Lancelot Du Lac (1974)
Although it won the Critics' Prize at the Cannes Film Festival,
Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac is a poorly realized
and surpassingly dull film. The acting is catatonic and the script
mired down in a dreary ponderousness, carried only by the bare
rudiments of plot. In fact, the entire production has the crude
look of a student film, with only a tenth of the necessary production
value.
Unlike the low-budget Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(which was released that same year), a film that made resourceful
use of existing locales, the castle interiors in Lancelot
du Lac look to have been shot in an old barn. Since the film
was shot in France where authentic castles do exist, why Bresson
did not utilize any of them is a mystery.
Sadly for Bresson, this overly serious film was released in the
US not long after Holy Grail, and most audiences howled
with laugher at the many scenes which recalled Monty Python's
satirical but brilliant hijinks.
Paul Andrew MacLean
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