DigitalRevenantX7 King Arthur sends his trusty right hand man, the knight Sir Lancelot to a rival kingdom to win the hand in marriage of Guinevere. He succeeds, but falls in love with the maiden. She marries Arthur but secretly yearns for Lancelot. After a time, they become lovers & when Arthur finds out, their friendship – sabotaged by a rival knight – becomes very strained.Originally released in the United Kingdom as Lancelot & Guinevere, this 1963 adventure film was directed by its star, Cornel Wilde. Wilde also produces & cast his wife at the time, Jean Wallace, as Guinevere.While not the definitive version of the Camelot story, Sword of Lancelot is still reasonably watchable. The film has some passable acting &, like most of Wilde's directorial efforts, filled with action scenes. The fights & battles are the showpiece of the film & are quite violent, even by 1963 standards. There is some passable plotting but the pace tends to drag a little inbetween the battles. Wilde & Wallace might be a good pair on the screen but they are both a little too old for their roles. Having said that, Sword of Lancelot is still a pretty reasonable Dark Ages adventure film, although I still prefer something like Under the Red Robe over this.

Cristi_Ciopron SWORD OF LANCELOT, crafted as Cornel Wilde's gift to himself, shows Guinevere as a strong and determined character—far from an 'etiolated princess …--and her character is also played with brio and charm.From the whole tale, the script picked as characters truly brought out the love triangle—the knight, his queen, and the oldster—and, in fact, only the couple of lovers—the others are too marginal …. Yet this couple of characters who are indeed defined and portrayed are alive and interesting. The score is, on the other hand, conventional and banal.It is not a kids' movie; it's occasionally piquant and playful, a nice French woman at an inn is introduced by her tits. As an adventure flick, it features a tournament and a battle with the pagan invaders, and it ends with the defeat of Mordred.Directed by Wilde, the movie has something sincere and straight and respectable, even a note of originality.

Poseidon-3 Countless versions of the Arthurian legend have been filmed, some with emphasis on the romance, some the action and some the supernatural. This one (produced by, directed by and starring Wilde) virtually eliminates any supernatural aspects (Merlin's primary mystical contribution is the invention of soap!) and focuses on the pageantry, battle and romantic passion of the story. Aherne is King Arthur, whose attempt to unify all of Britain includes the marrying of Princess Guinevere (Wallace.) Unfortunately, he sends Lancelot (Wilde) to collect her and she grows enamored of him before she's even met Aherne. Thus begins the legendary love triangle with Aherne loving Wallace, Wallace loving Wilde and Wilde devoted to both of the others. Amongst this romantic fervor is a healthy dose of clanking warfare as Aherne's army must combat rival hordes including Vikings. There is also a dash of palace intrigue as Aherne's illegitimate son Meacham attempts to pave the way for his own ascendance to the throne. Wilde, though undeniably fit for his age, is way too old (48) for his role. Ostensibly virginal Wallace is as well (40) and 61 years seems like a long time for Aherne to have waited to get married! In any case, despite these glaring oddities, the actors do pretty well with their parts. Wilde has been criticized for his accent, but he did speak several languages, French included, in real life, so it's at least partially accurate. Wallace spends the bulk of her time crying, but does that well. Her character lacks clear motivation at times (and her hair color and costumes aren't always very pleasing.) Aherne is excellent, showing a lot of charisma and assurance in his role (though he is not given a proper send-off at the end.) Meacham is an appropriately weaselly villain. Strangely, he never worked on the screen again after this. Corri has an extremely thankless role as one of Wallace's duplicitous handmaidens. There's also a nice turn by the young and handsome Gregory as Wilde's right-hand man. Gregory turned to sculpting after his brief film career. One drawback to the film is it's rather choppy editing. Entire sections of storyline are skipped over in order to accommodate the warfare scenes. This hurts the human side of the story somewhat as the relationships aren't given sufficient screen time to develop as strongly as one might like, especially with such an unnecessarily wide cast of supporting characters. Wilde really took a chance in producing such an expansive film as this on his own and it was not a particularly strong financial success. Still, there's a lot that's good in it. The scenery is striking at times, the pageantry is vivid, the music is rousing, the battle sequences are violent and engaging and, especially, notably, there are many soldiers put to work, giving the skirmishes a reasonably realistic feel. The carnage in the fighting scenes is fairly strong for 1963. It is, however, preposterous to expect an audience to believe that Wallace, en route to be married to a king, would bathe in the same water, simultaneously, as the knight who is escorting her. And with all the emphasis on soap in the early sequences, one wonders if Proctor & Gamble had a stake in the film! This was made during a time when Wilde was creating most of his own films and starring himself and real-life wife Wallace in them. Somehow, they avoided sticking a bone through her nose and casting her in "The Naked Prey", but she appeared in most of his other projects.

uds3 WHAT's this? Not a solitary comment on one of the really good medieval flicks of this period?Actually it was one of the last, coming at the end of the cycle that had included KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, PRINCE VALIANT, THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH, THE BLACK KNIGHT....all big moneyspinners in the 50's. It was also just 4 years shy of Richard Harris' beloved, but overblown musical CAMELOT.The film performed disappointingly at the box office as audiences tastes had changed and biblical spectacle was all the rage by the early 60's. By '63 even THAT had waned, THE LAST DAYS OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH having closed the chapter on epics the previous year.But hey, Cornel Wilde was a ragingly in-form Lancelot and pulled out all stops to impress his lady Guinevere. Course, her husband, King Arthur was majorly disgusted with both of them and things were messy there for a while. But you know, simply nothing overcame life's little set- backs in those days of yore, like crushing a few skulls in with a mace or broadsword and Lancelot was the champion after all. Some reviewers at the time took exception to Lancelot's french accent (Ah, my GuineVERE, u know 'ow I love you non?, ees not your coleurs 'anging from my lance-tip cherie?) Well ze franch accent or not, Cornel made as good a Lancelot as anyone ever has. This film rocked.Think A KNIGHT'S TALE handled seriously!