Behind The Scenes
According to the DVD audio commentary by Cleese, Palin, and Idle, the sequence originated in a story told to Cleese when he was attending an English class during his school days. Two Roman wrestlers were engaged in a particularly intense match and had been fighting for such a substantial length of time that the match had degraded to the two combatants doing little more than leaning into one another with their body weight. When one wrestler finally tapped-out and pulled away from his opponent, it was only then that he and the crowd realised the other man was, in fact, dead and had effectively won the match posthumously. The moral of the tale, according to Cleese's teacher, was "if you never give up, you can't possibly lose" – a statement that, Cleese reflected, always struck him as being "philosophically unsound".
Cleese said that the scene would seem heartless and sadistic except for the fact that the Black Knight shows no pain and just keeps on fighting, or trying to, however badly he is wounded. Also, as the scene progresses and Arthur becomes increasingly annoyed, his dialogue lapses from medieval ("You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine.") to modern ("Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!"), and finally to just plain sarcastic ("What are you gonna do, bleed on me?!") while the Black Knight remains just as defiant ("I'm invincible!" he yells with only one leg left, to which Arthur simply replies "You're a looney").
This scene is undoubtedly one of the best-known of the entire film. Arguably the most famous line of the scene, "Tis' but a scratch!", has since become an expression used to comment on someone who ignores a fatal flaw or problem, either out of optimism or stubbornness. The phrase "Tis' but a scratch" is similar to a line the character Mercutio speaks in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. He demurs, "Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch," referring to his mortal wound. The phrase "Tis' but a scratch" notably appeared in an early episode of The Goon Show entitled "The Giant Bombardon", broadcast in 1954; the Monty Python group has previously confessed to being influenced by the Goons.
The Knight was, in fact, played by two actors: John Cleese is in the Knight's armour until he is down to one leg. The Knight is then played by a real one-legged man, a local by the name of Richard Burton, a blacksmith who lived near the film shoot (not to be confused with Richard Burton, the Welsh actor of the same name), because, according to the DVD commentary, Cleese could not balance well on one leg. After the Knight's remaining leg is cut off, the quadruple-amputee that remains is again Cleese. Cleese still boasts that he had Richard Burton as his stunt double.
In the musical Spamalot, the scene with the Black Knight was the most difficult to play on stage, according to Eric Idle. Penn & Teller created the illusion for the musical.
Read more about this topic: Black Knight (Monty Python)
Famous quotes containing the word scenes:
“The Taylor and the Painter often contribute to the Success of a Tragedy more than the Poet. Scenes affect ordinary Minds as much as Speeches; and our Actors are very sensible, that a well-dressed Play has sometimes brought them as full Audiences, as a well-written one.... But however the Show and Outside of the Tragedy may work upon the Vulgar, the more understanding Part of the Audience immediately see through it, and despise it.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)