Camelot (1967)

(On Cable TV, March 2022) It took me until middle age to admit it, but here it goes: I have no affinity for the Arthurian legend. It doesn’t stick. I keep forgetting details, I can’t keep the minor characters straight, and perhaps worst of all—I don’t really care. So, the prospects of a 1960s musical, three hours long, about the Arthurian legends… eh. Well, Camelot is indeed all of that and worse: an interminable slog, devoid of memorable songs, executed in the leaden fashion that led musicals to their graves in the following decade. It’s really not fun (well, with the exception of seeing Vanessa Redgrave here—she’s simply stunning at times), is unable to capitalize on its material and can’t manage to be funny even when it’s trying to be. Lavish production values immobilize the production rather than make it even better, and the actors seem ill at ease with stiff material. You can certainly see Camelot as one of the last dying gaps of the Old Hollywood, released during the year where everything changed for American cinema. There was nowhere else left to go with that kind of aesthetics, and the result still bores by itself fifty-five years later.