The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 2 June 2004

British Kings and Queens on Film - A Royal Filmography

Royalty watchers who read the Royal News columns and links have probably often wondered what Kings and Queens of the past were really like. One way to breathe life into their personalities and reigns is through the medium of cinema. Films, though, often have a tendency to present historical figures absolutely, in black-and-white terms, in "tidy little boxes with no gray areas," as Joseph Roquemore says, making complicated lives and events into exaggerated, overly dramatic history.

Yet the historical novelist and screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser has written that Hollywood, oddly enough, provides us with more vivid and memorable pictures of past ages than we of the present are ever likely to get from historians and history books. On film, Kings and Queens come to life before our eyes. So, on that note, I'd like to briefly examine some of the best cinematic depictions of British monarchy; that is, those portrayals that seem more or less faithful ones, and best embody the true qualities, personalities and semblances of those unique individuals who wore the crowns of history.

The Ground Rules: Once I began this project, I realized how extensive it really could be. Only a few of the many hundreds of motion pictures portraying royalty that I turned up can be touched on; only the best and most historically valid, it is to be hoped. So unfortunately (for an amateur historian) this can hardly be an exhaustive list. To keep it manageable, readable and above all, entertaining, I've confined myself to reigning British monarchs only, not their various consorts and children; saving a few mostly present-day exceptions. And alas, even thus narrowed down, selectivity must yet obtain. There is not room to include the many films about lesser-known legendary British monarchs, so I must forgo any cinematic mention of Cymbeline, Macbeth, Tristan, Isolde, Mark, Robert the Bruce and the Scottish Kings, the Welsh monarchs, and Irish chieftains like Brian Boru and the fighting Prince of Donegal. Perhaps a future column could be devoted solely to movies about these figures, who embody their British realms so heroically. If I haven't seen a movie, I merely mention it for those who may want a cinematic glimpse of that particular "royal."

Nor can I include every sighting of a King or Queen in royal documentaries, newsreels, silent films, foreign language films, TV news reports and special presentations like royal weddings and funerals, most of the filmed Shakespeare/Jonson/Marlowe plays with British royalty as characters, and TV satires/parodies like Monty Python's Flying Circus, Spitting Image and Black Adder, which spoof all royalty. Ah, for that immortal Pythonesque vignette of a pantomime Princess Margaret being stalked by a breakfast! I only mention all these in passing for the student of history and film who may wish to seek them out.

Most of these films are not obscure, and widely available on the Internet and at chain bookstores. Likewise, some well-known actors and actresses are singled out because often when they are playing Kings and Queens (particularly so for British thespians, it seems - out of patriotism, perhaps?), they are on top form and their royal "command" performances rank among the best work of their careers.

I am indebted to the following sources:
A Decade of Masterpiece Theatre Masterpieces, by Alistair Cooke
England's Elizabeth, by Michael Dobson and Nicola J. Watson
History Goes to the Movies by Joseph Roquemore
The Hollywood History of the World by George MacDonald Fraser
A Knight At the Movies: Medieval History on Film by John Aberth
The Light's On At Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser
The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, edited by Antonia Fraser
The Madness of King George, the Complete and Unabridged Screenplay by Alan Bennett
Past Imperfect, edited by Mark C. Carnes
and the Internet Movie Database at imdb.com
but as always, my opinions are my own, not theirs.

Part I: Early British Monarchs

ARTHUR - The legendary King of the Britons is included here because, well, he's THE King, for everyone who as a child ever read a book about him and wanted to be a Knight of the Round Table. And if you read T.H. White's charming and whimsically British The Once and Future King, you probably then begged your parents to take you to see The Sword in the Stone (1963), Walt Disney's animated version of the legend, with several actors voicing the King as "Wart."
There are dozens of films about this mythic hero. Some of the more famous cinematic retellings are Camelot (1967), with Richard Harris as Arthur; Excalibur (1981), the sword-and-sorcery version with Nigel Terry; The Mists of Avalon (2001), a TV miniseries based on the feminist fantasy novel, with Edward Atterton as the King; and the many Arthurian movies made in the 1950s, with such men as Mel Ferrer playing him. Finally, and most hilariously, is Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1996), in a class of its own for sheer delightful lunacy, and featuring the late Graham Chapman as a very noble King Arthur.

BOUDICA - Also known as Warrior Queen (2003), Boudica is a very gritty, rough and realistic-looking television production starring Alex Kingston. The rapes of Boudica and her daughters by the Roman invaders are harrowingly shown. The clothing, houses, and chariots appear to be historically accurate. Pagan symbolism is employed extensively in the recreation of early Celtic rituals: for example, the holy man's rite of purification ceremony for the violated daughters is very moving in its simplicity and imbued with sanctity, showing a deep and true understanding of a tribal society with no written traditions. But the fighting aspect of the Queen, and her skill at uniting the various native tribes in an incipient nationalism, are also very well brought out. The battle scenes are as thrilling as anything in Braveheart (and on a far smaller budget). And there's a neat historical tie-in at the end with the Boudica statue in London.

ALFRED - Alfred the Great (1969). The late David Hemmings plays the heroic King of Wessex in the only major movie about him.

HENRY II - Becket (1964); The Lion in Winter (1968). In these two fine movies, Peter O'Toole plays the King definitively. The latter film also portrays two of his sons who succeeded him as Kings of England: Richard, later Richard I, the Lionheart (Anthony Hopkins); and John (Nigel Terry). There is also a TV remake of Lion (2003), with Patrick Stewart as Henry II.

RICHARD I - Here's a medieval King very familiar to modern filmgoers, because he's seen in various guises, with the other merry lads in tights, in a-many Robin Hood movies. But he's always noble and strongly masculine, even fatherly (which historically was probably not his persona, as he never sired children and was said to be homosexual).
Henry Wilcoxon plays him most famously in The Crusades (1935). Ian Hunter royally approves of Errol Flynn's derring-do in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Richard also turns up in the many versions of Ivanhoe, of which perhaps the best is the TV miniseries (1982) with Julian Glover playing the King. The zillions of B-movies about the man in forest green give us many other King Richards. Some notable ones are Richard Harris, in Robin and Marian (1976); and Sean Connery, in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (1991). Lurking ubiquitously in the Middle Ages is Patrick Stewart in Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993). And the late Peter Ustinov creates a fine facsimile of the King's voice in the animated Disney version of Robin Hood (1973).
On television, the best Richard in the overall best version of the outlaw's tale is perhaps Michael J. Jackson in the classy, British-made Legend of Robin Hood TV miniseries (1975). Richard also is seen in The Talisman TV series (1980), and I cannot resist a mention of stalwart Brian Blessed as the King in Black Adder (1993). Hiding out in Sherwood Forest as much as the Lionheart does on film, it's a wonder he has any time for the Crusades at all!

JOHN - This sly Angevin monarch appears more often cinematically as a Prince than as the King he became when he succeeded to his brother Richard's throne. He is seen in the abovementioned Lion in Winter and Adventures (bravo Claude Rains, who looks and acts every bit the man who would have the Magna Carta forced on him). Also in all the Ivanhoe films, Robin and Marian (there played by Ian Holm), and the Legend of Robin Hood series (well played by the incisive-looking David Dixon). Interestingly, Peter Ustinov also does John's voice in the Disney cartoon. The late Roddy McDowall plays John twice, in The Legend of Robin Hood (1968), a movie, not the TV show; and in The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood (1984). Edward Fox, later a spot-on Edward VIII, begins his illustrious career of portraying British sovereigns with John, in another Robin Hood TV series (1991).

EDWARD I & II - Braveheart, of course. The English King who was the Hammer of the Scots and William Wallace's great foe is tautly played by Patrick McGoohan, who's actually a New Yorker. Peter Hanly plays the Prince of Wales, the future Edward II. So many royal historical inaccuracies abound in this movie, though, that it's a pity we have not a better cinematic vehicle for the powerful Longshanks and his ill-fated son. Phillip, the effeminate Prince's favorite in the movie (played by Stephen Billington), was actually named Peter or Piers Gaveston, and was killed after Edward II's accession by a conspiracy of his courtiers, not via defenestration by his father. John Aberth in his book also takes Braveheart to task for its inaccurate depiction of royal homosexuality: Edward II was bisexual, not gay in the strict sense of the term; he had four legitimate children as well as an illegitimate one by a mistress.
And the most glaring error of all: his wife Isabella (Isabelle in the film, played by Sophie Marceau) did not give birth to his heir, the future Edward III, until 1312, seven years after Wallace was put to death. In that year, 1305, she was only nine years old. She did not marry Edward II until 1308, after he had succeeded to the throne. So Braveheart's royal romance, while lovely to look at onscreen, is not historically true at all: Wallace did not father an English King.

HENRY V - He appears in two excellent filmed versions of the most famous of Shakespeare's history plays, the one bearing his royal name and title. Take your pick: Lord Laurence Olivier's Henry (1944), or Kenneth Branagh's (1989). Pros and cons: The older version creaks with World War II symbolism and Branagh's version seems more action-packed, no doubt due to modern film editing styles with shorter, faster cuts of battle scenes. Of course Branagh is the right age (King Hal was 28 in the year of Agincourt), though Olivier (37 when he was filmed in the role) physically resembles the historical King more. There are many other less-well-known movie versions, including the one in the massive BBC-TV project, The Shakespeare Plays (1979), starring David Gwillim.

RICHARD III - He creeps about, hunchbacked (but probably not so, historically), leering, evil, over the top, in The Tower of London (1939). The portrayal is only historically accurate in the fact that Basil Rathbone, like the real Richard, is handsome in a saturnine way. Otherwise this film is a lurid Gothic thriller, only notable in that it probably packs in more Kings, Princes and Dukes per reel than any other movie ever made. Henry VI (Miles Mander), Edward IV (the very regal Ian Hunter, who was also Richard I earlier), Edward V (Ronald Sinclair), and various others of the Lancastrian and Yorkist royal dynasties show up here (mostly to be fiendishly murdered, heh heh).
But perhaps Richard III (1995) can also vie for the title of Most Royals in a Film. This "alternative" version of Shakespeare's history play, set in a 1930s England ruled by Fascists, has Ian McKellen as Richard and John Wood as Edward IV.

In the next column: Part II: Tudor and Stuart Monarchs
 

- Mel Whitney