Directed by John Boorman / Screenplay by Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman

Six years after King Arthur had been comprehensively spoofed by the Monty Python team, another British filmmaker rode to his rescue. John Boorman had initially made his name with gritty American thrillers like Point Blank (1967) and Deliverance (1972), before turning to the fantasy genre with 1974’s Zardoz (a weird dystopian fairytale starring Sean Connery as you’ve never seen him before) and 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic (a critically mauled sequel to the 1973 blockbuster). Boorman’s third excursion into fantasy emerged from an abortive attempt to film The Lord of the Rings: when that project folded, he retained its production designs and concept images, mapping them instead onto an Arthurian screenplay he had written some years earlier with his long-time collaborator Rospo Pallenberg. The result was Excalibur, a stylish reimagining of Thomas Malory’s 15th-century romance Le Morte d’Arthur. Shot on location in Ireland, the film helped to launch the movie careers of several young Irish actors, including Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson. Topping the bill were more established names: Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Cherie Lunghi, and the eminent Shakespearean actor Nicol Williamson, who gives the film its beating heart as perhaps the finest Merlin to have graced the screen. Matching Excalibur’s vivid performances are its sumptuous cinematography (never has sunlight glinted off armour quite so bewitchingly), and the operatic breadth of Boorman’s ambition, marking this out as an unusually high-minded entry among the spate of sword-and-sorcery films that flooded the cinema in 1981. It was a golden year: Excalibur was released in the UK on the very same day as Time Bandits and Clash of the Titans.

Framed Dimensions: 330mm x 410mm

Acrylic on 300gsm Arches oil paper
Glazed, mounted and framed

Supplied with signed letter of authenticity from Barnaby.