Lancelot and Guinevere
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Lancelot and Guinevere is a 1963 film starring Cornel Wilde and Jean Wallace. Lancelot and Guinevere, a lesser-known version of the Camelot legend, is a work almost solely made by Cornel Wilde, who co-produces, directs and plays Lancelot. Lancelot is King Arthur's most valued Knight of the Round Table and a paragon of courage and virtue. Things change, however, when he falls for Guinevere (Wallace, Wilde's wife at the time), bride of Arthur (Brian Aherne, who has essayed this character more than once, e.g. in 1954's Prince Valiant), and she for him.
Made ten years after Richard Thorpe's film Knights of the Round Table, the illicit romance this time is portrayed as a more intimate affair, and the sword fights have a more menacing reality (Wilde was an excellent fencer). A sub-plot concerns Arthur's effort to forestall a challenge from a rival king, a problem that will inevitably catch Lancelot up in a personal conflict. As a director, Wilde (The Naked Prey) knows what he wants, though his skills are generally outmatched by the size of his themes.
