Lancelot du Lac (1974) Robert Bresson   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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