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Simon Ward as the Young Winston: episodic but fun look at the early life of the Greatest Briton |
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Simon Ward (Winston Churchill), Robert Shaw (Lord
Randolph Churchill), Anne Bancroft (Lady Jennie Churchill), John Mills (Lord
Kitchener), Jack Hawkins (James Welldon), Ian Holm (George Earle Buckle),
Anthony Hopkins (David Lloyd George), Patrick Magee (General Sir Bindon Blood),
Edward Woodward (Captain Aylmer Haldane), Pat Heywood (Elizabeth Ann Everest),
Laurence Naismith (Lord Salisbury), Basil Dignam (Joseph Chamberlain), Robert
Hardy (Headmaster)
Any poll of the Greatest Briton is bound to throw up, near
the top, Winston Spencer Churchill. So famous is he, that his surname isn’t
even required for Attenborough’s biography of the Great Man – just that name
Winston gives you a pretty good idea of what you’re going to get. And you’d be
right, because this film gives you a pretty straightforward rundown of Winston
Churchill’s early years, in an episodic breakdown that gives us some small
insight into what shaped the chap who went on to implore us to “fight them on
the beaches”.
Simon Ward is the Young Winston, with Robert Shaw and Anne
Bancroft as his parents Lord and Lady Churchill. Lord Randolph is the
high-flying MP who throws away his career, catches syphilis, loses his mind and
dies aged 37 – all the time disappointed with the son desperate for his
approval. Lady Jennie is his loving, supportive but slightly distant mother.
Winston himself? A bright lad, but a hopeless academic, struggles at school,
needs umpteen attempts to scrap into Sandhurst for a career as a cavalry
officer (a dunce’s career clearly in the opinion of Randolph), serves in the
Sudan under Kitchener (John Mills) and starts writing books and newspaper
articles – because hopeless academic he might be, he’s still gifted with words.
A career in Parliament is his dream – helped no end by his escaping captivity
during the Boer War, making him a popular hero.
You can probably tell from that plot summary that this is a
somewhat episodic film. Although initially throwing us into a clash in
North-West India between the 35th Sikhs regiment and Pashtun rebels
– an action during which embedded journalist Churchill wins a mention in
dispatches – the film quickly settles into a straight narrative run down of
Churchill’s early life, filtered through the great man’s own writings and
biography. This makes for an episodic, at times rather dry, box ticking
exercise of key moments in his life although it gets enlivened at various
moments with some decent scenes and some good performances.
The one fact that comes out most strongly from the film is
the wretchedly unhappy childhood of Winston himself. A borderline dunce,
Churchill is a hopeless student from an early age. His school days are
miserable, dispatched to some ghastly boarding school where thrashings from the
headmaster (ironically played by later regular – and definitive – Churchill
performer Robert Hardy) are handed out as regularly as dollops of gruel. There
is a certain emotional impact throughout these scenes, with extensive quotations
from the pre-teen Churchill’s letters barely concealing pleas for his parents
to visit him (safe him) under protestations of his happiness at school.
But this emotional connection doesn’t really last once we
get into the adventures of the younger Churchill. This is despite an excellent
performance from Simon Ward, who perfectly captures the mood and manner of the
more famous older man while splicing in plenty of youthful exuberance and naivete.
Ward does a terrific job of holding the film together – so well in fact you are
left feeling slightly sorry that he never got a part as good as this ever
again. His final speech of the film is a perfect capturing of the speech-making
prowess of the young statesman.
The film takes
a mixed attitude to Churchill’s parents. It’s very open about the syphilis that
afflicted Lord Randolph, and even before that makes clear his career is one
governed by rashness and poor judgement. Robert Shaw is excellent as
Churchill’s father – a stern taskmaster, constantly disappointed in his
dullard, lazy son, but spicing it with enough small moments of affection to
make you understand why Churchill worshipped this man whom he surpassed by
every measurable factor. Shaw also makes a pre-illness Churchill, sharp, witty and strikingly intelligent: making his later descent into illness and unpredictability all the more affecting. Randolph’s final speech in the House – raddled by
syphilis he looks awful and can barely remember his train of thought for longer
than a few minutes – is remarkably moving.
The film takes far more of a conventional view of Lady
Sarah, presenting her far more as the idealised mother figure she must have
been for Churchill. Anne Bancroft is saddled with a rather dull part that never
really comes to life, as the more interesting aspects of her colourful life are
largely left on the cutting room floor.
Attenborough’s film does try to drill down into the
personalities of these three people with a curious device where each character
has a scene speaking (direct to the camera) to an unseen journalist asking them
questions about themselves and the events around them. This interrogational
style looks like a rather dated 1970s invention today – look how we put the
spotlight on these people! – but it does give a chance to see them from another
perspective, and give the all-seeing author of the screenplay (Carl Foreman) a
chance to ask questions viewers are probably asking. It’s on the nose, but
still kind of works, even if the revelations we get barely seem to give us any shocks.
It’s about the only slight moment of invention anyway in a film
that is another example of Attenborough’s excellence at marshalling a huge
number of actors and locations into something very reassuringly safe and
professional that is going to have a long lifespan on Sunday afternoon TV
schedules. Young Winston is a decent,
enjoyable mini-epic, but it’s not the film for those really wanting to either
understand the times or understand the personalities involved.
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