[2] It stars Richard Harris as King Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Guenevere, Franco Nero as Lancelot, David Hemmings as Mordred and Lionel Jeffries as Pellinore.

Original cast members Richard Burton and Julie Andrews were approached to reprise their roles from the stage musical, but both declined and were replaced with Harris and Redgrave.

As King Arthur prepares for battle against his former friend, Sir Lancelot, with his son, Mordred, raising an army against him back in England, he reflects on the sad circumstances which have led him to this situation.

Guenevere herself is worried about marrying a man she has never met and longs for the romantic life of a fought-over maiden ("The Simple Joys of Maidenhood").

Four years later, Arthur explores with Guenevere his idea for a Round Table that would seat all the noble knights of the realm, reflecting not only a crude type of democratic ideal, but also the political unification of England.

Inspired by Arthur's ideas, the French Knight Lancelot makes his way to England with his squire Dap, boasting of his superior virtues ("C'est Moi").

Mordred, Arthur's illegitimate son, arrives at Camelot determined to bring down the fellowship of the Round Table by stirring up trouble.

In April 1961, it was reported that Warner Bros. had purchased the rights to produce a film adaptation of the stage musical with Alan Jay Lerner hired to pen the screenplay.

[7] However, development was placed on hold when Warner Bros. fast-tracked a film adaptation of the musical My Fair Lady, for which they acquired the screen rights from CBS for $5.5 million.

[11] Robert Wise was asked to direct, but production chief Walter MacEwen noted, "He does not want to type himself as a director of musical subjects—and he still has The Gertrude Lawrence Story, which falls in that category, on his slate for next year.

[13] Warner approached Burton to reprise his stage role as Arthur, but he demanded a higher salary than the studio was willing to pay, as a result of which the negotiations ceased.

[12] For four months, Harris sent complimentary letters, cables and offers for a screen test to Lerner, Logan and Jack Warner, indicating his interest in the role.

At the time, Redgrave was performing in the stage play The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie so Logan had to wait several months for her availability.

[20] Richard H. Kline came to the attention of Logan after he had watched footage from Chamber of Horrors (1966), which contained medieval castle doors with a carriage drawn by a team of gray horses rolling through a bricked courtyard that had been shot with muted colors of the woods and mist.

For Camelot, Kline wanted to shoot the film in a more authentically textured style rather than the polished look of Hollywood musicals,[21] and utilized pre-flashing techniques in order to mute colors and control contrast.

However, the location shoot had setbacks due to the country's rainfall and high temperatures, and finished 12 days behind schedule, yielding half an hour of usable footage.

[31] On the LP soundtrack album, "Take Me to the Fair" appears after "How to Handle a Woman", and "Follow Me" (with new lyrics written for the film) is listed after "The Lusty Month of May".

[33] Retrospectively, Alice Grellner suggested the movie served as "an escape from the disillusionment of Vietnam, the bitterness and disenchantment of the antiwar demonstrations, and the grim reality of the war on the evening television news" and reminder of John F. Kennedy's presidency.

[33] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Redgrave "dazzling" but criticized the film's conflicting moods and uncomfortable close-ups.

Crowther felt the main characters were not sufficiently fleshed out to evoke any sympathy from the audience, concluding that the film lacked "magic".

[39] Variety magazine ran a positive review, declaring that the film "qualifies as one of Hollywood's alltime great screen musicals," praising the "clever screenplay" and "often exquisite sets and costumes.

"[40] Clifford Terry of the Chicago Tribune was also positive, calling it "a beautiful, enjoyable splash of optical opiate" with "colorful sets, bright costumes and three fine performances.

"[41] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post wrote, "Long, leaden and lugubrious, the Warner's 'Camelot' is 15 million dollars worth of wooden nickels.

"[42] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a very considerable disappointment," writing that its moments of charm "simply cannot cancel out the slow static pace, the lack of style, the pinched and artificial quality of the proceedings, the jumpy and inconsistent cuts, the incessant overuse of close-ups, the failure to sustain emotional momentum, the fatal wavering between reality and fantasy, the inability to exploit the resources of the film medium.

[52] As a result, it was one of the last big-budget American films that attempted to physically construct a large-scale full-size set on a studio backlot to represent an exotic foreign location.