Word: knighting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...American theater. Under his guidance, the Yale Repertory Company has been vibrant and innovative. The Yale School of Drama has established itself at the forefront of American theater training. On the surface, Brustein appears to have every credential to serve an apocalyptic function, to act as a White Knight who can ride in and take Cambridge by storm...
From an administration perspective, the prospect of a prestigious Harvard Repertory Company is the crowning glory of Brustein's proposal. He might be a wonderful Harvard acquisition, but his company promises to be a serious problem for undergraduate theater. While the vision of Brustein as a white knight who will save Harvard theater from the "blahs" is naively optimistic, that optimism is harmless enough. It is more dangerous to gloss over the very significant problems that will result from the imposition of a professional company in an undergraduate facility...
...story is adapted from the narrative of the 12th century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, who wrote the first formal version of the Grail legend. Perceval (Fabrice Luchini), a Welsh lad of sublime simplicity, encounters five knights galloping after distressed damsels. At first he takes the warriors for angels, but when he learns they are men like him self, he sets out to find King Arthur, that famous knight maker. Perceval's mother had told him to help ladies in trouble but to expect no more than a kiss, and perhaps a ring, in return. He misreads...
Eventually he finds Arthur (Marc Eyraud), who is in a sulk because the Red Knight is trying to seize his land. Perceval puts a spear through the fellow's eye, and Arthur dubs him the new Red Knight. Various adventures follow, with Perceval rescuing maidens, downing oppressors and entering enchanted houses. Invariably, however, he misconstrues good advice. When he does see the Holy Grail, he does not recognize it or ask about it, having been told by a wise old man that a good knight keeps his mouth shut. For that error he is cursed. He has become...
Rohmer's telling of the story is highly stylized. The actors speak in rhyming verse, and much of the narrative is provided by a chorus, playing medieval instruments. Luchini is more a suggestion of a knight than a knight himself. With a receding chin, concave chest, and dangling, half-open mouth, he looks as if he would be afraid to kill a mouse with a trap, much less joust with a man in armor. The sets are also symbolic, rather than realistic-sculptured trees, cardboard castles, painted skies-and they have the strange beauty of a Dali painting...