Ken Hughes (1970)
One of the ‘distinguished’ Tudors-or-Stuarts historical epics that were a standing dish a few years ago, on big and small screens[1]. Written as well as directed by Ken Hughes, this two-and-a-quarter-hour, as is its eponymous hero. Oliver Cromwell may have been dour but you feel he must have been more than he’s shown to be here – a military genius or leader of men or charismatic orator or something? Richard Harris is insufferable. A past master at rant and pregnant whispering, he now adds a demoniac cackle and weary hoarseness to his repertoire if mannerisms. He has virtually no middle range and even less charm. Although a stilted epilogue pays Cromwell the tribute of having changed England irrevocably, the film seems more interested in Charles I, intelligently played by Alec Guinness. In spite of having to look modestly suspicious most of the time, Guinness shows a lot of finesse. His mild stammer is beautifully judged – so too Charles’s occasional expressions of wounded, resigned outrage.
The events leading up to the Civil War are rushed through to make way for the massive set-pieces, the battles of Edge Hill and Naseby. Ken Hughes’s abundant dialogue isn’t bad of its kind. There aren’t any howlers on the scale of the ones heard in the following year’s Mary Queen of Scots (and Nicholas and Alexandra, a more exotic power-to-the-people number). Richard Harris delivers the line ‘What bloody treachery is this?’ with the ‘bloody’ spat out as a twentieth-century expletive. The standouts in the estimable supporting cast are Robert Morley as an amusing full-of-blague Earl of Manchester and Michael Jayston, in his feature film debut, as Cromwell’s sidekick Henry Ireton. Jayston’s fine voice often gives a convincing urgency to what Ireton says. (His questionable reward is to be saddled with perhaps the worst line in the script, ‘Is this wise, Oliver? Numbers are not on our side’.) Jayston holds attention whenever he’s on screen. His quick, unnerving grin as John Pym (Geoffrey Keen)’s rabble-rousing begins to pay off in Parliament is one of the high points of Cromwell. Nino Novarese won an Oscar for his costumes. There are certainly plenty of them.
[1970s]
[1] Afternote: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, that is.
