A Book about the Film Monty Python and the Holy Grail by Darl Larsen

Author:Darl Larsen [Larsen, Darl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SCENE TWELVE

Title Sequence Animation

This title sequence1 (not defined in any meaningful way in the printed script) is set up with a hand-penned “ANIMATION: THE QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL” written between the typed lines “Stirring music crescendo. They ride off” and “CUT TO TITLES SEQUENCE.” There is no other indication as to what these titles are to look like, what the style might be, the content, and so on. This mere mentioning of an animated sequence without description was typical for the Pythons by this time. During the run of Flying Circus the writing team (everyone except Gilliam) would be together during the week leading up to the taping of the show—reworking the script, blocking out the taped (studio) scenes, rehearsing, finding music and film cues, etc., while Gilliam would be off working on animated linking and titling sequences. Even earlier, as the scripts were being written, the animation would only be a consideration—it would be accomplished much later, and in a shroud of some mystery. See the “Suddenly another light. . .” entry in scene 11 for more.

With Gilliam so actively participating in the production of this feature film (as codirector and cowriter, as well as likely the shadow grandee production designer), there was clearly no need for the troupe to expend much more energy on any scene description for Gilliam’s eventual animated contributions—the Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book) is loaded with drawing after drawing by Gilliam as he thought about the film, individual scenes, characters, and monsters that didn’t make the final cut. The annotations for those drawings and sketches found on the facing pages (pages opposite the script text) are included in appendix A, and reveal the impressive breadth of Gilliam’s search for suitable period images.

As for the finished film itself, this first significant animated sequence contains the following, in order of appearance:

Trumpets rising into view in a clouded sky and playing a fanfare—(24:55) The stylized, nebulous-like clouds are copied and then enhanced (xerographed several times, then laid out in more lifelike cloud patterns). They are borrowed from an image of “The Sounding of the Second Trumpet,” which is a panel of a tapestry, photos of which Gilliam found in The Flowering of the Middle Ages (1966). This is a quarto-sized history and art book that Gilliam will use extensively for both inspiration and clever copying/adaptation. The tapestry clouds are originally from the fourteenth-century Angers Apocalypse embroidered hanging, pictured in color on page 251 of FMA.2 Unlike other cutouts he adapted, Gilliam here maintained the original colors for the clouds—various blues and whites. The trumpets and the heralds attached to them are of Gilliam’s design, though they resemble the trumpets depicted in the Cloisters Apocalypse (see below) in both design and ornamentation.

New trumpets emerging (downward, towards the earth) from the clouds and blasting an unsuspecting shepherd off a hilltop—(24:58) The clouds are the same type used in the previous shot, though the trumpets are different, and may be borrowed from (or inspired by) the

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