Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legend

Summary

'It was a magical chemical balance': How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legendEmmanuel Lafont/ Getty ImagesFifty years after Monty Python and the Holy Grail redefined comedy, stars Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam look back on the freedoms – and limitations – that shaped the film.An independent British comedy made on a shoestring by a television sketch troupe? It sounds like a film destined to be forgotten within weeks of leaving cinemas – assuming it reaches cinemas in the first place. But Monty Python and the Holy Grail is still revered as one of the greatest ever big-screen comedies, 50 years on from its release in April 1975. Terry Gilliam, who co-directed the film with Terry Jones, thinks he knows why. "Every time I watch it I'm completely bowled over by how incredibly wonderful it is," Gilliam tells the BBC. "It's still so funny, and I just love everything about it."The Monty Python team first appeared on TV together in a BBC series, Monty Python's Flying Circus, in 1969. Five of the six members – Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin – had honed their craft in student comedy societies at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The sixth, Gilliam, had moved to the UK from the US, and provided animated segments which linked their surreal sketches. In 1971, some of these sketches were reshot and compiled into a film, And Now for Something Completely Different, but the Pythons had ambitions to make a bona fide feature film – or some of them did, at least.AlamyThe Pythons paid so much attention to detail that the aesthetics of Holy Grail came to define the look of the Middle Ages, even for more serious films (Credit: Alamy)"It was by no means unanimous that we should do a film after the television series," says Palin. "John, to his credit, was doing Fawlty Towers, Eric was doing Rutland Weekend Television, but the two Terrys wanted to direct a film, and I loved cinema as well, so that was the only way forward – not...