Sword of Lancelot (1963)

I saw most of this the other day on the B-Zone (a streaming channel not to be confused with B Movie TV, which covers similar ground).  Originally released as Lancelot and Guinevere, this was something of personal project for the idiosyncratic director/actor Cornel Wilde.  I'm something of a sucker for Arthurian themed films and I've consequently sat through many a bad adaptation of the legends, often departing radically from the accepted narrative.  I say accepted narrative, but the reality is that the Arthurian cycle derives from a number of different sources: the central parts of the myth, involving Arthur, his knights and Merlin derive from the Celtic tradition, while other elements, such as Tristan and Isolde and Lancelot come from German and French origins, respectively.  Malory made a valiant attempt at synthesising them all together into a single text, with his Morte D'Arthur, but the disparate texts and legends of King Arthur's exploits mean that te whole cycle is open to interpretation.  Sword of Lancelot is interesting as it tells the story from the perspective of Lancelot (played by Wilde, with an ill-advised French accent), which means that the likes of Merlin and King Arthur himself are relegated to the roles of secondary characters.

As the original title suggests, the film's plot focuses upon the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, which eventually tears the Round Table apart and results in Arthur's defeat and death.  However, we don't actually see most of the latter events, instead being told about them as Lancelot is exiled in Brittany.  In a departure from the traditional narrative, Arthur and Mordred don't kill each other in a final battle, to which Lancelot arrives too late.  Instead, we're told that Arthur has died and that Mordred is trying to seize the crown, so Lancelot returns to England, takes control of what remains of Arthur's forces and confronts Mordred in a final battle.  Despite such departures, (a result of the fact that the film puts Lancelot rather than Arthur at its centre), Sword of Lancelot, from what I've seen of it, seems a far better adaptation of Arthurian myth that films such as the better known and more prestigious Knights of the Round Table (1953).  The battle scenes are of a suitably large scale and the portrayal of medieval warfare surprisingly realistic, with heads split by axes and limbs lopped off with swords. The cast is filled out with various familiar character actors like George Baker and Brian Aherne.  What I saw of it interested me sufficiently that I'm going to have to make the effort to watch this one in its entirety.