Crew
Director – Stephen Weeks, Screenplay – Philip Breen & Stephen Weeks, Based on the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Producer – Philip Breen, Photography – Ian Wilson, Music – Ron Goodwin, Special Effects – Les Hillman, Art Direction – Anthony Woollard. Production Company – Scancrest Productions.
Cast
Murray Head (Gawain), Ciaran Madden (Linet), Nigel Green (The Green Knight), David Leland (Humphrey), Pauline Letts (Lady of Lyonesse), Murray Melvin (Seneschal), Ronald Lacey (Oswald), Robert Hardy (Sir Bertilak), Tony Steedman (Fortinbras), Anthony Sharp (King Arthur), Richard Hurndall (Bearded Man), Geoffrey Bayldon (Wiseman), Peter Copley (Pilgrim)
Plot
During the end of year feast at Camelot, The Green Knight appears and offers a challenge to King Arthur’s knights – to behead him with an axe. Nobody will stand up to take the challenge excepting the young squire Gawain, who is quickly knighted by Arthur. Gawain succeeds in beheading the Green Knight – only for the knight to pick up his head and place it back on again. As part of the challenge, it is now his turn to behead Gawain. However, seeing as that Gawain is so young, The Green Knight gives him one year to go out into the world to find his way. And so Gawain sets out on a quest to find the Green Knight’s chapel.
The legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem that goes back to the 14th Century. It is written in Middle English, although the identity of the author is unknown. It is designed as a spinoff from the Arthurian Legends based around the knight Sir Gawain. Gawain’s quest and meeting with the Green Knight is one that comes rich in allegory and its meaning has been much debated.
I had heard about this obscure version of Gawain and the Green Knight for many years and held hopes out for it. Eventually seen, it ends up disappointing. The biggest disappointment is that it often looks a threadbare production. In particular, the opening scenes at Camelot look like a high-school pantomime with their awkwardly sewn costumes and Nigel Green turning up as the Green Knight with very fake looking beard and wig. It reduces the mystique of the Arthurian cycle to cardboard spectacle. On the plus side, the end credits note that the film was shot in four different castles in England and Wales, which add an undeniable authenticity and pictorial majesty.
The story takes place around a series of episodic encounters with the various people that Gawain meets on his journey. These include his detour to the magic land of Lyonesse and romancing of Linet, as well as an extended series of scenes where she is abducted and he has to fight against the seneschal’s men in a competition. These vary between the quite good – Pauline Letts has a great speech lambasting what an awful man her husband, whom Gawain has just slain, was – and those that could easily have been cut – the scenes with the seneschal and Gawain being made to fight. Stephen Weeks’s direction often seems hesitant and awkward, not quite sure how to give the material the mythic stature it needs.
Stephen Weeks later remade the film as Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1984) with Miles O’Keeffe as Gawain and Sean Connery as the Green Knight, essentially reusing the same script here. The remake retains aspects that Weeks adds here over the original Gawain text such as the detour to the land of Lyonesse. The remake even casts Ronald Lacey in the same role. In the remake, Linet’s role is less, whereas here she becomes the love interest and much of the subsequent plot is based around rescuing her.
Lead actor Murray Head was better known as a singer, having appeared in the British version of Hair (1967) and singing on the original album version of Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar (1970). Head had made several acting appearances, most notedly with the acclaimed Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Head’s work since then has mostly been in music, most notedly with the hit single One Night in Bangkok (1984) from the Rice musical Chess. Head is the older brother of Anthony Head, best known for tv’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003).
Other tellings of the story of Gawain and the Green Knight include: Stephen Weeks’ remake for Cannon Films with Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; the tv movie Gawain and the Green Knight (1991), a Thames Television tv movie starring Jason Durr as Gawain; and David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2021) with Dev Patel as Gawain.
Director Stephen Weeks was a minor director on the outskirts of the English horror scene where he also made the likes of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde adaptation I, Monster (1971) and Ghost Story (1974).