According to Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, Launcelot of the Lake hardly ever had a bad day at a tournament. But for Malory, Launcelot did not live just from joust to joust. His chivalrous life was sprinkled with palace romances that would be cover stories in every contemporary magazine from Focus to Dare. In Knights of the Round Table, the movie version of the tale, MGM has all but smothered the knight's rakish inclinations. True, he remains the "champion" to Queen Guinevere, but in the book the word seems to have a greater breadth of meaning.

One can understand the screenwriters' efforts to scrape the tarnish from poor Launcelot's soul. And it is clear that they had to pare down the number of characters wandering through the story to keep within the limits of the CinemaScope screen. But when only a lean-faced Mel Ferrer, a sullen Ava Gardner, and a Frank Merriwellish Robert Taylor remain, disappointment tends to creep in. All that keeps the audience from leaving their seats are the colorful sword-swinging battle scenes between regiments of Round Table rivals and the single-handed heroics of Robert Taylor's Launcelot.

Shunning the pedestrian gimmicks of familiar 2-D swashbuckling movies, MGM has contrived a new set of problems for Taylor. There is, of course, the scene with the hero trapped in his palace room as a group of adversaries outside threaten to break down the door. Knights of the Round Table adds a degree of sophistication: Robert Taylor discovers that his sword is out at the blacksmith's for repairs and has to fight off the first few rogues with a torch. Later, in the wrestling scene between the cunning antagonist and the formidable knight, the pair work their way over to the edge of a cliff. Here, oddly, it is Taylor who gets thrown to the floor of the ravine. Miraculously, he lands in a bed of quicksand; and on hearing his affectionate call, his horse trots over, throws him a rein, and pulls him out. It is certain that no writers in Hollywood, save those with especial creative talent, were permitted to work on the scenario of this film.

Flecked with historical idioms like "My liege" and "So be it!", the dialogue is dull and insipidly metaphorical. Taylor and Ava Gardner, who plays Guinevere, struggle gamely, but neither can reduce the heaviness of the material. Late in the film Queen Guinevere is sent to a nunnery. Miss Gardner shifts through this role with the same dexterity we would expect from Lily St. Cyr. Mel Ferrer, as King Arthur, spends the greater part of the film looking wide-eyed at people and ornaments about the palace. He is so obsequious one cannot help but wonder how he put over this Round Table idea in the first place. So far, Hollywood has proven that it can produce CinemaScope movies of a consistent calibre. When a film comes along to break the streak, perhaps it will be worth revisiting the medium. BYRON R. WIEN