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2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page i Turner Classic Movies British Film Guides General Editor: Jeffrey Richards Brighton Rock Dracula The 39 Steps Steve Chibnall Peter Hutchings Mark Glancy A Hard Day’s Night Get Carter The Dam Busters Stephen Glynn Steve Chibnall John Ramsden My Beautiful The Charge of the Light A Night to Remember Launderette Brigade Jeffrey Richards Christine Geraghty Mark Connelly The Private Life of Whiskey Galore! & The Henry VIII Maggie Greg Walker Colin McArthur Cinema and Society Series General Editor: Jeffrey Richards ‘Banned in the USA’: British Films in the United States and Their Censorship, 1933–1960 Anthony Slide Best of British: Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present Anthony Aldgate & Jeffrey Richards Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots: Distortions of Scotland in Hollywood Cinema Colin McArthur British Cinema and the Cold War Tony Shaw The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939–1945 James Chapman Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British and European Cinema Edited by Mark Connelly The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western Michael Coyne Distorted Images: British National Identity and Film in the 1920s Kenton Bamford An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory Annette Kuhn Film and Community in Britain and France: From La Règle du Jeu to Room at the Top Margaret Butler 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page ii Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany Richard Taylor Hollywood Genres and Post-War America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir Mike Chopra-Gant Hollywood’s History Films David Eldridge Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films James Chapman From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema Ewa Mazierska & Laura Rascaroli Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film James Chapman Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces Andrew Moor Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 David Welch Somewhere in England: British Cinema and Exile Kevin Gough-Yates Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone Christopher Frayling Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster Geoff King Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in the Popular British Cinema Andrew Spicer The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929–1939 Edited by Jeffrey Richards 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page iii PAST AND PRESENT National Identity and the British Historical Film James Chapman 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page iv Published in 2005 by I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W24BU In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Copyright © James Chapman 2005 The right of James Chapman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 1 85043 807 2 (hardback) EAN 978 1 85043 807 6 (hardback) ISBN 1 85043 808 0 (paperback) EAN 978 1 85043 808 3 (paperback) A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Project management by M&M Publishing Services Typeset by FiSH Books, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page v For Einor Day 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page vi 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page vii Contents List of Illustrations ix General Editor’s Introduction xi Acknowledgements xiii List of Abbreviations xvi Introduction 1 1. Merrie England: The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) 13 2. Age of Appeasement: The Iron Duke (1935) 45 3. Monarchy and Empire: Victoria the Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938) 64 4. Class and Nation: This England (1941) 91 5. Cry God for Larry, England and St George: Henry V (1944) 113 6. The Dunkirk Spirit: Scott of the Antarctic (1948) 143 7. Hollywood’s England: Beau Brummell (1954) 166 8. Nearer, My God, To Thee: A Night to Remember (1958) 180 9. Men of Harlech: Zulu (1964) 199 10. Decline and Fall: The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) 228 11. The Conscience of the King: Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972) 255 12. The British Are Coming: Chariots of Fire (1981) 270 13. Queen and Country: Elizabeth (1998) 299 Conclusion 319 Notes 326 Bibliography 365 Filmography 377 Index 385 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page viii 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page ix List of Illustrations 1. Charles Laughton’s appearance in The Private Life of Henry VIII was modelled on Holbein’s portrait of the King. 26 2. Henry is bewitched by the coquettish Catherine Howard (Binnie Barnes) in The Private Life of Henry VIII. 35 3. George Arliss as The Iron Duke directs the Battle of Waterloo. 49 4. Regal Neagle: Anna Neagle as Victoria the Great. 72 5. Sixty Glorious Years: The Queen is not amused when her Prime Minister Gladstone (Malcolm Keen) hesitates to relieve General Gordon at Khartoum. 85 6. ‘This earth, this realm, this England’: labourer Appleyard (Emlyn Williams, left), American visitor Ann (Constance Cummings) and farmer Rookeby (John Clements) find common cause in the modern segment of This England. 96 7. ‘Cry God for Harry, England and St George’: Laurence Olivier directed and starred in the patriotic spectacular Henry V. 130 8. ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’: Henry inspires his troops before the battle in Henry V. 133 9. Scott of the Antarctic: Captain Scott (John Mills, right) persuades Dr Wilson (Harold Warrender) to join him on another Antarctic expedition, but Oriana Wilson (Anne Firth) is not happy. 157 10. ‘I do not regret this journey’: Scott makes his last diary entry, remaining stoical to the end in Scott of the Antarctic. 163 2725 M&M Past and Present 20/7/05 10:37 am Page x x Past and Present 11. Beau Brummell explores the nature of intimate male friendship between Brummell (Stewart Granger, right) and the Prince of Wales (Peter Ustinov). 175 12. Abandon ship: Second Officer Herbert Lightoller (Kenneth More) directs the evacuation in A Night to Remember. 188 13. ‘Goodbye, my dear son’: Lucas (John Merivale) exhibits emotional restraint in A Night to Remember. 193 14. Contrasting masculinities in Zulu: the pragmatic Lieutenant John Chard (Stanley Baker, left) and the apparently effete Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead (Michael Caine). 217 15. After the battle: Chard and Bromhead, sickened by the carnage, survey the burnt hospital in Zulu. 220 16. A Colonel Blimp for the 1960s: the aged Lord Raglan (John Gielgud) pointing out ‘the pretty valley’ to Mrs Duberly (Jill Bennett) in The Charge of the Light Brigade. 245 17. The Charge of the Light Brigade Captain Nolan (David Hemmings) is about to realise that the Brigade is advancing into the wrong valley. 249 18. Henry (Keith Michell) is beginning to tire of the exotic charms of Anne Boleyn (Charlotte Rampling) in Henry VIII and His Six Wives. 265 19. The race that never occurred: Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross, left) and Lord Lindsay (Nigel Havers) run against the clock and each other in Chariots of Fire. 278 20. Eric Liddell faces the Olympic Committee and his conscience in another dramatic scene invented for Chariots of Fire. Left to right: the Duke of Sutherland (Peter Egan), Liddell (Ian Charleson), Lord Birkenhead (Nigel Davenport), the Prince of Wales (David Yelland) and Lord Cadogan (Patrick Magee). 289 21. Elizabeth attracted controversy for its depiction of a passionate love affair between the young princess (Cate Blanchett) and Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes). 308 22. Elizabeth was notable for its highly expressive visual style: note how Elizabeth alone is illuminated as she imposes her will upon her parliament. 313 2725 M&M Past and Present 19/7/05 3:53 pm Page xi General Editor’s Introduction xi General Editor’s Introduction URING the course of the nineteenth century a permanent split Ddeveloped between academic and popular history. The latter, a heady amalgam of popular painting, poetry, novels, plays and films, is more enduring and influential than almost any academic history. Labour MP and film buff Sir Gerald Kaufman spoke for many when he wrote in his memoir My Life in the Silver Screen: ‘In my youngest years all my history lessons were taught me via the cinema screen.’ Popular history centres largely on the colourful and the arresting, on battles and boudoirs. This tendency is firmly borne out by James Chapman’s choice of the 13 British history films for analysis in his superb study of the genre: half of them are concerned wholly or in part with the private lives of royalty and five feature episodes from Britain’s wars. It has long been argued, however, that historical films tell us more about the period in which they were made than about the period in which they were set.