The Films of Graham Chapman
The Short But Brilliant Movie Career of the Monty Python Star
Sep 16, 2009
The first Monty Python movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) was, like the television show, conceived, written and performed by the entire troupe, but it was Graham Chapman who took the lead role of King Arthur. Chapman, a qualified doctor, was perhaps the most truly anarchic of all the Python’s, standing out even in company with Cleese, Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam as an unorthodox and complicated personality.
Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why he was and is regarded as the best actor among the group. For while the others possess undoubted comic ability, Chapman surpassed them all in intensity and pathos. So it was left to Chapman to hold the quest together, as the others wove a typically bizarre web around him, creating a wealth of endlessly quotable moments: The Knights who say ‘Ni’; the determined Black Knight, insisting that the loss of a limb is "Just a scratch"; the potty-mouthed Frenchman whose lord already has a Holy Grail; and the show-stopping musical number ‘Camelot’, since used as the inspiration for the Broadway hit ‘Spamalot.’
These classic scenes go a long way to masking the fact that the film has very little real plot, but what it does have is built around Chapman. The importance of this can be seen in the Python’s later films, The Life of Brian (1979) in which Chapman once again starred, and The Meaning of Life (1983) which featured no continuous lead character.
Graham Chapman Stars in The Life of Brian
Chapman stepped up his level of dramatic performance from The Holy Grail and delivered a career-defining display. The Life of Brian undoubtably contains many moments of exceptional comedy, right up to the singing of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by the victims of crucifixion over the closing credits, but it is not humour which makes this the best Python film, it is the fact that the Python’s, and Chapman in particular, allowed themselves at time not to be funny. It is the moments of real drama and pathos, and the fact that the plot is given equal importance to the jokes, that make this a great film.
Graham Chapman and Yellowbeard
Sadly, alcoholism, ill health and a tragically early death at the age of just 48 meant that Chapman was to make only one more film. Yellowbeard (1983) starred Chapman as the pirate Captain Yellowbeard in a Treasure Island style comic adventure. The film was beset from the start by financing issues, and Chapman worked on numerous scripts before finding a balance between British and American humour that satisfied his backers.
The final draft of the film was co-written by another British comedy legend, Peter Cook, and the cast included former Python’s Eric Idle and John Cleese, as well as Spike Milligan, whose surrealist sense of humour had been a big influence on Chapman and the rest of the Flying Circus. Yellowbeard was also the last movie to feature Marty Feldman, who died during filming.
The film received some critical praise, but did not do particularly well at the box office. The repeated re-writes, while making the script more acceptable to Hollywood, had taken the film some way away from Chapman’s original concept, perhaps to the overall detriment of the project. Yellowbeard nevertheless remains a very funny film, and a worthy addition to Chapman’s body of work, which considering the strength of the Python catalogue is no faint praise.
