What better subject for a Technicolor spectacle than King Arthur's adventures? Set in the half-imaginary chivalric world of knights errant, damsels in distress, and mysterious enchanters, 1953's Knights of the Round Table presents us with a young, vigorous King Arthur (Mel Ferrer) who is determined to unite all of England under his rule, despite opposition from his half-sister Morgan le Fay (Anne Crawford) and the sinister Sir Modred (Stanley Baker).

I was interested in Knights of the Round Table because I'm partial to the whole Arthurian legend, both in its many written versions and its various film renditions. The story of Arthur is fundamentally a tragedy, but depending on what part of the story you focus on, it also has a great deal of glorious adventure and derring-do. Knights of the Round Table has a story that encompasses the full swing of Fortune's wheel for Arthur, but its tone as a whole is squarely in the "enthusiastic" camp, focusing on the knights' vigor and sense of adventure rather than on their flaws. This is a perfectly acceptable approach, except that as it turns out, Knights of the Round Table is... oddly laughable. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what makes the whole experience so ridiculous. No one thing stands out, but a lot of little things add up to a decidedly off-kilter film.

The phony-archaic dialogue certainly doesn't get things off on the right foot. We get plenty of old-fashioned vocabulary like "thou" and "thee" and "knave" along with slightly awkward grammar, mixed in with otherwise modern English. The actors all seem slightly self-conscious about it, too, and well they should: it sounds corny. I'd have been delighted if they'd tried to stick with the actual dialogue written by Sir Thomas Malory, which would have been genuinely and consistently old-fashioned, but as it is, it sounds like the scriptwriters just wanted to throw some linguistic icing on the cake. Sorry, guys, it didn't work.

The acting is nothing to write home about, either. The knights (including Arthur himself) all have the emotional and dramatic depth of cardboard cut-outs. Possibly they had a hard time getting into character, given the rather tacky props and costumes that they were supposed to use, as well as the corny lines of dialogue they were supposed to declaim.

Knights of the Round Table shows all the tell-tale signs of being filmed in the early days of Technicolor: bold primary colors are everywhere. The horses in particular suffer from being draped in various brightly colored costumes, from yellow and green to eye-popping purple. This has the unfortunate effect of highlighting the fact that the MGM costumers didn't do their homework: the high-ranking Sir Modred is dressed in black, and the purple trappings belong to one of his underlings. However, at the time the movie takes place, purple was the imperial color; difficult and expensive to create, purple cloth was worn only by those of the highest rank. Black and brown were easy and cheap to make, and were the colors of the low-born. Oops.

The overall credibility of the film would have been helped if the props and costumes had been of a bit higher quality. The limited sets aren't really an issue; while more expansive, realistic locations would have looked nice, they don't actively detract from the film. On the other hand, it's hard to keep a straight face during an "epic" fight in which the combatants are flailing around with swords that obviously weigh a tiny fraction of what a real sword would weigh, and defending themselves with dented tin-can shields. (Not to mention the peculiar way in which the knights tend to chop up the bushes and nearby trees when they're fighting; was there a "shrubbery" budget they had to use up?) Then there's the way that all the costumes and props stay perfectly clean and nice all the time. Not a smudge of dirt appears on anyone's clothing, and Lancelot appears to have a magical self-cleaning sword: whenever he runs someone through, it comes out just as shiny and clean as it went in.

A few aspects of the film show some promise. Morgan le Fay is presented as Arthur's half-sister, who is using her status as Uther Pendragon's only legitimate heir to justify her own claim to the throne; Modred is her consort, and is explicitly against Arthur from the very beginning. And while the course of events runs along essentially as it does in all the legends, some of the specifics of the ending are different as well. These are all new variations on the Arthur legends, and don't come either from Malory's version or any of the others that I know of. The way that the scriptwriters have rearranged some elements of the legend to fit their story better is a time-honored tradition with the Arthurian legends: there is no single "correct" version of the legend, and many are wildly contradictory. Malory himself, in creating what is often seen as the definitive version of the legends in 1485, drew on many different sources and changed things as he saw fit, and later British and French authors would adapt his stories even further.

In fairness to the action portions of the film, I also have to point out that Lancelot (Robert Taylor) does get one decent swordfight: when he's taken by surprise with Guinevere (Ava Gardner) and has to fight his way out without his armor, we get a very nice sequence in which Taylor shows that he actually knows how to fence quite skillfully as long as he's not encased in a tin can.

Knights of the Round Table merits a place among the many honest visions and re-visions of the Arthurian legend; unfortunately, it doesn't earn a place on the top level of adaptations that are actually successful. It's not so actively bad as to be unwatchable, but I admit that I was completely unable to take it seriously... unintended similarities to scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail kept interfering with the "serious" nature of the film.

The DVD

Video

Knights of the Round Table is presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer at its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The transfer is good on the whole, but it's distinctly uneven. Most of the time, the image is clean and bright, with the bold Technicolor color scheme looking as strong and clear as it was intended, but in some of the outdoor scenes, we get a wavering of the image, and the colors turn slightly faded and brownish for a moment. Some indoor scenes also display occasional shifts in color. Some strong vertical lines also appear occasionally in the print, although it's free of most other flaws. I was pleased to note that edge enhancement is virtually absent in most scenes, and noise is present in only a small degree. All in all, the clarity of the image isn't outstanding, but it looks solid and undoubtedly has benefited from restoration.

Audio

The soundtrack is perfectly satisfactory. Dialogue is clear, and is presented cleanly and without any distortion. The background of the soundtrack is clean and free of noise. The music is nicely balanced with the dialogue, without the variations in volume level that are a frequent problem in older films.

Extras

Some minor special features accompany the film on this DVD. Actor Mel Ferrer (Arthur) provides a short (minute and a half) introduction to the film; a date is not given, but it appears to be recent. An eight-minute featurette shows us the "Gala Premiere" for the film, and we also get a nine-minute musical piece with the MGM Symphony Orchestra playing the Overture from The Merry Wives of Windsor. (No indication is given of how this relates to Knights of the Round Table, other than the fact that they were made by the same studio.) Trailers for Knights of the Round Table, Camelot, and Excalibur are also included, along with a cast list and a text essay on "King Arthur at the Movies."

Final thoughts

MGM's first venture into the widescreen Cinemascope format, Knights of the Round Table goes for epic spectacle and comes up short. It has its points of interest, but they're overshadowed by the weak script and lamentable prop and costume choices. Fans of 1950s cinema, or of stars Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner, may want to check it out, considering that the transfer is reasonably good, but otherwise it's not really worthwhile.