MovieChat Forums > Camelot (1967) Discussion > That Awful Wind Machine

That Awful Wind Machine

posted 14 years ago by fugazzi49
7 replies | jump to latest

The staging of If Ever I Would Leave You was wonderfully realized in this film by a complex montage of all the seasons until the climax when under some odd inspiration Joshua Logan brings in a wind machine and turns the whole thing into a shampoo commercial.Talk about breaking the spell...Guenivere looks like she's stumbling in from a hurricane.You can see the effect he is aiming for,but the shot is too long and Guenivere looks disoriented rather than ravishing.I almost had to laugh,and I am a fan of the film.not one of it's detractors.Did anyone else feel this way?

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] GinaRenee 13 years ago

One of the thousands of reasons that the stage version is so much better.

[–] PeaceRocks 13 years ago

Having just rewatched it on TCM last night, I disagree. The montage is beautiful just like the song.

[–] Mandyjam 13 years ago

I agree with the OP. Too long. Too much!

"great minds think differently"

[–] PeaceRocks 13 years ago

You're right, "different strokes for different folks," but they are married to each other now and I believe it showed there, in that particular scene.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] TANSD76 11 years ago

When the number began I was distracted by just how terrible Franco Nero's lip-synching was in the close up. Then they began rolling around on the ground (or maybe that happened later). I thought the montage was a fairly effective way of communicating their romance without wasting time (unlike the extended Camelot number which could have been trimmed since the song is repetitive and we did not need to see every way they spread the word about Camelot or Lancelot's journey to Camelot following C'est Moi). But yeah, the wind machine was hilarious. It would have been so much more effective for her to just stand there in the soft focus with a little halo of light around her. Instead magical wind seems to be blowing through the door... from inside the building... though there's no wind from outside the building.