TCM at 10pm: Joshua Logans CAMELOT (1967) is an overdecorated, lumbering musical that finally overcomes ones resistance by sheer persistence and by the most moving curtain-call number ever written for Broadway. At least the JFK generation will always think of the song Camelot in those terms, even though the original Richard Burton has been replaced by Richard Harris, who, like Lyndon Johnson, accents both the coyness and boorishness of being king. Director Logan, the elephant man of latter-day Hollywood musicals, tends to many eccentricities, such as close-ups of flaring nostrils, in a misdirected search for fleshy moments of truth within the dense, heavily lacquered, fairy-tale decor.The casting is also erratic, and the intensity of Vanessa Redgraves Guinevere totally eclipses Franco Neros dim presence as Lancelot. But the ultimate blame for the immense promise and spare rewards of CAMELOT will always lie with Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who are as uneven in culling from T.H. Whites whimsy as they were uncannily on target in overlaying MY FAIR LADY on George Bernard Shaws PYGMALION.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 23:34:17 +0000
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