Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Promotional poster for 2001 re-release
Directed by	Terry Gilliam Terry Jones
Produced by	Mark Forstater Michael White John Goldstone
Written by	Graham Chapman John Cleese Terry Gilliam Eric Idle Terry Jones Michael Palin
Starring	Graham Chapman John Cleese Terry Gilliam Eric Idle Terry Jones Michael Palin
Cinematography	Terry Bedford
Editing by	John Hackney
Studio	Python (Monty) Pictures
Distributed by	EMI Films (UK) Cinema 5 Distributing (1975) Rainbow Releasing (2001)
Release date(s)	April 3, 1975 (UK) May 10, 1975
Running time	87 minutes (Original) 89 minutes (Re-release)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English French Latin
Budget	£229,575
Gross revenue	£80,371,739
Preceded by	And Now for Something Completely Different (1972)
Followed by	Life of Brian (1979)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1975 British comedy film written and performed by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin), and directed by Gilliam and Jones. It was conceived during a gap between the third and fourth seasons of their popular BBC television series Monty Python's Flying Circus.

In contrast to the group's first film, And Now for Something Completely Different, a compilation of sketches from the television series, Holy Grail was composed of original material, therefore considered the first "proper" film according to the group and mainstream audiences. It generally spoofs the legends of King Arthur's quest to find the Holy Grail. The film was a success on its initial run and remains popular to this day. Idle used the film as the inspiration for the 2005 Tony Award-winning musical Spamalot.

The film was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1976, but lost to A Boy and His Dog.

Plot

Monty Python and the Holy Grail loosely follows the legend of King Arthur. Arthur (Graham Chapman) along with his squire, Patsy (Terry Gilliam), recruits his Knights of the Round Table, including Sir Bedevere the Wise (Terry Jones), Sir Lancelot the Brave (John Cleese), Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot (Eric Idle) and Sir Galahad the Pure (Michael Palin). The group is instructed by God (represented by an animated photograph of legendary cricket figure W. G. Grace^[1]) to seek out the Holy Grail. They are led to a castle controlled by the French where they believe the Grail is being held. After being insulted in mangled Franglais and failing to invade the castle in a Trojan Rabbit, Arthur decides that they must go their separate ways to seek out the Grail.

Concurrent to these events, in a manner of breaking the fourth wall, a modern-day historian, while describing the Arthurian legend as for a television program, is killed by a knight on horseback, triggering a police investigation.

Each of the Knights encounter various perils on their quest. Arthur and Bedevere attempt to satisfy the strange requests of the dreaded Knights who say Ni. Sir Robin narrowly, but bravely, avoids a fight with the Three-Headed Giant. Sir Lancelot accidentally assaults a wedding party at Swamp Castle believing them to be holding a lady against her will (who is, in fact, an effeminate prince). Galahad is led by a Grail-shaped beacon to Castle Anthrax, populated only by comely women who wish to perform sexual favours for him, but is "rescued" by Lancelot. The Knights regroup and travel to see Tim the Enchanter, who points them to caves where the location of the Grail is written on the walls. To enter the caves, the group is forced to defeat the Rabbit of Caerbannog using the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

With their final destination known, the group travels to its last peril, the Bridge of Death, where each Knight is forced to answer three questions by the bridge-keeper before they can cross; Sirs Robin and Galahad fail and are thrown into the chasm below the bridge, before Arthur tricks the bridge-keeper. Lancelot becomes separated from Arthur and Bedevere, later shown arrested by modern-day police for the murder of the historian. Arthur and Bedevere travel to the Grail's castle, which they find is already occupied by the French who send them away with their insults. They amass a large army to prepare to storm the castle, but just as they are ready to start the charge, the police arrive and stop it, arresting Arthur and Bedevere, and putting an end to the filming.

Breaking the fourth wall

One of the running gags in the film is the frequent breaking of the fourth wall; for example, the aforementioned "old man from scene 24" and the death of the animator. Others include:

• The mood-setting opening credits initially play out in a serious manner before they are "hijacked" three times by trouble-making crewmembers (who, along with adding faux-Norwegian subtitles, sneak in mentions of Sweden and moose, e.g. "A møøse once bit my sister" [sic]) The text at one point claims that the remaining credits have been completed at the very last minute and at great expense. The last few screens are then shown against a backdrop of garish, blinking fluorescent colours, with repeated mentions of llamas.
• The narrator (played by Michael Palin) is heard being killed after taking too long to introduce scene 24, although strangely he is heard later.
• "The aptly named Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film" (the face of Michael Palin's infant son William, crudely inserted by Terry Gilliam into a photograph of a knight in chain-mail).
• When an obviously fake Castle Camelot comes into view and the knights chorus its name in awe, Patsy (Gilliam) remarks "It's only a model" and is shushed. "Castle Camelot" was actually a two-dimensional cutout of a castle, in fact in the film's trailer, it falls over.
• In one Castle Anthrax scene, Dingo (played by Carol Cleveland, Python's main female supporting player) faces the camera and inquires about the quality of the scene to that point, asking if it should have been cut. Other characters from scenes both past and future respond and, after being drawn out, command her to "GET ON WITH IT!" (This moment was actually removed from the film on initial release, but was reinstated for TV broadcasts and the video release).
• When Arthur and his knights encounter the Legendary Black Beast of Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh (which is depicted as a cartoon) in a cave, they run for their lives around the cave until the beast's animator suddenly suffers a fatal heart attack, causing it to disappear.
• Prince Herbert (Jones) repeatedly attempts to begin a musical number, but his music-hating father (Palin) forbids him to sing, and the incipient musical accompaniment stops at his command.
• When Prince Herbert is about to tell how his fall off the tall tower was broken, the crowd breaks into song, and everyone who was killed by Sir Lancelot rises from the dead, including Princess Lucky's father.
• The film ends very abruptly, with one of the police officers putting his hand over the photographic lens, the film jumping its sprockets, and the screen suddenly going black.

Production

The film was mostly shot on location in Scotland, particularly around Doune Castle, Glen Coe, and the privately owned Castle Stalker. The many castles seen throughout the film were either Doune Castle shot from different angles or cardboard models held up against the horizon. There are several exceptions to this: the very first exterior shot of a castle at the beginning of the film is Kidwelly Castle in South Wales and the single exterior shot of the Swamp King castle during "Tale of Sir Lancelot" is Bodiam Castle in Kent — all subsequent shots of the exterior and interior of those scenes were filmed at Doune Castle. King Arthur was the only character whose chain mail armour was authentic. The "armour" worn by his various knights was silver-painted wool, which absorbed moisture in the cold and wet conditions.

The film was co-directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, the first major project for both and the first project where any members of the Pythons were behind the camera. This proved to be troublesome on the set as Jones and Gilliam had different directing styles and it often was not clear who was in charge. The other Pythons evidently preferred Jones, who as an acting member of the group was focused more on performance, as opposed to Gilliam, whose visual sense they admired but whom they sometimes thought too fussy: on the DVD audio commentary, Cleese expresses irritation at a scene set in Castle Anthrax, where he says the focus was on technical aspects rather than comedy. The two later Python feature films, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life, both have Jones as the sole director.

Chapman as King Arthur in Holy Grail

Originally the knight characters were going to ride real horses, but after it became clear that the film's minuscule budget precluded real horses the Pythons decided that their characters would mime horse-riding while their porters trotted behind them banging coconut shells together. The joke was derived from the old-fashioned sound effect used by radio shows to convey the sound of hooves clattering. This was later referred to in the German release of the film, which translated the title as "Die Ritter der Kokosnuss"^[2] ("The Knights of the Coconut").

The use of coconuts leads to an extended, tangential discussion on how coconuts could have found their way to the British Isles. The possibility of swallows carrying them, absurd as it seems, reappears in a key moment late in the film and helps Arthur advance his quest.

As an extension of the group's penchant for never abiding to a generic formula, the 2001 DVD release of the film commences with the British Board of Film Censors' certification for Dentist on the Job, a film "Passed as more suitable for Exhibition to Adult Audiences", followed by its grainy black-and-white opening titles and nearly two minutes of the film itself. During the opening scene of Dentist on the Job, the projectionist (played by Terry Jones) realises it is the wrong film and puts the correct one on. (Dentist on the Job was a 1961 comedy starring Bob Monkhouse. Its alternate title is Get On With It, a phrase spoken multiple times throughout Holy Grail.)

Cast

Characters

Knights of the Round Table

• King Arthur – King of the Britons
• Sir Bedevere the Wise
• Sir Lancelot the Brave
• Sir Galahad the Pure
• Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot
• (The aptly named) Sir Not Appearing In This Film
• While not referred to as 'Knights of the Round Table', Ector, Gawain, and Bors make limited appearances

Villains

• The Knights Who Say Ni, a mysterious, forest-dwelling order of knights devoted to the word 'Ni'
• The French, who apparently possess the Holy Grail and are unwilling to relinquish it
• The Black Knight, a very stubborn knight who refuses to admit defeat even when dismembered
• The Three Headed Knight, a giant with three heads, all of whom are very argumentative
• The Keeper of the Bridge of Death (also known as "the old man from scene 24," in which he appeared first), who demands correct answers to his three questions before the knights may pass
• The Killer Rabbit, whose fluffiness belies its murderous intent
• The Legendary Black Beast of Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh
• The Witch, who is not really a villain but is reviled by the people as one
• Dennis, who scolds King Arthur for treating him as an inferior
• The police

Soundtrack

The dramatic music played during Sir Lancelot's misguided storming of Swamp Castle is The Flying Messenger by Oliver Armstrong, from the DeWolfe library.^[3]

The organ music heard during the film's brief intermission and at the film's end is the Alligator Crawl by Fats Waller.

Television broadcast

The film had its television premiere February 25, 1977 on the CBS Late Movie. Reportedly the Pythons were displeased to discover a number of edits were done by the network to reduce use of profanity and the showing of blood. The troupe pulled back the rights and thereafter had it broadcast in the United States only on PBS and later other channels such as IFC, where it runs uncut.^[4]

Home video editions, locations

The first DVD was released in 1999 and had only a non-anamorphic print, about two pages of production notes, and trailers for other Sony Pictures releases. On October 23, 2001, the Special Edition DVD was released. It includes two commentary tracks, documentaries related to the "brickfilm", the "Camelot Song" as sung by Lego minifigures,^[5] and "Subtitles For People Who Don't Like the Film", consisting of lines taken from William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2. There are also two scenes dubbed in Japanese, where the knights search for a "holy sake cup" and where the Knights Who Say Ni request a bonsai. It also includes a small featurette, presented by Michael Palin, about the proper use of a coconut. It also contains a feature for the Hard of Hearing, where the menu is said in a very loud voice.

Reaction and legacy

This film is #40 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Monty Python and the Holy Grail the 5th greatest comedy film of all time. The next Monty Python film, Monty Python's Life of Brian, was ranked #1. A similar poll of Channel 4 viewers in 2005 placed Holy Grail in 6th (with Life of Brian again topping the list). A 2004 poll by the UK arm of Amazon and the Internet Movie Database named Monty Python and the Holy Grail as the best British picture of all time.^[6]

Influence

A number of works, such as video games, novels, and newspapers pay homage to this movie.

• The 2007 DreamWorks film Shrek the Third includes a scene in which a character is banging coconuts together to simulate the sound of horses' hooves. Although both John Cleese and Eric Idle appeared in the film, Idle stated that he did not know and did not approve of the use of the gag in the film. He claims to be considering suing the producers for the unauthorized use of the gag, while the producers claim they were honouring Idle and Cleese by its use.^[7]
• The beer Monty Python's Holy GrAil ("Ale") comes complete with Python-style cartoons, including the trademark foot of Cupid. The label states it is "Tempered over burning witches."^[8]
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Doomsday World, co-written by Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger, Geordi La Forge is sitting in a bar, the proprietor of which is described as knowing "everything about anything." Geordi asks the bartender some obscure questions about the dimensions and climate about the planet they are on, which the bartender answers, immediately and correctly. Geordi then asks, "What's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" to which the bartender replies, "African or European?" "Damn, he's good." Geordi is forced to concede.^[9]
• Ben & Jerry's has an ice cream flavor called Vermonty Python, with fudge cows.^[10]
• In 2009, Gatorade released an online campaign entitled "Mission G" and 10-minute commercial entitled "The Quest for G" that parodies many elements of the film. The commercial starred Kevin Garnett in the King Arthur role; Derek Jeter, Jimmie Johnson, Usain Bolt, Misty May, Kerri Walsh, and Alicia Sacramone as the knights; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the Tim the Enchanter role, and Michael Jordan as the voice of the Grail.^[11]

References

External links

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the Internet Movie Database
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Allmovie
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Rotten Tomatoes
• Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow