clear, the climate shall be perfect all the year.” The movie was quite prescient.
I still love these old movies. My Fair Lady, anything from the ’60 w/ Barbara Streisand, even Mary Poppins.
Hair was a great movie, I haven’t seen the plays, but I can’t see how nudity would improve it.
Speaking of Hair, why hasn't there been a Prince Valiant movie or TV show?
Galavant was apparently a spoof of Camelot.
LOL - AA it's only a "Movie" with 99% fiction as the plot.
"I do vividly remember one thing above all: The gigantic closeups of faces lit to cause a glistening of a single drop of mucus hanging from the nostril."
There was an album cover produced in the late 70s-- for a recording of an opera, I believe, although I cannot recall which, alas-- that featured prominently a fairly close-up image of one of the singers, a bass or tenor he must have been, in which there was very obviously a globule of mucus (not a euphemism I used back then) in his left nostril: to this day I remember thinking, who can have decided it was a good idea to use that particular photograph for the cover?
About two years before he died, Richard Burton toured as Arthur in a revival of CAMELOT. I went reluctantly, but in retrospect I'm glad I went. The show was enjoyable, but mainly it gave me a chance to see Burton, live and in person.
Didn't care much for the movie, but Richard Harris' "RUN, BOY--RUNNNNNN!" stll gives me chills.
Ralph, there was a Prince Valiant movie, in the early 1950s. Robert Wagner was Prince Val. Great musical score by Franz Waxman, and when the Singing Sword begins to sing in the final fight, I got goosebumps.
The Kennedys were nothing if not quick to leap in front of a trend or a fashion, and the Camelot-JFK connection sits in the public mind now the way Catch-22 is matched with Vietnam, although the real historical connection should be JFK-Vietnam.
No political clan in American history has received more undue attention and adulation than they.
I looked at a list of 1967 releases and damn, I have never seen most of them. I did see Camelot at some point in a theater but not when it was new.
Narr
Can't recall much about it now
Oh come on people! It's a camp My Fair Lady. It's not intended to have themes or meaning or serious music. It has some talented people chewing the scenery, and some fun songs. OK, it's kinda long. But take it for what it is.
"What, after all, is different in "Camelot" from "Carmen" in the category of "fake"?"
Because Carmen is real opera. While Camelot is just trying to be Opera-lite. Its a completely fake story made from the Camelot legend. Its about fake royalty behaving in fake ways with fake emotion. It also has two leads, Harris and Redgrave who can't sing.
But anyway, its absurd to argue about taste. Some people think Ishtar is the funniest movie ever. Some people think Porky's III was great. Some people think their local painter is better than Rembrandt. Its not provable science. If 10% of the public does *NOT* think something is boring shit, that's 30 million people.
In that clip, Vanessa Redgrave looks so much like her daughter when she appeared in “The Parent Trap.” I still blame the socialist Canadian medical system for her tragic death. She fell and hit her head skiing in Canada.
Natasha Richardson was Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter.
Does it make sense to talk about a "real King Arthur"? The King Arthur in our minds was the creation of French troubadors in the 1300's.
Carmen is kind of long.
My father loved opera. He would listen to the radio broadcasts. He always appreciated the fact that the operas he loved were in a language he didn't understand so he didn't have to pay attention to the plots.
Carmen is about fake Spanish people being played as odd and exotic.
This was very popular in the 18th-19th centuries.
Consider the settings of "Don Giovanni" and "Figaro". And tons of others.
There is even a Spanish word for this - its an "espanolada" - an inauthentic infusion, think "limonada" - lemonade.
Medieval chivalric romance is even more stylized and "fake" - this stuff is pure imagination with only the occasional mention of historical reality - Malory (or T.H. White) is not the worst in this either.
"Camelot" could be considered an operetta. In Spain it would be, probably, a zarzuela, had it come out 50 years earlier. Zarzuelas are sung and spoken, and can be both comic and dramatic.
The real King Arthur makes flour.
Curious about my joke, I find out this:
In 1896, Sands, Taylor & Wood decided to introduce a new brand of premium flour. George Wood had attended a performance of the musical King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which inspired the name of the new product: King Arthur Flour. The brand was introduced at the Boston Food Fair on September 10, 1896, to substantial commercial success.
Opera librettos can be interesting.
Don Giovanni is full of double entendre, of archness, of deadpan humor, and etc.
Da Ponte knew what he was doing.
As Lerner&Lowe stuck so much of in Camelot. "c'est moi" - what is that? It's over the top, its funny.
Heck, even Turandot has this stuff.
Italian audiences have a lot to smile at.
Now, Bizet wrote (or copied, notably the Habanera) better music than Lerner&Lowe. That us not in question.
But "Camelot" is not worse than hundreds of standard issue operettas that are rarely revived.
This is also fascinating, this review of J. Comyns Carr's King Arthur. It points out that the great popularization of Arthur in the 19th century was Idylls of the King:
Milton long had in mind an epic with King Arthur as hero, but abandoned it for "Paradise Lost"; Spenser took his machinery for the "Faerie Queene" from the popular legends about King Arthur; Dryden wrote a drama and projected an epic on the theme; Bulwer wrote a heavy "King Arthur" which nobody reads; Tennyson wrote a series of splendid poems which everybody reads,--and thus to most people King Arthur is the Arthur of the "Idylls of the King."
Milton long had in mind an epic with King Arthur as hero, but abandoned it for "Paradise Lost" -- there's a near miss.
buwaya said: "Da Ponte knew what he was doing."
Especially when he teamed up with Mozart for the score! For some of us, it probably wouldn't matter that much who wrote the libretto.
I love Mozart operas. I never bother to read the translations of the librettos that
come with the discs. It has been said that he fell in love with the sopranos who performed in his operas. I can believe it.
Dr. Zhivago. At some point in that movie, I fell hopelessly in love with Julie Christie.
I had the cast album as a kid, but I’ve never made it all the way through the entire movie. It desperately needed some editing. I also liked Vanessa Redgrave, but even then I could tell she wasn’t that great of a singer.
It's only a model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3dZl3yfGpc
The Castle Anthrax was much more lusty and exciting. Sir Galahad still wants to go back and face the peril, but it’s too perilous.
Redgrave and Harris aren't dubbed? Nero was, and did a credible job of syncing in a new to him language.
Like BAG I was the right age to miss this and hit Hair! I had the Hair! album and wore it out. I saw this live a few years ago. Silly fun — but the music beats Hair!
Rcocean shows his ignorance. Fake singspiel music sir!
"Camelot" could be considered an operetta.
When I think 'operetta' I think G&S.
I saw the theatrical roadshow version of the Camelot when I was a teenager. It was wonderful. The movie...not so much...although I did like the wedding scene. The costumes were cool. I was sentimental about the whole Kennedy-Camelot for many years.
The movie is a clunker. But the musical is good in a hokey way.
Gee I totally missed the Zhivago post! I was hoping Ann would do that one too.
A boring movie, great book, but it's all political to me. Revolution sucks!
Fortunately, the Communists assassinated JFK before he could almost start a nuclear war a second time.
Camelot - I couldn't watch it. I'm sure if was great fun on Broadway. Movies bring out all the weaknesses. And no bar to run to between acts.
"Letters to Juliet" was probably meant to be a vehicle for Amanda Seyfried, but here is the scene where Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) reunites with Lorenzo (Franco Nero), who had been her lover over forty years before. Watch these two veteran actors and former lovers play the scene.
Much stuff in "Camelot" would fit right in with Gilbert&Sullivan.
The tone of most of it works in that vein.
G&S could also do tragedy and sentiment, consider the last act of "Yeomen".
One of the best bits in G&S is Yeomen's "I have a song to sing", jolly in the first act, despairing the second.
Compare the "Major General" in "Pinafore" with "c'est moi".
G&S would have had livelier music though.
And been more clever, probably.
G&S were much more talented than Lerner&Lowe
A romantic breakup, G&S style - the classic "dear john" of the operetta form.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OI9njpT7c74
Yeomen of the Guard Act II
I think most of us have been there.
Whenever I think of Richard Harris, I can't help but remember:
The SCTV People's Global Golden Choice Awards
One year away from Bonnie and Clyde and the sea change in film making.
Most literature is about the struggle between Passion and Reason. What Camelot adds is a vivid illustration of the vulnerability of high-trust societies to immigration.
Compare the "Major General" in "Pinafore" with "c'est moi".
Major General was in Pirates of Penzance.
Buwaya suggests: Compare the "Major General" in "Pinafore" with "c'est moi".
G&S would have had livelier music though.
And been more clever, probably.
The words to Major General are about as clever as they get. And hard to sing!
I get the P’s confused!
While Major General is from Pirates of Penzance, "Pinafore" is given mention in the song. So there's that. :-)
Speaking of lyricists, IMO there is none better in our day that Sondheim. Sweeney Todd was brilliant.
It was a good date movie. My girlfriend and I were 17 when we saw it and afterward we had great car sex. That movie really put her in the mood. Thanks, Hollywood!
This is a true story.
I loved "Once and Future King."
Most people who read the post are now wondering, "Does YouTube have a full, live version of Richard Harris singing MacArthur Park?" Yes:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQmZNbVBeIk
MacArthur Park has the strange and dubious honor of making it on both "Best" and "Worst" song lists. Put me in for being among the best!
PS. Love the live version you linked. It seems that Harris finally followed Jimmy Webb's insistence that the line was MacArthur Park and not MacArthur's (possessive) Park which he kept forgetting in the original recording!
Two things:
1. I never saw the movie (and this was no accident), but my family had the original cast album of the musical, and I listened to it endlessly. When I saw the clip of the movie's Lancelot (whoever the actor was) it reminded me of how much better Robert Goulet was. Same idea, but not so hokey. And Burton (no singer, but with a great voice) made you WANT to believe in the dream of Camelot.
2. As a kid, I got interested in the King Arthur story when I read in Churchill's "Birth of Britain", that Arthur might have been based on a real person, a Romanized Briton who led the forces of civilization against the invading barbarians. There's been some further development of that idea, still by no means dispositive, and I like to think it might be true. See Big Mike's comment at 12:55 pm. "King Arthur" of course was an ideal leader. He wouldn't have abandoned his allies on the beach at the Bay of Pigs.
Brendan Gill of The New Yorker declared, "On Broadway, 'Camelot' was a vast, costly, and hollow musical comedy, and the movie version is, as might have been predicted, vaster, more costly, and even more hollow."
The Monthly Film Bulletin of the UK wrote, "A dull play has become an even duller film, with practically no attempt at translation into the other medium, and an almost total neglect of the imaginative possibilities of the splendid material embodied in the Arthurian legend. Why, for instance, is Arthur not shown extracting Excalibur from the rock instead of merely talking about it? Such is the stuff of film scenes."
The biggest hit from the Camelot score was If Ever I Would Leave You, sung by Robert Goulet. In 1961 you couldn't get away from that song being played on the radio right in the midst of all the rock and roll. - Anon Guy at IMDB
Direction is sluggish, and the movie goes on forever. Guess who directed? Josh Logan. Of course.
PS. Love the live version you linked. It seems that Harris finally followed Jimmy Webb's insistence that the line was MacArthur Park and not MacArthur's (possessive) Park which he kept forgetting in the original recording!
Webb was one of the most accomplished songwriters of the 60s & 70s, but he never had a #1 hit -- until Donna Summer covered MacArthur Park. I read an interview with him saying something to the effect he was driving around Las Vegas with the radio turned up full and the windows down yelling "Number 1, baby!" whenever Summer's version would come on..
Macarthur Park was a supremely silly song which epitomized a supremely silly decade. This is a cake that should be left out in the fucking rain.
buwaya said...
I get the P’s confused!
One of my favorite bits of movie-making is the use of "He Is an Englishman" in Chariots of Fire.
I can never remember which P that's from either.
But now for our survey results. Without question, the voters' choice for Worst Song -- in both the Worst Overall AND Worst Lyrics category --
is ... (drum roll ...)
``MacArthur Park,'' as sung by Richard Harris, and later remade, for no comprehensible reason, by Donna Summer.
It's hard to argue with this selection. My 12-year-old son, Rob, was going through a pile of ballots, and he asked me how ``MacArthur Park'' goes, so I sang it, giving it my best shot, and Rob laughed so hard that when I got to the part about leaving the cake out in the rain, and it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again, Rob was on the floor. He didn't BELIEVE those lyrics were real. He was SURE his
wacky old humor-columnist dad was making them up.
Although I disagree with Barry a bit. MacArthur Park is what it is, and I like that cake every now and then.
Here's that clip; recorded charmingly askew.
"He Is an Englishman" is Pinafore.
The Major General song is one of the most parodied (or homaged), and some of them are as clever as the original.
You had a "generation gap" when it came to the arts/entertainment in the late 60s and early 70s. The "Kids" Listened to rock and roll and went to movies like "Hair" "Midnight Cowboy" or "Bonnie and Clyde". Meanwhile the over 35 crowd were still going to stuff like "Camelot" or "Man for All Seasons" and listening to Sinatra and Tom Jones.
I look forward to what Althouse watched in '68 '69 and '70.
Hey y'all....get past the cake! The second movement:
There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
And never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one
I will take my life into my hands and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
And my passion flow like rivers through the sky
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
And wondering why
What...no one's ever had their heart broke?
"But "Carmen" is brilliant regardless."
Especially with Elina Garanca
the Kennedy Camelot connection came from an interview shortly after JFK's assassination where Jackie noted that JFK listened to that musical in the evening in the WH. The interviewer, Theodore White, couldn't have made it up better himself.
I can see a couple of green leaves, but a whole cake?
I will only pay $$ for about 20 Operas, and Carmen is one of them.
People have long talked of the musical Camelot as a bit of a mess. The book writer and director was Moss Hart, but he suffered a heart attack and the second act never recovered.
Loved it. Context counts. It was our first break at Basic Combat Training at Ft. Dix.
WRT Arthur. See Morris. "The Age of Arthur". His research finds no trace of Arthur but, metaphorically speaking, there is a hole in Brit history which has the shape of Arthur. So there must have been an Arthur.
See Sutcliff, "Sword at Sunset" for a good fictional treatment of the best known.
She sings like old people fuck.
RALPH L There was a Prince Valiant movie. With Robert Wagner as Valiant and James Mason as the villain, if I recall...
She sings like old people fuck.
How do you know this, Nichevo?
But take it for what it is.
I agree. I, too, grew up with this sort of mush and never expected to draw any particular meaning from it.
The songs are agreeable and often — « C’est Moi » — rather witty and funny.
The production values were high and the characters attractive.
One could pass a pleasant, painless afternoon and leave the theater in a good mood.
This was Hollywood.
I heard “what do the simple folk do” on the broadway channel the other day. I can see AOC or some other elitist singing that.
15 Operas I pay to see:
01. Carmen
02. The Marriage of Figaro
03. The Magic Flute
04. The Barber of Seville
05. La Traviata
06. Fedilio
07. Don Giovanni
08. Madame Butterfly
09. La Boheme
10. DER ROSENKAVALIER
11 The Master-Singers of Nuremberg
12 AIDA
13 TOSCA
14 The Ring Cycle
15. Rigelitto
You have good taste in liking the poster. It's by Bob Peak, who did a lot of good ones.
Buwaya said: “Everything in "Camelot" is satirical of course.”
If this is true, it’s a game-changer. It’s like discovering you owe the IRS -20,000 instead of $20,000 (iow, they owe you a refund.). I discovered one of Aesop’s fables was satiric once (can’t remember which one but I think it was the one about a stray dog and owned dog meeting). I had first read it straight up and took the moral the same way. Then I found out there was that “minus sign” in front of it ... satire.
In the world of human communication determine if that minus sign is there is the first order of business, Trump has been fully misunderstood by the Left because they never see the wink.
Eddie W, I don’t care what anybody says, Macarthur’s Park was a great song.
Every time I watched or listened to Barack Obama speak, the lyrics of “c'est moi" popped into my head...
“C'est moi! C'est moi, I blush to disclose, I'm far too noble to lie
That man in whom, these qualities bloom
C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I,
I've never strayed from all I believe
I'm blessed with an iron will
Had I been made the partner of Eve we'd be in Eden still
C'est moi, c'est moi, The angels have chose to fight
Their battles below and here I stand, as pure as a pray'r
Incredibly clean, with virtue to spare, the Godliest man I know, c'est moi.”
You got me, musicals are a guilty pleasure. I can probably sing this one in its entirety.
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