Now that movie musicals are in vogue again, maybe somebody at Warner Brothers will give the green light to remake this Lerner & Loewe spectacle that was poorly filmed in 1967.
This version is really a shame, considering how beloved the original 1960 Broadway musical is. Lerner & Loewe wrote some of their best songs for this show: "If Ever I Would Leave You", "Camelot", "What do the Simple Folk Do?" and "Fie on Goodness". But when making the film, producer Jack Warner chose tone-deaf actors, one of the worst directors in the medium, and had Alan J. Lerner rewrite his script, stressing the drama over the comedy (to the narrative's detriment) as well as throwing out half the score (including, sob, the show-stopping "Fie on Goodness"). Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave ARE great actors, and in their dramatic scenes, they are quite effective, but they most certainly are NOT singers, especially poor Ms. Redgrave (although, her orgasmic rendition of "The Lusty Month of May" has to be seen to be believed). Franco Nero, a beautiful, beautiful man, has a great opening with "C'est Moi", but then goes downhill from there. David Hemmings manages to bring some mirth to the film, but he's only in the last third, and by that time it's nearly too late (plus, they cut his only song!).
On the plus side, the film DID deserve the 3 Oscars it won: Best Scoring (if you take the voices out, the music sounds magnificent), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Costume Design (the flick IS sumptuous). And the cinematography is rather breathtaking at times. (If you do watch it, try to see it on DVD, where it's letterboxed.)
So, if anybody from Warner Brothers, or any other studio for that matter, is reading this, give it another go: go back to T.H. White's original source novel and Lerner's original B'way script, keep ALL the songs intact, and hire actors who are proven singers, say, Ewan McGregor (he demonstrated his pipes in Moulin Rouge!) as Arthur, Kate Winslet (who scored a British top 10 hit last year) as Guinevere, and Hugh Jackman (who got his start in a West End production of Oklahoma!) as Lancelot. Please....
