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DVD Knights of the Round Table
This 1953 follow-up to the successful teaming of actor Robert Taylor and director Richard Thorpe on Ivanhoe isn't quite as good a film, but it is a sumptuous adventure-romance shot on location in England. MGM's first widescreen production finds Taylor playing Sir Lancelot to Mel Ferrer's King Arthur. Based in part on Thomas Malory's 14th-century version of the Camelot legend, Knights of the Round Table tells the familiar tale of Arthur's construction of a Utopian kingdom, where virtue, courage, and a sense of possibility rule the hearts of strong men. Lancelot is there every step of the way, but after Arthur marries a particularly bodacious Guinevere (Ava Gardner), Lancelot can't stifle his love for her, nor can she stifle her own for him. That chink in the wall of the Camelot dream is exploited by detractors Morgan le Fay (Anne Crawford) and Mordred (Stanley Baker), who set up the lovers for their downfall. The script by Talbot Jennings is proficient at capturing the outsized passions of Malory's epic, which may be one reason why Ivanhoe, with a bit more understatedness, is the better of the two adaptations. True-blue Arthurians, however, will want to see this for its visual sweep and loyalty to the source. --Tom Keogh
Three cheers to fellow reviewers who identified problems discerning adults will have with this film: the miscasting, the dull acting of Robert Taylor, the AWOL acting of Mel Ferrer, the bad accents, the lost plot threads (what about that Holy Grail?).
But for watching with a little boy, plastic sword in hand, this is great stuff. It's good where it needs to be good: the action, particularly the battle scenes; the scenery; the costumes and weaponry. Moreover, the talk of honor is done seriously, and the Christian piety expressed is a very good thing (and a rare thing, too, in films these days). One can talk around the business of adultery and talk about trust and promises and love on the one hand, and gossip and intrigue on the other. Overall, a delightful film for the young; my six year old son and I will be seeing this a few times. Recommended.
Knights of the round table
Movie was good. arrived quickly and in good condition
Strictly A Fun Movie - A Medieval Guys Movie
This is a fun movie that re-tells the myth of the love triangle in King Arthur's court, where Arthur's queen and Sir Lancelot have a mutual attraction. That involvement by Lancelot at that time in history translates into treaon against the king.
This is a follow on to the movie Ivanhoe filmed on location in England with many panoramic outdooors scenes along the hilly and green ocean coasts of England, filmed mostly in the summer. Robert Taylor plays Sir Lancelot while Mel Ferrer is King Arthur, and Ava Gardner is his wife Guinevere. All three are well suited to their parts although if there is any weakness it is Ferrer who does not have a strong on sceen personality. It is all based on Thomas Malory's 14th-century version of the Camelot legend and the Knights of the Round Table, and as we all know, it is presided over by King Arthur.
This mostly a fun film, that is a bit slow to start but has a strong finish. There are a number of battles where we see the clash of knights and the use of archers. It is all very colorful and entertaining with many horses dressed up in knights garb.
My only problem is the acting itself. It is theatre style with the actors almost yelling their lines. Otherwise it is a solid 1950s period movie - with a general family rating. We do not see that much of Ava in the film, or her famous passion and sex appeal, and there is little on screen chemistry or heavy interpersonal stuff. For example, and quite farfetched if one thinks about it, in the movie Guinevere develops a lifelong passion for Lancelot after meeting him briefly for just 5 minutes. In any case, it is mostly sword fights and similar - a sort of medieval guys movie, with lots of male bonding.
I rented the film with some reservations, but ended up enjoying the movie.
Among the most exciting of MGM swashbucklers, Richard Thorpe's 1952 Ivanhoe stars Robert Taylor as the medieval hero of Sir Walter Scott's novel. Returning to England from the Third Crusades, Ivanhoe is steadfast in his determination to raise the ransom for the captured King Richard (Norman Wooland), but the effort is full of peril. First is Ivanhoe's reunion with his estranged father (Finlay Currie), a Saxon who hates the Norman king and refuses to give his son the money. Then there's Ivanhoe's unpopular rescue of a wealthy Jew, Isaac (Felix Aylmer), from anti-Semites, and the subsequent decision by Isaac's beautiful daughter, Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor), to pay Ivanhoe's entry fee in a tournament. (The strapped knight seeks the tourney's cash prize.) Wait, it gets worse: two of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Taylor - Elizabeth Taylor - Joan Fontaine Director(s): Richard Thorpe DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Cartoonist Hal Foster's medieval hero, the Scandinavian Prince Valiant, comes to the screen in all his Dutch-bob-haircut glory in this 1954 film directed by Henry Hathaway (Kiss of Death). Robert Wagner plays the title role and does a bang-up job of it, convincingly portraying the heroic prince as he enters the court of King Arthur (Brian Aherne) in England and becomes (with some tutelage from Sir Gawain, played by Sterling Hayden) a Knight of the Round Table. Determined to restore his dethroned family to their proper seat back home, Valiant takes on the Black Knight (James Mason), who plans to do away with Arthur and then finish his misdeeds back in Scandia. Under such pressure, the prince, quite understandably, falls in love with Princess Aleta (Janet Leigh). Hathaway proves to... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Henry Hathaway DVD Release Date: Released the 11 May 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Adventure yarns don’t come more ripping than King Solomon’s Mines, the classic Great White Hunter tale. Novelist H. Rider Haggard’s hero, Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger), reluctantly agrees to lead an Englishwoman (Deborah Kerr) and her brother (Richard Carlson) deep into uncharted territory in Africa, in search of the lady’s lost husband. What follows is a cavalcade of boys’ adventure stuff: charging rhinos, cannibals, an incredible wildlife stampede, and the back-of-the-neck-tingly thrill of venturing into unmapped lands. The location shooting, including tribal rituals, is marvelous throughout, and the movie manages to pack a great deal of material into 102 minutes without ever seeming rushed. A remake of a 1937 film, King Solomon’s Mines... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Deborah Kerr - Stewart Granger Director(s): Andrew Marton - Compton Bennett DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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As first lines go, Scaramouche's is irresistible: "He was born with a gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad." This exuberant period adventure is pretty irresistible itself--even more than Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, likewise derived from Rafael Sabatini novels. Within more or less one day in pre-revolutionary France, devil-may-care Stewart Granger learns he's the bastard offspring of a nobleman, gets orphaned, realizes he's fallen in love with his sister (Janet Leigh), swears to avenge his best friend's murder, becomes a hunted traitor, and breaks into show business. George Sidney directs as if making an MGM musical, only with swashbuckling instead of song-and-dance. The unlikely casting of Granger and Mel Ferrer as overripe nemeses proves... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Stewart Granger - Janet Leigh Director(s): George Sidney (II) DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Dashing Errol Flynn is the definitive Robin Hood in the most gloriously swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome, glowing Technicolor adventure set to a stirring, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The decadent Prince John (a smoothly conniving Claude Rains) takes advantage of King Richard's absence to tax the country into poverty but meets his match in the medieval guerrilla rebel Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, who rise up and, to quote a... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Errol Flynn - Olivia de Havilland Director(s): Michael Curtiz DVD Release Date: Released the 30 September 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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