Royal Parade: 'The Young Victoria'

[ CritiCalviews ] 112 • Metro Magazine 163 Royal ParadeParade The Young VicToria and iTs anTecedenTs In spite of the fact that we are living in what might be called ‘republican’ times, the screen’s fascination with royalty continues unabated, writes Brian McFarlane. Metro Magazine 163 • 113 [ CritiCalviews ] HAT, I WONDER, are the attractions of royalty on the screen, not just in countries with resident royals, but in countries whose connections are more tenuous? Australia certainly has a royal, if absent, head of state, but why has the United States, which so definitively severed its royal links in 1776, so often taken screen queens and kings to its republican (and democratic) bosom? screen queens and kings What has royalty going for it to have commanded so much screen time? Perhaps most obviously it offers occasion like nothing else (except maybe an Olympic opening or closing ceremony) for the display of pomp and ceremony, orchestrated within an inch of its life for maximum drama. Think of the television audiences for a royal wedding anti-monarchist alike. The former can bask For anti-monarchists, the or funeral. Does even an Oscar-viewing in a feeling of getting close to the leaders extravagant lifestyles and audience outnumber those tuned in for a they revere, in the sense of finding them to internecine conflicts can only ringside seat at Westminster Abbey or St be ‘real people’ as well as otherwise remote be grist to the mill, confirming their worst suspicions about Paul’s Cathedral? royals. For anti-monarchists, the extravagant what they know to be an lifestyles and internecine conflicts can only outmoded system. Further, in these days of the ascendancy of be grist to the mill, confirming their worst publications like Hello, New Idea and Who suspicions about what they know to be an Weekly, brazenly placed at the supermarket outmoded system. And so on. checkout to beguile us as we wait, nothing sells like ‘celebrity’. Without lifting a finger, The US, having got rid of royalty, has had to a major royal (and even some quite minor invent an equivalent. Some occupiers of the ones) can still pull a buying crowd. We may White House have measured up reasonably there was abundant drama in getting people never have heard of Diana Spencer or Sarah well, but for the most part America has had onto thrones, in securing those thrones Ferguson, but the moment they hitched their to make do with mere ‘celebrities’. It has had and in fending off contenders. The chance wagons to royal stars they were, whether they to be constantly concerned – and Australia of a public beheading, or of ordering one, sought it or not, instant celebrities, their every has gone along with this if the supermarket the complicated sexual manoeuvres with move diligently (or opportunistically) recorded checkout is a reliable indicator – with, say, mistresses discreetly available, the odd for our delectation. The purveyors of this kind whether Brad and Ange are still together assassination attempt or abdication: it sounds of information (to use that term loosely) know or whether Tom has won Katie over to like Dallas in doublet and hose. Could screen that half the world is dying to know whether Scientology yet. By comparison, royalty may melodrama ask for more rewarding material Wills and Kate will make it to the altar – or, to seem like the real thing, giving off a whiff of to work on? go beyond Britain, whether all is well between class and an intimation of permanence, even the handsome young Danish royals. if its actual exemplars sometimes cut up rough. Paradoxically, too, the screen incarnations previous page and this spread: the young of royalty may well appeal to monarchist and And so often, especially in times safely past, victoria 114 • Metro Magazine 163 [ CritiCalviews ] Metro Magazine 163 • 115 [ CritiCalviews ] record – Victoria is referred to at the end ‘What had always interested me about this story of the new film as ‘the longest-reigning … was the contrast between the public perception sovereign to date’. Which brings me at last of the Queen – a dour, stout figure in black with to The Young Victoria – according to one an expression of permanent disapproval – and the source, the ninety-fifth big- or small-screen strong-willed, passionate, romantic girl she had appearance (since silent days) of this most been when she came to the throne in 1837.’ durable monarch.1 – ScreenwrIter JulIan FelloweS 1 Victoria on the screen 1 If royalty in general has exercised filmmakers’ craft and imagination, Victoria appears to British royals in (mainly) British have held a special fascination for them. In films the 1930s, Anna Neagle famously appeared twice as Victoria.2 The first time was in There isn’t space here to do justice to Victoria the Great (Herbert Wilcox, 1937), the screen representation of monarchies. a film that may be seen to reinforce the Leaving Victoria to one side for the moment, role of the monarchy in the troubling wake just think of this royal parade down the of Edward VIII’s abdication, with the film ages: the charismatic young Peter O’Toole ‘celebrat[ing] a perfect marriage and a doing a brilliant turn as Henry II, and his dedicated partnership in the service of the contentious queen, Eleanor, making a star nation’.3 Following the success of this film, entrance from a barge in the person of the Sixty Glorious Years (Herbert Wilcox, 1938) quarter-century older Katharine Hepburn appeared the next year, dealing with the in The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, latter part of Victoria’s life, perhaps extolling 2 1968); Laurence Olivier, via Shakespeare, national unity in the face of the war clouds calling Englishmen to rally to the nation’s gathering over Europe, asserting ‘the need to defence in a World War II version of Henry on TV, doing her again on the big screen protect Britain’s national security’.4 Neagle’s V (Laurence Olivier, 1944) and Kenneth and crossing verbal swords with Vanessa is a very ladylike monarch; this is an image Branagh striking a different pose in his 1989 Redgrave in Mary Queen of Scots (Charles one now sees as belonging to an earlier film for the same king from the same play; Jarrott, 1971). period when royalty was less exposed to the Charles Laughton stomping about studio public gaze and to criticism. sets in Holbein postures in The Private The list goes on and on, without even Life of Henry VIII (Alexander Korda, 1933), touching on American attempts at There was plenty of criticism in Britain which incidentally was the first British film interpreting British royalty, such as ‘Queen’ over the importation of US star Irene to break substantially into the American Bette Davis, frizzled and later bald, in The Dunne to play the ageing queen brought mainstream markets; and Henry VIII’s Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Michael out of seclusion by (fanciful) dealings in daughter, eponymously played by Cate Curtiz, 1939). Before The Young Victoria The Mudlark (Jean Negulesco, 1950). Blanchett in Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2009), one of the most Presumably this casting was for US box- 1998) and in its (dire) sequel Elizabeth: The recent and perhaps most distinguished of all office reasons, as there were plenty of Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007), as well the ‘royal’ films, there was Stephen Frears’ British actresses whose cheeks could just as by Flora Robson in Fire Over England unambiguously titled The Queen (2006), as convincingly been puffed out with cotton (William K. Howard, 1937) and The Sea which enshrined Helen Mirren’s uncanny and wool. There were sketches of Victoria by, Hawk (Michael Curtiz, 1940), and by Glenda touching portrayal of Elizabeth II, who needs among many others, Fay Compton in The Jackson, who’d ‘done’ Elizabeth memorably to reign a few more years to pass Victoria’s Prime Minister (Thorold Dickinson, 1941), 116 • Metro Magazine 163 romantic turn of mind, there is the wonderful fact of a genuine love match at the highest level, a fact that is as central to the new film as it was to the Neagle/Wilcox pairings (and they were themselves a love match in an industry not always noted for the longevity of its relationships). And if drama with a touch of mystery is what grabs filmmakers and audiences alike, there is the puzzle of the long reclusive widowhood and the 3 final emergence into public acclaim and veneration – and into becoming, or giving 2 rise to, an adjective. We all think we know what we mean by ‘Victorian’. But do we? urging John Gielgud’s Disraeli to be wary of the threat of Bismarck, and touchingly 2009 and The Young Victoria offering comfort upon the death of his wife; Helena Pickard in the Neagle biopic What it is not: (i) ‘heritage’ of Florence Nightingale, The Lady with filmmaking the Lamp (Herbert Wilcox, 1951); Sybil Thorndike in Melba (Lewis Milestone, 1953), The Young Victoria can’t help being a in which the diva sings to the queen at costume drama: it is set in the past, so of Windsor Castle; and Mollie Maureen, twice, course it is generically ‘period’. However, it in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy skilfully avoids falling into that now mind- Wilder, 1970) and an episode of TV’s The numbing category of ‘heritage’ filmmaking, Edwardians. Then, decades later, came Judi in which distinguished actors are paraded Dench’s popular Mrs Brown (John Madden, before listed buildings, as if we should be 3 1997), which made lively cinematic capital grateful just for the display of both. Naturally, of the Queen’s supposed relationship with unless we’re dealing in Blackadder-like her Scottish groom, John Brown, played by been when she came to the throne in 1837.

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