the court jester

[cimorene]

I'd never seen The Court Jester until earlier this year, and Danny Kaye was missing from my cultural knowledge until my wife told me who he was. When I did finally see it, that seemed a bit shocking.

I know it doesn't make any SENSE, but as I was watching it the first time I kept being disoriented by the fact that it's so funny - so reminiscent of later medieval comedy like The Princess Bride and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (but better, maybe. Narrowly, but... yeah, I think I would put it above The Princess Bride as well) - and yet is older, as if I was subconsciously expecting the technology of humor to have advanced in the meantime. (I did say it didn't make sense.) And more logically, I'm a bit gobsmacked that with all the conversations I've had about The Princess Bride, Men in Tights, and The Holy Grail over the years, I haven't met with lots of people asking if I'd seen it and telling me how good it was.

One of the things that's fascinating is what it does with gender, both masculinity and femininity - while still being noticeably (cheerfully?) beholden to Hollywood beauty standards and notions of costume and hair and makeup of the time. I think there are several essays' worth of stuff to be said there, actually. (Not essays that I have time to write right now. I did look for analysis about it, but that mostly turned up positive reviews and trivia about Danny Kaye.)

But of course the biggest difference between those movies and The Court Jester is that it's the writing of the jokes which makes them shine - not that the acting in them isn't good and funny, but The Court Jester is very much a star vehicle designed and written for the skills of its star. Its physical comedy gags are for many people the most memorable parts of it, and they make up whole plot sequences.

Comments

[alafaye]

You are only the second person I've met who knows this movie. Even among people who watch older movies, not many people know this movie. It's just not known. I loved it from the first and I wish I could find it on DVD or that it played more often on TCM, but alas. It's so great.

[cimorene]

Mail ordering DVDs is probably the way to go! I'd check ebay, or the Amazon marketplace or its equivalent - that's where I've had to look for DVDs in recent years.

[brownbetty]

One of the most astounding things about it to me is how much Angela Lansbury looks like Angela Lansbury, and they don't let that stop them?

And also there's an acrobatic scene with little people. Haven't had that in a while!

[cimorene]

She's quite a good actress, so maybe that was it, although also possibly that look was fashionable or something? Because they've also got her cast as a beauty in Meet Me in St Louis.

[copracat]

She was totally a famous beauty in the 40s and 50s. I mean, omg you guys, look at this hot pink diamond.

I love her.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that's the showgirl outfit from Meet Me in St Louis.

That movie totally is ripe for a femslash reading.

[copracat]

I think you typoed! It is from The Harvey Girls and I know exactly what you mean by the femslash.

[cimorene]

Oh yes! Thanks! Not a typo exactly, a braino? Because I got the two movies at the same time and watched them in the same day the 1st time, so I'm always mixing them up now.

[copracat]

Braino is a spectacularly good word and I am going to use it all the time.

[cimorene]

Hah, be my guest! It is tragically increasingly common as I get older...

[cimorene]

And that would have been a much better story, really, because Angela Lansbury was kinda the most interesting character as I recall it.

[brownbetty]

It's hard for me to see her as A Beauty! I mean, she's certainly not breaking any clocks, but she just looks exactly like Angela Lansbury!

[cimorene]

I mean... I guess I can kind of see it, but she definitely has a unique look that is very far from the modern ideal.

You know what she DOES remind me of, though, is the classic porcelain doll face. (In the era when people were always saying that, they usually didn't actually mean people who looked like it, just sort of round pink cheeks and round eyes and small noses...)

[copracat]

When I was a kid, movies of this era were regular weekend TV. I imagine it was easier to get hold of them then, when they were old enough to be cheap TV programming but Turner Classic Movies hadn't launched.

[cimorene]

Yeah, I remember my mom briefly taping a few 50s classics off of television before TCM and HBO took over! We could've just missed this one out of bad luck. I'm sure she'll have seen it - she has encyclopedic knowledge of a lot of 40s-50s movies from the tv being on all the time when she was a kid - but she doesn't always remember them until asked about it. I don't even know what channels she got those taped off of, come to think of it? I was inundated with vintage TV, but I don't remember seeing any vintage movies in my tv watching.

[copracat]

In Australis in the 60s, 70s and into the 80s we just didn't have enough local TV production to fill the broadcast hours - and this was when TV shut down overnight! My childhood was full of US and UK TV shows and movies.

[phosfate]

US stations used to play the national anthem before shutting down ("WOWT now ends is broadcast day."). I don't know why they played the national anthem. It wasn't like we'd all get up and stand in front of the set with our hands over our hearts.

[cimorene]

My sister was friends with a kid whose parents were both ex-army and her mom ran their girl scout troop like a sergeant major. Or more like a parody of one. I saw her get mad at first graders over not taking the flag ceremony seriously enough.

So I bet she would.

[phosfate]

Same. It was unusual for Saturday and Sunday afternoons not to have at least one classic movie. It also depended on what movie packages your local stations bought. So I've never seen The Court Jester, but I've seen The Great Race 20-30 times, and would happily watch it again.

[cimorene]

I just caught the second half of it Monday! It was one of Wax and her siblings' favorites when they were kids. (They had managed to tape it off tv.)

[phosfate]

Yeah, it was what they used to call a roadshow picture, with an overture (you can see it in certain editions) and intermission. I didn't see many in the theater, because four hours is just too long for a little kid, until Mom made me go to a re-release of Gone With the Wind. The last picture I remember with an overture was Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. It wasn't that long a movie, but somebody apparently thought it would be a nice touch.

[cimorene]

Oh wow, that's neat! My version has the long musical intro complete with a rhyming summary of the plot, but it doesn't have the intermission.

[phosfate]

I don't remember if mine does. I think it's after the scene where they wake up on the iceberg. That's when CBS used to cut it in half to show over two nights.

[copracat]

OMG, the pie fight.

[cimorene]

That was amazing 😁🥧

[phosfate]

Banished! Banished! Banished!

There's a production still of Blake Edwards about to hit Natalie Wood right inna puss with a pie for a close-up, but I don't know if he actually did it.

[tripleransom]

"The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle, the flagon with the dragon holds the brew that is true" was a staple saying of my childhood. I adore that movie!

Danny Kaye is wonderful and Basil Rathbone is perfect also. I'm glad you liked it. I think it's a wonderful movie!

[cimorene]

A chance to see Rathbone's formidable fencing skills! Though it's a bit hard because Danny Kaye is so funny in that scene.

[tripleransom]

And Angela Lansbury is..Angela Lansbury. 'Nuff said!