For Norris J. Lacy, with thanks.

In the closing scene of John Boorman’s Excalibur, Perceval, at Arthur’s com- mand, rides forth from the apocalyptic battlefield to cast the eponymous sword upon the waters. When he returns to that battlefield, he frantically calls out, “Arthur? Arthur? Arthur?” Anyone who has studied what I have elsewhere termed “cinema Arthuriana” may also wonder what has become of Arthur. While there have been more than one hundred films more or less indebted to the Arthurian tradition, there is a great difference between the quantity and the quality of these films. It could be said that the cinematic tradition of Arthur has produced few noteworthy films, and arguably no films that are truly important in the history of cinema.

To be sure, there have been any number of important classic films set in the Middle Ages: Fritz Lang’s epic two-part Nibelungenlied, Carl-Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. Students of the Arthurian tradition clearly have their favorite films, but, even allowing for Eric Rohmer’s Perceval le gallois, Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du lac, Boorman’s Excalibur, and Hans-Ju rgen Syberberg’s Parsifal, it is hard to find Arthurian films of the caliber of those directed by Lang, Dreyer, and the others I previouslymentioned.

The most popular source for screen adaptations of the Arthuriad remains Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, although here quantity and quality again do not go hand in hand. As Elizabeth S. Sklar (97-108) and Barbara Tepa Lupack (167-9) point out in separate publications, filmmakers have repeatedly turned Twain’s satiric response to his own age into juvenilia at best or pabulum at worst. As a result, any relationship between the putative source and the film is at times little more than titular or incidental. For instance, in the latest screen version of Twain, Roger Young’s 1998 A Knight in Camelot made for television by Disney, the screenwriters transform Hank Morgan into Dr. Vivien Morgan, a fast-talking physicist from West Cornwall, Connecticut - played by Whoopi Goldberg complete with dreadlocks, no less.

Given the great literary influence, the length, the scope, and, most importantly, the rich tapestry of incidents and abundant dramatis personae of Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s great work would seem a natural source for film adaptations of the Arthurian legend.