Bonnie Prince Charlie

This movie is excellent - I've been looking for a copy for ages but do not know where to purchase it from. Can you help! I am very interested in Scottish History and find this movie contains all the ingredients I enjoy in a movie. Prince Charles of Scotland was the rightful heir to the throne of England but was duped out of the throne by his English relatives. He was a descendant of James VI of Scotland and I of England which gave him title to the throne of England. That is why he attempted to get the throne back by force. He nearly succeeded but his Army was too small and the English loyalties were elsewhere. They didn't want a Scottish King sitting on the English throne. That would have been anti-English.

Unfortunately a number of technicolour productions made in Britain in the forties were great failures.In this case Niven was miscast and the script was a total bore.

Bizarrely this version shows us only the aftermath of Culloden, but anyone who has ever seen Peter Watkins' 1964 cinema-verite TV version will never forget Olivier Espitalier-Noel's callow, French-accented Bonnie Prince Charlie snootily looking on from horseback as the Jacobites are routed. He couldn't be further removed from David Niven's dashing Young Pretender in this monumental Technicolor folly, upon which the critics fell en masse following a long and troubled production.

You know what to expect after the first five minutes when lovely shots by the second unit of authentic highland heather is replaced by a fascinatingly unreal studio glen where Niven meets Morland Graham as Donald the Shepherd for the first time.

And so it continues for the next two hours as scenes between men in wigs huffing & puffing alternate with further phony-looking studio exteriors shot at Shepperton in which the clouds never move; relieved by very occasional (and brief) second unit footage actually shot in Scotland, and by a darting-eyed Charles Goldner as the relentless Captain Ferguson.

Not a bad movie but badly in need of restoration. This was a very sad time in Scottish history. Charles brought years of hardship to the Highlands. His grandfather James 2nd tried to get his throne back 56 years earlier in Ireland. He landed there with a French force with the view to conquer Ireland, then Scotland & England. Causing hardship at the Siege of Londonderry, he was finally defeated at the Battle of the Boyne. This crazy ex king & then his nutty grandson 56 years later caused the misery of thousands of people. Charles could not even speak Gaelic, the language of the highlanders. His English was'not very good either.

I was anxious to rent Bonnie Prince Charlie, because I knew the backstage story behind the movie. David Niven met his second wife while filming in Scotland, and after a whirlwind courtship, brought her back to America. What a surprise for her to first see him on the set, blond, without his signature mustache, and in a 1700s costume!

If you're actually interested in the story, you'll get to see The Niv rallying troops and trying to take back the throne that belongs to his family. He sparks a great rebellion as he tries to assert his birthright, and along the way, he gets to romance Margaret Leighton and make friends with Jack Hawkins. I'll gladly sit through anything and everything with David Niven, but it's not really a subject matter that would normally hold my interest. Unless you really love that particular struggle of Great Britain and Scotland, you might be bored. One sad tidbit about the movie: it was a pet project of Leslie Howard, who planned to star in the movie after the war. His pal Niv took the mantle up for him.