LANCELOT DU LAC

A dream project that Bresson waited 20 years to make, LANCELOT DU LAC depicts the end of the age of chivalry, the death of a dream. It is set the last days of the quest for the Holy Grail, as King Arthur's knights are overcome by the failure of their mission, and Lancelot, the greatest of them, struggles to break off his affair with Guinevere in order to heal the ailing kingdom. The film's masterly cinematography depicts the bright surfaces of pageantry surrounded by dark, treacherous forests and the twilight tones of a dying age. The jousting tournament, stripped to its essentials by selective framing and editing, has been called "one of the most exciting action sequences in the history of cinema" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Comment). In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)