The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 16 June 2004

British Kings and Queens on Film - A Royal Filmography

Part II: Tudor and Stuart Monarchs

Click here for part I

HENRY VII - The founder of the royal Tudor line and father of England's most famous monarch doesn't fare nearly so well in the cinema as his larger-than-life son. Only two primary depictions: those of John Woodnutt, in the BBC-TV miniseries, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1971); and Edward Jewesbury in Richard III.

HENRY VIII - He and his younger daughter share the prize for the Most Dramatized English Monarch. And surely he is the most cinematic one. Strong, full of life, intelligent and lusty, he overwhelms the screen with his regal presence. Perhaps the most noteworthy Henrician depiction is in The Six Wives of Henry VIII, where Keith Michell embodies him as a handsome and commanding man, a young and then an old lion, larger than life and best of the lot for all time, to this viewer.

Too bad that back in those halcyon days when PBS was first gaining an audience for quality television in America, when programs like this one forever dispelled the notion that American TV was better than the British variety, even this series wasn't perfect. Michell's towering Henry overshadows the weakness of his supporting cast and the thinness of the scripts and production values. Some of the six wives scarcely resemble their historical counterparts, Catherine of Aragon (Annette Crosbie) being the inspired exception - Henry's first Queen did not have the "traditional" Spanish complexion so often depicted. And in a few cases these ladies are so plain and boring as characters that you cannot believe a King, who presumably could have any wife he wanted, would choose them.

And some of the historical situations chosen for dramatization, like Catherine's miseries for Henry's growing flirtations with Anne Boleyn; Jane Seymour's pathetic and fatal pregnancy (it could have been a great farewell love scene); Katherine Howard's skulking adulteries (only hinted at); and Catherine Parr's intellectual forays that land her in trouble with her husband are stunningly, accurately costumed but talky and lugubrious as written. Acted out on barebones, claustrophobic sets, mostly in tight close-up, with little or no music to set the tone, the televised episodes sometimes seem as heavy-handed and stifling as the historical Henry must have been toward his women. Still, for TV of the time, and with the limitations of budget and acting skills firmly in mind, Six Wives is a milestone of history reenactment. And much better fare for this then-high-school-age viewer than what was on the American networks.

There are other good Henrys, of course, in livelier films. In A Man For All Seasons (1966), Robert Shaw as Henry craftily outmaneuvers the churchman who has become his nemesis, Thomas More (a saintly man as played by the immortal Paul Scofield, but in historical reality a fiery hater and punisher of Protestants, and a Tudor apologist who may have been responsible for the blackening of Richard III's name as the murderer of the Princes in the Tower in 1483). Charles Laughton plays a roaring lion of a King in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), and again in Young Bess (1953). In Crossed Swords, known also as The Prince and the Pauper (1978), he's played (not badly, either) by an American: Charlton Heston, no less. And in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), a rather listless and unfiery Richard Burton plays Henry. Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn shines far more, as do the sumptuous, carefully-styled costumes and sets (in one scene her Court gown and jewels match one of the historical Anne's portraits virtually exactly). This French-Canadian actress' accent is quite accurate historically, by the way, as Antonia Fraser points out, because Anne was brought up in the Queen of France's household and probably spoke English with a slight French intonation.

Another man playing the most famous of English Kings is Montagu Love in The Prince and the Pauper (1937) with Errol Flynn. Finally, there is the BBC Shakespeare Plays' version of Henry VIII (1979) with John Stride in the role of the King. A perennial favorite on film, no doubt many more Henrys will strut the world's stage, in years to come.

EDWARD VI - The only surviving legitimate son of Henry VIII appears briefly in Lady Jane (1986), played hauntingly by Warren Saire. And of course he's the little heir to the throne in all the Prince and the Pauper movies (twins Billy and Bobby Mauch in the Flynn version). Jason Kemp plays him in the magnificent BBC-TV miniseries, Elizabeth R (1971). In the aforementioned Crossed Swords, Edward is played by Mark Lester, and never would possibly have died so young, had he really been as tall and strong and glowing with health as this actor is in this film.

Lady JANE GREY - The young Queen who was a nine-days' wonder has her brief, tragic reign and downfall chronicled in Lady Jane. But Helena Bonham-Carter looks nothing like the historical Jane. The movie is splendidly arrayed visually, but transforms her prim, priggish character and makes her lusty, strong-willed and far too politically progressive for her era. Surprisingly, there are a lot of other cinematic Lady Janes, supporting their more famous Tudor cousins: Ann Howard in the Flynn Prince and the Pauper, Sarah Frampton in Elizabeth R, Jody Schaller in Six Wives and Felicity Dean in Crossed Swords.

MARY I - Henry VIII's eldest daughter is the least popular Tudor, cinematically. Why so? The Renaissance is doubtless the most popular historical era portrayed theatrically today. It's probably because historically she seems to have been fussy and stubborn, and also a staunch Catholic in a country that at her accession to the throne was already become mostly Protestant. Nevertheless, she is depicted occasionally on film. Alison Frazer plays her dutifully in Six Wives; Daphne Slater in Elizabeth R; Jane Lapotaire brings out her fussiness in Lady Jane. But the best portrayal of her to my mind is in Elizabeth (1998). As a cold and spiteful Queen Mary, Kathy Burke gives vent to the frustration and rage that the historical Mary must surely have kept bottled up for many years, as her parents battled and then divorced, as her own youth came and went, as her fortunes rose and fell, as she was made first a royal bastard and then a Queen. She is truly "Bloody Mary" to her awed younger sister. She is terrifying.

ELIZABETH I - The Queen of them all, cinematically, and no doubt historically, too. Like that of her father, almost every physical and chronological aspect of her life, from girlhood to sovereignty to extreme old age, has been filmed. She has even been played theatrically (pun intended) by a man: the late Quentin Crisp, in Orlando (1992).
Lalla Ward plays her as a pouty, teenaged Princess in Crossed Swords. This characterization seems historically inaccurate; the young Elizabeth was noted for her circumspection and canniness, in the dangerous political atmospheres of her half-brother and -sister's Courts before her own accession. In her girlhood she is also seen in the Flynn version of The Prince and the Pauper, played by Gwendolyn Jones; and is prettily played by Jean Simmons, in Young Bess.

As Queen, Elizabeth undoubtedly appears in more films than any other English monarch. Probably because she is such a fascinating and enigmatic woman, because she wielded power so well, with an iron will, and since her world was so colorful and tumultuous, her role remains a tour de force for an actress to play. One of the many Good Queen Besses is the redoubtable Flora Robson, in Fire Over England (1937); The Lion Has Wings (1939), a semi documentary; and The Sea Hawk (1940). These films, used as Allied propaganda in wartime Britain, depict a strong, confident woman who is the living symbol of her embattled country. Robson does not, however, physically resemble the historical Queen. Bette Davis also takes two starring turns as Elizabeth, in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and The Virgin Queen (1955).

The best modern interpretation of England's beloved Queen for many is seen in Elizabeth R. Glenda Jackson, now a Member of the British Parliament, begins her political career, so to speak, by playing one of the greatest world leaders of all time. Her Elizabeth is many-faceted: cunning, artful, smart, brave, cool-headed, hard, fiery, and dangerous; just as the historical Queen must have appeared to her political allies and enemies alike. It's a triumph of reenactment, and its being shown in America at a time when the women's political movement was at its height marks it as another television milestone. Ms. Jackson was honored with an Emmy Award for her portrayal.

Of course, she, like Mr. Michell, has many hours of screen time to hone and perfect her characterization. She also gets to repeat it in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971). (The movie title inserts the comma.) This film is historically inaccurate in many key scenes; for example, Elizabeth and Mary never met. But the English Queen's greater political savvy and her manipulation of her royal cousin are well depicted.

Finally, in the last few years there have emerged two more theatrical Queen Elizabeths. Cate Blanchett as the eponymous Queen in Elizabeth has the right-looking features and physical build, and certainly the correct historical demeanor of sly innocence. But the film suffers for its dark, lurid, Gothic tone and set direction. Since the historical Elizabeth loved bright gowns and loads of jewels and adornments, her palaces were surely brilliant with candles and mirrors and glitter, befitting a vain and very feminine Queen; with furniture and baubles and royal bric-a-brac crammed everywhere. Not dark holes with but one single solitary chair per dim chamber, or one dark tapestry to divide a gloomy passageway, allowing regicides easy concealment behind it. Spend some money next time on Queenly gewgaws, Mr. Kapur! Also, as Roquemore points out, torture of political prisoners was not in common use in the Elizabethan era, but this film wallows in it. On a lighter note is Dame Judi Dench's all-too-brief appearance as a middle-aged Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love (1998). She storms into the Globe Theatre, heckles the Bard like a groundling, storms out, and along the way picks up an Oscar� for Best Supporting Actress, so much life and regal character does she inject into this silly little failed-the-history-exam comedy.

MARY Queen of Scots - The eponymous film biography of her, mentioned above, wins praise for Vanessa Redgrave's radiant portrayal of the starry-eyed, romantic Queen. Many others of its actors physically resemble very closely the historical figures they are portraying: Darnley, Dudley, Rizzio, and of course Elizabeth I all look just right. But the film is inaccurate in historical details, as noted above. Another example of that: Mary on first coming to Edinburgh is greeted by a kilted crowd "straight off the shortbread tin," as George MacDonald Fraser says. And John Knox camps out on the windswept Scottish coast just to yell at her, eh?

CHARLES I - This most tragic of English Kings reaches apotheosis in Cromwell (1970). The late, great Alec Guinness is the only reason to see this film. He portrays an intelligent, cultured, but obstinate man who will not and perhaps cannot allow himself to submit to the majority rule of Parliament. So he's just right, historically, as the King. And physically right too, his luminous features exactly matching Van Dyck's portraits of the older, careworn King, although the real Charles was only four feet eleven inches tall, almost a dwarf even in a time when most men weren't above five feet six or so. Guinness makes palpable and heroic the King's fine sense of his own divine right, and his personal integrity in asserting it even at the cost of his own life. But that's hardly the effect wanted, probably, in a movie ostensibly about his political opposite, Oliver Cromwell (played dully by Richard Harris). Still, quite simply, it's Guinness' film (and King Charles').

Yet is it a show worth stealing? It's slow-moving, the battle scenes aren't thrilling, and as the inexorable (and interminable) trial of the stylish, gentleman King by the boring, grim-faced Parliamentarians drones on, you almost want to cry, "Get on with it! Off with his head!" It's no doubt good history, since extensive records of the historic proceedings are readily available and were in 1970, but lay audiences for what is really just an entertainment, not a scholarly debate on royal prerogative, don't need such intensive and exhaustive legal detail to understand the protagonists' arguments. Film is the medium of images, not words.

To their credit, the filmmakers have the good sense to reenact the most dramatic event in Charles' reign: his execution. The King dies nobly, just as the historical Charles did, in a poignant scene that looks very much as the turbulent reality outside the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace must have to him and to history's witnesses, on that chill January day in 1649.

Several other actors who play this royal Cavalier are Rupert Everett, in To Kill A King (2003); and Martin Turner, in the TV miniseries, The Last King (2003). Another fine cinematic portrayal of Charles I is seen in another TV miniseries, By the Sword Divided (1983), a fictional account of a family torn by conflicting allegiances in the English Civil War. Jeremy Clyde (of Chad and Jeremy fame) makes a slight, haunted-looking Charles who is nonetheless a dapper, noble, impeccable little gentleman. And historically right, just as everything else about this series seems to be. The period detail in costumes and furnishings had me awestruck.

British films always do royalty and gentlemen right, just as American ones do common soldiers best, German ones do officers, and French ones do downtrodden peasants. Could it be, ventures this American for whom another Civil War is much more familiar ground, that the British celebrate Henry VIII as the symbolic Englishman and archetypical King, but know down deep that Charles I is really that man?

CHARLES II - The Merry Monarch fares rather better than his father both historically and cinematically. Robin Stewart plays him as the young Prince of Wales in Cromwell; Simon Treves is Charles as a young man in By the Sword Divided; Vincent Price is King in Hudson's Bay (1941); George Sanders in Forever Amber (1947); James Villiers in the BBC-TV and PBS Masterpiece Theatre series The First Churchills (1971); and Sam Neill, gloriously and cynically (and quite right, historically), is the crowned-at-last sovereign fretting over his sick spaniels in the royally appointed Restoration (1995). Neill, though an Irish-born Australian, may be the best Charles of the lot, is quite the most charming, and as completely at ease in his royal role as the real Charles was in his, once he got his kingdom back. But Nell Gwynn's royal boyfriend also has a whole miniseries to himself now, which his sire never managed to get. The Last King, also known as Charles II: The Power and the Passion, stars Rufus Sewell, who certainly has the saturnine looks for the part.

JAMES II - Charles II's brother and successor, as played by Charlie Creed-Miles, is seen in The Last King, with his accession as the Last One After the Last One of the House of Stuart still in the future. On becoming King, James appears briefly in Captain Blood (1935), portrayed by Vernon Steele; and in Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948), by Henry Oscar.

ANNE - Margaret Tyzack, who does not physically resemble the corpulent daughter of James II at all, nevertheless plays her in The First Churchills.

In the next column: Part III: Modern British Monarchs
 

- Mel Whitney

Click here for part III