Craig J. Clark
One scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail that encapsulates the entire film is the plague village, through which a cart laden with bodies is wheeled while a man cries “Bring out your dead!” and takes nine pence for each one he collects. Everything and everyone is slathered in mud, and all concerned look as miserable as can be. After a brief exchange between the dead collector and another man toting a not-quite-deceased relative, King Arthur blithely trots through the scene, accompanied by his coconut-banging servant Patsy. No one knows who he is, but the collector surmises he must be a king because “he hasn’t got shit all over him.” As much as Arthur tries to rise above the filth that surrounds him, though, by the time he reaches the end of his quest that is no longer the case.
When Monty Python set about filming their follow-up to And Now for Something Completely Different – with Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones as co-directors to retain more control over the final product – the troupe had been operating as a unit for half a decade and were eager to transcend the sketch format. Just as they exploded the conventions of television comedy in the first three series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, they were prepared to do the same for the medieval epic, although they arrived at it via a circuitous route. The initial writing sessions generated a wealth of material that eventually coalesced around a retelling of the legend of King Arthur and his knights, but the first draft also included scenes in modern-day Britain, which were wisely set aside. The decision to keep the story firmly in the past made the moments when the present intrudes on it all the more jarring and unexpected.
Holy Grail is built on the disparity between its realistic depiction of life in the Middle Ages and sanitized Hollywood spectacles like 1953’s Knights of the Round Table and 1967’s Camelot. In addition, King Arthur’s frustrating encounters with what can best be termed “the common folk” (the likes of which Mel Ferrer and Richard Harris were generally spared) are given extra weight by the inherent dignity Graham Chapman brings to the role despite spending so much screen time pretending to be riding a horse. (The moment when he and his knights “dismount” is a sublime sight gag a full two-thirds of the film has been leading up to.)
Along with taking King Arthur down a few pegs (as Michael Palin says on the commentary, “This is the way to deal with powerful people: make fun of them”), the Pythons use his knights to poke fun at the notion of chivalry. Jones’s Sir Bedevere the Wise is prone to spouting nonsense about the Earth being banana-shaped. John Cleese’s Sir Lancelot the Brave is apt to lose his head and charge into battle against a castle full of unarmed merry-makers. Palin’s Sir Galahad the Pure is ready to give into temptation the first time it presents itself. And Eric Idle’s Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot is a coward who regularly soils his armor and has a chicken on his shield for a reason. Meanwhile, Gilliam’s Patsy doesn’t say much, but when he does speak, he deflates their triumphant arrival at Camelot by grumbling that it’s “only a model.”
In addition to the occasional fourth-wall break (such as Arthur’s comment about another character’s “eccentric performance” and a reference to one who appeared in “Scene 24”), the modern world begins encroaching on the film with the introduction of “a famous historian” whose violent death at the blade of a knight on the horseback leads to a police investigation that progressively closes in on our heroes. The historian’s death, incidentally, is one of many moments that push the film’s PG rating. See also: the Green Knight’s bloody demise, the Black Knight’s dismemberment, Lancelot’s crazed assault on Swamp Castle, and Sir Bors’s gory death by rabbit. Fans of the Flying Circus were no strangers to such Peckinpah-inspired mayhem, but the conjunction of comedy and bloodletting was still something of a novelty on the big screen.
Holy Grail definitely had something on its side when it arrived in theaters in the spring of 1975. American fans primed by the proliferation of the Flying Circus on public television (as well as imports of Python books and records) lined up around the block for its New York engagement, and it soon joined the ranks of other cult favorites on the college circuit. And thanks to its extraordinarily tight budget – every penny of which is accounted for in the screenplay book – it remains their most profitable feature. Not bad for a film shot under trying conditions by a pair of novice directors. That there would be more to come was inevitable.
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” can be readily found on a number of streaming services. No need to set alight a grail-shaped beacon.
